European Student Think Tank

© www.kremlin.ru

“Belarus rep­res­ents an extreme case of an author­it­arian regime appar­ently little enticed by the EU’s car­rots and little dis­turbed by the EU’s sticks”, Pro­fessor Karen E. Smith poin­ted out while reflect­ing on the EU-Belarus rela­tions within the con­text of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) in 2005. Although six years have already passed, things have not been changed at all as pres­id­ent Aljak­sandr Lukashenka still appears excess­ively cal­lous to grow­ing cri­ti­cism and pres­sure eman­at­ing from the EU, joined by other demo­cratic coun­tries and inter­na­tional organ­iz­a­tions. By the same token, he remains irre­spons­ive to the exten­ded help­ing hand offered in forms of fin­an­cial and polit­ical sup­port and in exchange to open up a space for demo­cratic reforms in the country.

This is not sur­pris­ing: fear­ing that even embryonic indic­a­tion of any demo­cratic change will dir­ectly pose an imme­di­ate threat to his author­it­arian regime, Lukashenka drags Belarus into total isol­a­tion. The only com­pens­a­tion: devel­op­ing close rela­tions with like-minded rulers of the Post-Soviet space and else­where. Usurp­a­tion of power, rampant cor­rup­tion, severe human rights viol­a­tion, con­stant per­se­cu­tion of polit­ical oppon­ents, restric­tions on media, and abus­ive prac­tice of rigged and unfair elec­tions are few accus­a­tions among many oth­ers that rightly earned him a notori­ous epi­thet – “Europe’s last dictator”.

There is no ques­tion that the EU’s need to improve rela­tions with Belarus has gained urgency as the whole east­ern neigh­bor­hood policy is threatened to be run out of steam slowly. Fail­ure at the Eastern Partnership (EaP) Sum­mit in Warsaw provides a salut­ary example to that: the par­ti­cip­at­ing states dropped another EU attempt to exert fur­ther pun­it­ive meas­ures on the Lukashenka’s regime. More import­antly, this fact also high­lights and brings to sur­face other prob­lem­atic issues far exceed­ing a nar­row con­text of the EU-Belarus relations:

First and fore­most, it calls into ques­tion the effect­ive­ness of the EU’s prefer­able regional approaches towards its neigh­bors. The EU aspir­ant coun­tries Ukraine, Mol­dova and Geor­gia do not shy away from mani­fest­ing their dis­sat­is­fac­tion over the decision that placed them in the same EaP “bas­ket” with Belarus, Azerbaijan and Armenia, who have no inten­tion what­so­ever to integ­rate deeply with the Union.

Addi­tion­ally, Brus­sels two-billion-euro-offer to Lukashenka in exchange for release of polit­ical pris­on­ers and re-run of pres­id­en­tial elec­tions under the guid­ance of inter­na­tional observ­ers demon­strates plain incon­sist­ency in the EU for­eign policy beha­vior and defies coher­ence in usage of the “Car­rot and Stick” approach. Inev­it­ably, award­ing repress­ive regime with such a big mon­et­ary sum – pre­sum­ably on the assump­tion it would cata­lyze the demise of Lukashenka’s power in the long run – is illus­ive and devoid of any logical judgments.

Belarus or Bela – Rus that is the puzzle

Fail­ing to tame, Lukashenka thus far is imper­at­ive for Brus­sels to refresh its atti­tudes and stave off the pre­vi­ous mis­takes. The EU needs to focus a great deal of atten­tion on numer­ous vari­ables, which play import­ant roles in determ­in­ing con­sequences of its rela­tions with Belarus. Look­ing ahead there is one main chal­lenge that requires scru­pu­lous ana­lysis from the EU lead­er­ship in order to intro­duce more prag­matic and viable approaches from its dip­lo­matic tool­box. Namely, that is the Rus­sian factor that impedes all efforts of the EU.

Belarus has a very spe­cial status in the Rus­sian for­eign policy agenda, which binds these two broth­erly nations insep­ar­ably together. In the imme­di­ate after­math of the break-up of the Soviet Union they have act­ively sought reuni­fic­a­tion in dif­fer­ent forms. In 1991 they co-founded the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – a plat­form, which was meant to serve Russia’s ambi­tions to retain con­trol over ex-Soviet repub­lics. They went even fur­ther and cre­ated the Union of State in 1996 that aimed to develop fed­er­at­ive integ­ra­tion of both states under a com­mon gov­ern­ment. Besides, they forged the Customs Union, which was a dir­ect copy of the EU eco­nomic alli­ance and quite recently the soon-to-be (again) pres­id­ent of Rus­sia, Vladi­mir Putin, unveiled another ini­ti­at­ive to estab­lish a Eurasian Union, which expli­citly implies to con­tain the EU expan­sion east­wards. As a res­ult of this integ­ra­tion pro­cess the Belarus­ian eco­nomy has largely become attached to the Rus­sian mar­ket and its energy supplies.

This brief his­tor­ical excur­sion com­ple­men­ted by the com­mon Soviet leg­acy clearly cap­tures the essence of the cur­rent Bela-Russian entan­gle­ment – the only but­tress of the Lukashenka’s regime. His recent state­ment “that the sta­bil­ity of Belarus is largely depend­ent on sta­bil­ity in Rus­sia. If the ‘Rus­sian bear’ is doing well, we’ll be fine, too” as quoted from the Belarus­ian online news­pa­per Telegraf, unam­bigu­ously illus­trates this fact.

Against this back­ground, achiev­ing tan­gible deliv­er­ables in its rela­tions with Belarus, first and most import­antly, the EU needs to shift emphasis away from the regional approach – the EaP.  As already men­tioned above, it lacks dif­fer­en­ti­ation by put­ting inju­di­ciously six states of dif­fer­ent aspir­a­tions in the same “bas­ket”. Also, pla­cing a higher value on bilat­eral rela­tions with Rus­sia is neces­sary. It is thus of crit­ical import­ance that the EU ensures full back­ing of Rus­sia in its attempt to keep a pres­sure on Belarus, although, admit­tedly enough, hold­ing high expect­a­tions and optim­ism on such assist­ance would also be naïve as it out­runs capabilities.

Nev­er­the­less the Belarus­ian issue should become a cent­ral piece of their ongo­ing mutual rela­tions and the EU must com­mit addi­tional resources to the future trade-offs with Rus­sia. What are the chances that the EU can con­vince Rus­sia to cooper­ate and “sac­ri­fice” its close part­ner is a mat­ter of fur­ther dis­cus­sions which require more room than a single blog can provide.

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