| Abstract [eng] |
This master‘s thesis examines the military cooperation between China and Belarus, with particular focus on the interests that drive and sustain it. The object of the study is the official political discourse through which both states construct and legitimise their security partnership. The research problem stems from a gap in existing literature – despite growing academic attention to China‘s expanding global security partnerships, the specific factors motivating military cooperation between China and Belarus remain underexplored. Belarus is frequently treated either as a Russian satellite with little independent agency or as a peripheral actor in European security debates. The study aims to identify the factors and motives that drive the intensifying military cooperation between the two states, and to assess what this cooperation reveals about each party‘s broader strategic interests. To achieve this aim, the thesis pursues four objectives: (1) reviewing theoretical frameworks applicable to authoritarian security partnerships; (2) tracing the historical development of Sino–Belarusian military cooperation across four analytical phases; (3) conducting a systematic narrative analysis of primary sources; (4) evaluating how the identified narratives relate to the study‘s four hypotheses. The central research question asks what narratives China and Belarus construct to justify their military cooperation, how these narratives reveal each state‘s underlying interests and whether the partnership is moving toward deeper integration. Four hypotheses were assessed. The first states that the strengthening of an authoritarian, anti–Western bloc increases the intensity of military cooperation. The second holds that China‘s ambition to diversify its security partnerships and expand influence in Europe drives the partnership‘s development. The third suggests that Belarus‘ structural dependence on Russia motivates military cooperation with China as a balancing act. The fourth argues that the Belarusian regime uses the partnership primarily to maintain an illusion of autonomy before domestic and international audiences. The empirical analysis is grounded in qualitative narrative analysis of fourteen primary sources spanning 2000–2025, including bilateral declarations, diplomatic communiques, presidential directives and high-level officials‘ public statements. Using a five–category coding framework – subjects, threats, roles, causes, goals – fourteen dominant narrative types were identified and analysed both in terms of their content and their chronological evolution. The study‘s central finding is that the two states‘ interests are asymmetric rather than genuinely convergent. For Belarus, the partnership is existential, however, for China, it is just one pragmatic partnership among many. This asymmetry carries important implications for the partnership‘s future trajectory. Rather than evolving toward a stable, institutionalised military alliance with formal defence commitments and joint operational structures, the cooperation is more accurately described as a situational alignment sustained by Lukashenko‘s personal political needs and China‘s pragmatism. Deep operational integration appears unlikely in the foreseeable future, as China consistently prioritises avoiding escalation with Western actors. |
