Belarus: island of stability?

The crisis in Ukraine should oblige Europe’s policymakers to pay more attention to Belarus, writes Andrew Gardner.

Sunday, 20 July, marked the twentieth anniversary of Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s presidency of Belarus – a European record for longevity in leadership with which, until last year, only Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker could compete.

So what has life been like under the man usually described as ‘Europe’s last dictator’? “Belarusians have never lived better in their history than they do now,” says Dzianis Melyantsou of the independent Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies (BISS), a sad conclusion borne out by years of opinion polls. Such findings highlight the paradox of Lukashenka’s rule: he may be authoritarian, but he is successful and has a genuine claim to popular legitimacy, however much he rigs elections.

The European Union’s policy towards Belarus has been affected by such success, as well as by excess. The success of Lukashenka’s unattractive model has made him peripheral in European diplomacy. His excesses have made him a pariah. His use of the death penalty has kept Belarus out of the Council of Europe. His repeated rigging of elections and imprisonment of opponents has put him on EU and US sanctions lists. The ‘disappearance’ – presumed murder – of four critics in 1999 makes policymakers believe he is capable of ruthless crackdowns.

As a result, EU policy has been dominated by sanctions and afflicted by cycles of engagement and frustration that largely coincide with the electoral cycle. The net effect is to raise questions about the purpose of EU policy. It is hard to describe the policy as strategic: Belarus has managed to remain so stable, so self-contained and so successful in playing Russia and the EU off against each other that the need for containment, the possibility of regime change and even of meaningful engagement have been limited.

Instead, EU strategy could be viewed as a policy of marginal gains: intended to extract some concessions from Lukashenka (such as the periodic release of political prisoners), to re-affirm the EU’s commitment to international norms of good behaviour and to keep in step with the US’s policy. This year, though, the crisis in Ukraine has radically changed the context in which Lukashenka operates, a change that should make the EU reconsider its policy.

Lukashenka has reacted with a blend of strength and caution to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the violence in eastern Ukraine: he has threatened personally to shoot any ‘little green men’ who cross Belarus’s border, has reached out to Ukraine’s new government – but has sought to avoid antagonising Russia. He has continued to offer the EU crumbs of hope, starting talks on visa liberalisation and releasing a political prisoner (Ales Bialiatski). But Europe’s most successful strongman has kowtowed to Europe’s most assertive strongman – Russia’s Vladimir Putin – by signing up to the Eurasian Economic Union.

The question now is whether Russia will undermine achievements that Lukashenka has always prided himself on (and that analysts accept are real): Belarus has kept itself independent of Russia and, unlike Russia, has very few oligarchs, little corruption and deep-rooted stability. There is a plausible prospect that an island of stability – albeit unattractive stability – will become less stable and more Russian.

So what are the EU’s options? One is to continue policy unchanged. In practice, that translates into policy being made mainly at member-state level, referring ‘normative’ or symbolic issues – such as personalised sanctions – to the EU level. The EU – or, rather, the most influential states – will not change their well-established positions and, frustrated by previous failed attempts to reach out to Lukashenka, will not bargain. Belarus can take or leave the offer on the table – an offer that is, in essence, the same as other eastern neighbours of the EU are taking (such as Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia). This is the ‘more of the same’ approach.

Another offers ‘more and less of the same’. This would follow the model set out in the EU’s Eastern Partnership initiatives, coupled with greater diplomacy and more EU-level action but shaped by the belief that the Lukashenka system is here for a long time and that the emphasis should be on developing contacts with Belarusians and with the people who operate their institutions.

Another approach could be viewed as reflecting a belief that ‘everything must change for everything to remain the same’.  In this scenario, Lukashenka has created something independent, separate and distinct from Russia (and somewhat better) from a Soviet republic that differed little from Russia. The challenge, then, is to encourage that trend and help it acquire more European features.

These options have striking similarities. They suggest changes will be slow and incremental, they offer Belarus deeper institutional co-operation and could bolster it against Russian influence. But they also differ sharply in the depth of potential engagement, the terms of that engagement, their sense of Belarus’s geopolitical importance and – therefore – the urgency for change.

Perhaps the biggest difficulty, though, is that they demand a broadly shared interest in, attention to and perception of Belarus from Europe’s policymakers, a greater role from the EU and a willingness to take political risks. That may be unpalatable. There is, though, an unavoidable dilemma that European policymakers will increasingly have to face up to: as Ukraine becomes more important to the EU and as the EU reviews its policy towards Russia, can it really leave relations with Belarus on autopilot?