Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 12 – Most discussions
of the prospects for the integration of post-Soviet states in Vladimir Putin’s
Eurasian Economic Union or alternatively the EU are based on the assumption
that, despite difficulties, these countries can more or less quickly integrate
into one or the other.
But a Belarusian economist has
warned that his country’s economy is not in a position to integrate with
either, a problem that is likely to echo well into the future regardless of
which “choice” Mensk declares it has made and one that will at the very least
slow down integration projects in either direction (camarade.biz/node/16068).
Yaroslav Romanchuk, head of the
Mises Center in the Belarusian capital, says that it is a mistake to think that
the signing and ratification of an economic integration agreement with the
Russian Federation will mean very much anytime soon given the Belarusian
economy as presently constituted is in no position to integrate with any other
country or group.
“In relations between Belarus and
Russia,” the economist says, “the letter of international agreements is always
secondary to the words and spirit of relations,” and consequently, no one, not
in Belarus or anywhere else should put much faith that what has been agreed to
will be carried out or even can be.
Just as the Russian leadership is
likely to find it harder to garner the high levels of support it has if oil
falls to 60 dollars a barrel, pay is cut and the banking crisis intensifies, so
too, Romanchuk says, the Belarusian leadership needs to recognize that “the
main sources of the relative well-being of the country will run out by 2017.”
The next two years “will pass very
quickly,” and one “cannot exclude the possibility” that the difficulties
Belarus will soon be facing will mean that a future Belarusian parliament will
be “ordered to denounced the accord that it just adopted” almost without
debate.
To avoid that scenarios – and Romanchuk
suggests that it is a likely one – Mensk would have to come up with an
effective system of targeted state assistance to those who will be hit hardest
by expanding market relations with Russia. “Unfortunately,” he says, “the
government does not have on its desk any fresh ideas” on how to do that.
Consequently, instead of using the
money that Alyaksandr Lukashenka has extracted from Moscow to join the Eurasian
Economic Union for fundamental transformations, it is far more probable that
the Belarusian government will spend it on current account needs and do nothing
to prepare for the future.
The Mensk regime “for years has been
conducting a policy of isolationism, protectionism, and self-sufficiency,” even
though “on paper” it has signed “numerous integration accords” which call for
the free flow of goods, services, capital and labor. And it has exploited on
occasion the more liberal economic arrangements in other countries, including
in Russia, without offering the companies of those countries similar
possibilities at home.
That creates problems in relations
between Belarus and Russia, and it makes almost impossible any thought of
integrating Belarus into the EU. Those
are “two different worlds … not only politically but economically,” and it is
far from clear that anyone in Mensk is prepared to pay what would be required
to change that either.
For any integration project to work,
Romanchuk says, the Belarusian government would have to engage in “complex
structural reforms, the diversification of the economy, the acquisition of the
habit of not living beyond one’s means, the promotion of competitiveness, and the
defense of property.”
“If we successfully will do [that]
homework,” he says, “then we will be ready for any integration.” Sadly, Belarus today is not ready to take
those steps and thus is not ready for any integration, eastward or westward.
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