Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 3 – In the wake of
Crimea, Moscow is likely to increase pressure on Belarus to cooperate, but experts
say there is little chance that the two countries will unite anytime soon.
Instead, Putin’s Crimean Anschluss is likely to make Belarus and other former
Soviet republics even more leery than they already are of yielding sovereignty
to Moscow.
Many expected after Russian
President Boris Yeltsin and his Belarusian counterpart Alyaksandr Lukashenka
signed agreements for a union of their two countries in the late 1990s that the
two would soon fuse. That has not
happened, and Aleksey Polubota of “Svobodnaya pressa” says experts don’t think
Crimea will change that (svpressa.ru/politic/article/84896/).
What Crimea has done is change
expectations in both countries. On the
one hand, some Russians think that Belarus should come to the aid of the
Russian Federation which now faces sanctions given that Moscow has in their
view helped Belarus out on numerous occasions in the past.
And on the other, many in Belarus
looking at what Moscow has done in Crimea are even more cautious about yielding power to any combined state,
although it is clear that they are at least equally concerned, given Western
attitudes toward Mensk, that their country not take any step that might provoke
a harsh Russian response.
According to Vyacheslav Tetyokin, a
KPRF Duma deputy, the Crimean events underscore how important closer integration
is “not only for Russia and Belarus but also for Ukraine and Kazakhstan.” Belarus needs Russian raw materials and
markets for its economic success, and consequently, Crimea should “push” Moscow
and Mensk closer together.
But Boris Shmelov, head of the
Moscow Center for Political Research at the Academy of Sciences, says that it
has long been clear that “a full fusion” of Russia and Belarus is “now
impossible. A union state would involve a significant loss of sovereignty,
something the Belarusian side” – including both “the elite and the population”
-- is not prepared for.”
From the very beginning, “it was not
very clear” just what such a union state would be, Shmelyov continues. A
federation or a confederation? And more
generally, it was not specified “on what foundations we must jointly exist.”
As a result, “today in Belarus, the
dominant point of view is that it is necessary to have close contacts with
Russia in economic, military, cultural and other spheres, but under the
condition that [the two] countries remain sovereign and equal in rights.”
Consequently, “in the full sense of
this word, a Union state of Russia and Belarus does not exist and hardly will
anytime soon. There is no common Constitution, currency or foreign policy.”
Instead, the Moscow scholar says, “our union today is a certain
political-economic form of relations between two states.”
Belarus has avoided constructing a
nation state for the Belarusians, one in which ethnic Russians living there
might feel second class citizens, Shmelyov continues, and along with that,
there exit “many objectively positive trends which create the foundation for
further cooperation.” That will continue
unless Moscow puts too much pressure on Mensk.
The events in Crimea, however, have
raised questions in the Belarusian capital, the Moscow expert says. Belarusians are very cautious about Moscow’s
absorption of the peninsula. They aren’t celebrating but they aren’t displaying
“sharply negative” reactions either. The
same thing is true at the government level.
Lukashenka for his part, “as a pragmatic politician,” Shmelyov says, “is
seeking to find something positive for Belarus in this situation. For example, he declared that Western
sanctions against Russia will open new opportunities for the sale of Belarusian
goods on the Russian market.”
Much
of the Russian-Belarusian relationship depends on the personality of
Lukashenka, Shmelyov says. If the
Belarusian opposition came to power, it would almost certainly seek to conduct “a
more multi-vector foreign policy” and expand contacts with the European
Union. That is what the West would like
to see, just as it has in the case of Ukraine.
For
the time being, if Russia conducts “a wise policy” toward Mensk, Belarus will
remain “a reliable economic partner.”
But there are problems ahead, Shmelyov adds. A new generation is growing
up in Belarus “which already does not have the experience of living in a single
state with Russia” and which has far greater interest in Europe.
Pavel Salin, the director of the Center
for Political Research at Moscow’s Financial University, adds that “the new political
reality” after Crimea is likely to “force the president of Belarus to be more
careful in his relations with Russia.”
Lukashenka has to be concerned,
Salin says, that Moscow in Crimea has crossed “a certain psychological barrier”
which had restrained it even after the August 2008 war in Georgia “and
demonstrated that it is ready to conduct itself in a new way in the post-Soviet
space.” He was more comfortable with “the earlier and ‘predictable’ Russia.
Given that, the Moscow scholar
continues, it is “not excluded that Lukashenka will try to re-insure himself in
order to feel himself less dependent on Russia. Perhaps, he will make certain
steps toward the West which after the events in Crimea is trying to play the
Belarusian card against Russia.”
But the Mensk leader’s possibilities are limited in that
regard, Salin says. The West remains suspicious of him, and there is in Belarus
neither an oligarchy nor a population that has as yet expressed much interest
in integrating with Europe given how radically Belarus would have to change in
order to do so.
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