President George Bush, in his 2005 inaugural speech, announced that the spread of liberty and democracy worldwide would be among his new policies. With respect to Belarus, Secretary Condoleezza Rice defined this policy in some detail during her April visit to Vilnius, and President Bush did the same in May during his stop in Riga on his trip to Moscow. Their statements were covered by this writer in the summer issue of the Review under the title "President Bush and Secretary Rice Push for Democracy in Belarus." The essence of those statements was that the last dictatorship in Europe needs to be replaced by a democracy, and that the US was ready to work toward that end. To make this happen, the US Congress budgeted $30 million for the fiscal years 2005 and 2006.
How to achieve this was left up to the State Department to define. The direction of this new US policy was first revealed in Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried's July 11 Warsaw interview with BelaPAN, an independent Belarusian news agency. Overall, the interview offers some insight into how the US plans to solve the Belarus problem. The approach seems to be soft, avoiding anything radical, and seeing what happens during the 2006 presidential election.
With respect to Russia's role in this situation, Mr. Fried says: "[We] hope that Russia will work to support freedom in Belarus because Russia, I believe, is a great friend of Belarus as it shows to be. President Bush and President Putin have good personal relations. We believe that cooperation with Russia can help democracy in Belarus and we hope the Russians will work to support the Belarusian people."
Mr. Fried also said that dictatorships do not last forever and made it clear that if Lukashenka were to run and win in 2006, the US would not recognize that election as valid in view of the fact the US had not recognized the 2004 referendum that let Lukashenka run for a third term. Mr. Fried was careful not to say what the US would do if Lukashenka ran and the international monitoring community decided the election was free and fair.
The West, of course, would not recognize fraudulent results. But so what? Starting with the 1996 referendum, the West did not recognize any subsequent referenda/elections, declaring them fraudulent, while, at the same time, Russia, an interested and biased party, recognized all of them as legal and valid and has supported Lukashenka's stay in power.
Therefore, we have good reason to believe that Russia is part of the problem, not the solution, and history proves that. Russia has not been a friend of Belarus since the time of its total incorporation into the Russian Empire at the end of the 18th century. The territory known today as Belarus became a colony of Russia. During the past two centuries Russia?s interests in Belarus have not changed. The colony has remained a colony subjected to fierce Russification and denationalization, which has been extended and brutally enforced under Russia's present client, President Lukashenka. In fact, Belarus is on the verge of being reintegrated back into Russia.
At this very moment, Russia is busy working on how to reintegrate Belarus into Russia under the cover of a "union state." This year alone there have been over half a dozen meetings between high officials of Russia and Belarus, including several private meetings between Putin and Lukashenka, to discuss accelerating the process of finalizing the draft of the union constitution and introducing the Russian ruble as a common currency. We think all these moves are designed to rush the completion of the union state project so as to preempt the US/EU drive for democracy in Belarus and keep Lukashenka in power.
It was reported that on September 9, Mr. Lukashenka was quite exuberant when he said: "Today it is evident to anyone that our integration has taken place. The Belarus-Russia union has become a geopolitical reality," and further, "The adoption of the union state's constitution would bring the two states even closer to each other ..."
Against this background it is unrealistic to expect Russia to give up its drive to reintegrate Belarus into Russia or to work, as the West hopes, to support the spread of freedom and democracy in Belarus. We believe it is wishful thinking to rely on Mr. Putin's goodwill to bring freedom and democracy to Belarus just because he has a good personal relationship with Mr. Bush. We do not doubt Mr. Bush's sincere desire to help Belarus, but we do not know what Mr. Putin promised regarding Belarus during their private meetings in Bratislava and Moscow that justifies the US's confidence that Russia will indeed promote democracy in Belarus.
We think Belarus' independence, sovereignty and the territorial integrity are very much at stake if the union state does materialize. If this happens, there will be no chance to pull Belarus back from Russia's embrace. We hope that the US and EU realize this and apply enough pressure on Russia to make it abide by the commitment it made to respect "the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of the Republic of Belarus" by signing the 1994 memorandum on security assurances at the Budapest CSCE Summit in accordance with the 1975 CSCE Helsinki Final Act.
This article appeared in
Belarusian Review, Vol. 17, No. 3
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Copyright 2005 Belarusian Review
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23 december 2005
Author: Joseph Arciuch