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What 15 August 2020 meant for the region
Summary
A retrospective on a day of troop deployments, appeals to Moscow and a UN defeat for Washington.
What did a single Saturday reveal about the region's security map? On 15 August 2020, three developments pointed in different directions: a troop agreement in Warsaw, an appeal from Minsk to Moscow, and a diplomatic defeat for the United States at the UN a day earlier.
Troops move east
In Warsaw, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Błaszczak signed an agreement to redeploy about 1,000 U.S. troops from Germany to Poland, bringing the total there to 5,500. The deal also provides for a potential increase to 20,000 U.S. troops if Poland is under threat.
Minsk turns to Moscow
In Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko issued an appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said he considered the protests "not a threat to just Belarus anymore". Statements from both sides contained a pointed reference to the Union State between the two countries.
Meanwhile, opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who was in exile in Lithuania, called for more protests.
A setback at the UN
On 14 August 2020, the UN Security Council rejected a U.S. bid to extend a global arms embargo on Iran indefinitely. Only the Dominican Republic backed the U.S. resolution, leaving it far short of the nine "yes" votes required for adoption. Eleven of the 15 members, including France, Germany and the United Kingdom, abstained. Russia and China opposed extending the ban but did not need to use their vetoes.
The vote came amid a long-running pattern of international sanctions on Iran, imposed by the UN and unilaterally by the United States, the European Union and others.
