Belarus – U. S.: The ‘cold peace’ period

Andrei Fyodarau

Summary

Last year’s Belarusian-American relations can be described as relatively calm. Despite the never-ending tension, quite frequent meetings held by high-ranking officials, which began in autumn 2013 and continued in the first months of 2014, conveyed the impression of certain positive developments. The meetings did not produce any remarkable improvements, and it did not raise much of an eyebrow when it all ended and both countries seemed to roll back to the usual state of confrontation. However, the unexpected visit of a senior official from the Department of State to Minsk at the end of the year showed that the situation was not that clear.

Trends:

Rapprochement attempts

Quite frequent contacts between Belarusian officials and U.S. Charge d’Affaires in Belarus Ethan Goldrich, which started few months before, unexpectedly continued early in the year.1 Goldrich met with Deputy Minister of Economy Anton Kudasov on January 14 and Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Guryanov on February 8. The sides discussed Belarusian-American cooperation in the political, economic, trade, investment and humanitarian sectors, international security matters, and Belarus’ opportunities regarding its accession to the WTO. Small and medium business development in Belarus and international technical aid were also on the agenda.

This did not mean, though, that Minsk had completely forgotten about its claims to Washington. In January, the Foreign Ministry spokesman stated once again that the economic sanctions imposed on Belarus violated the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances and discredited the United States. He also noted that “in the spheres where the parties managed to avoid political clichés, the dialogue went fairly smoothly”, and referred to the joint monitoring of nuclear nonproliferation as an example.

At a press conference on January 15, Alexander Lukashenko made a critical comment on the concern about new integration processes in the post-Soviet area voiced by then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “Wherever you set foot all over the world, there would be a zone of interests of the United States of America... She said it and, on the next day, all State Department officials started denying it fiercely, that it was not what she really meant. What was that? A hangover blurt, or what?” First of all, the situation not directly concern Belarus. More importantly, it was already known at the time that Clinton was about to resign. So, no diplomatic reaction of Washington followed.

By the way, the Belarusian leadership could have well-founded fear with regard to the new Secretary of State, Senator John Kerry: two years ago, Kerry and his colleague Joe Lieberman urged the West through The Washington Post to apply targeted economic and visa sanctions against Belarus for the post-election crackdown on the opposition.2

And yet, ways to alleviate the tension were still looked for despite old and new problems. Lukashenko’s meeting with a delegation of American political scientists headed by president of The Jamestown Foundation Glen Howard held on January 21 evidenced Belarus’ high motivation. According to the official website of the Foundation, the experts visited Minsk to survey the situation and talk about Belarusian relations with the U.S., EU and Russia. The program of the visit was impressive. It included a meeting with Vladimir Makei, representatives of the Ministry of Defense, Belarusian Railways, the Polish community in Lida, and European diplomats accredited in Minsk.

One of the delegation members, Radford University Professor Grigory Ioffe said that the main message conveyed by the Belarusian leader was that Belarus was keen to put foreign policy in equilibrium and normalize relations with the United States. Lukashenko thus demanded respect for Belarus as an independent state. Belarus was not going to “be friends with anyone against” Russia or America. He said the sanctions were nothing but absurd, and many began to realize that. The president expressed confidence that the door to the West would open sooner or later, but sooner would be better than later.

Also, it was confirmed after the meeting that Belarus would substantially contribute to the so-called Northern Distribution Network, NATO vital logistic supplies in support of the War in Afghanistan, which was very important to the Americans, who played the leading role there. The amount of non-military goods delivered from Klaipeda doubled in 2012. The route will be even more important in view of the planned pullout of the Alliance’s troops from Afghanistan.

Although Coordinator of U.S. Assistance to Europe and Eurasia Daniel Rosenblum, who visited Minsk right after the experts of the Department of State, said that they did not speak on behalf of any government institutions, it is possible that Alexander Lukashenko was very much inspired by the talks and, when hearing Makei’s report on January 29, he gave special consideration to the Belarus-EU and Belarus-U.S. relations outlook. Even the sanctions against TM Services Limited and Republican Design Bureau Radar for “having the potential to make a material contribution to weapons of mass destruction or cruise or ballistic missile systems” imposed by Washington in February did not cause a usual angry reaction from the Belarusian side. According to the Foreign Ministry, “it was a customary practice used by the United States... So we simply took note of this decision.” Probably, in addition to the desire to improve relations, the reason for such restraint was that this time the sanctions were not a response to domestic policy of the Belarusian regime, to which the latter usually reacts very strongly.

The meeting between Sergei Rachkov, chief of the Foreign Ministry’s Department for the USA and Canada, and representatives of the Department of State, U.S. Congress and analysts’ community with a very broad agenda held in late March in Washington can be considered as another clear manifestation of the Belarusian authorities’ desire to establish a dialogue. According to the official report, the sides discussed bilateral political and economic relations, feasibility of joint humanitarian projects in the field of health, social security and education in Belarus. The United States was informed about Belarus’ efforts aimed at accession to the World Trade Organization. The Department of State shared its media relations experience. It is particularly remarkable that both sides agreed to further exchange working visits to develop Belarusian-American relations. In April, something that had not happened for a long time took place: the Belarusian authorities expressed condolences to the United States three times: on the terrorist attack in Boston, the explosion that destroyed the West Fertilizer chemical plant in Texas, and the devastating tornadoes in Oklahoma.

Finally, on April 26, Vladimir Makei accepted Ethan Goldrich again to discuss current and future matters on the bilateral agenda and cooperation in the multilateral format. The American diplomat was handed over a message from the Belarusian foreign minister to John Kerry, in which Makei stated his vision of future Belarusian-American relations. It would be logical to assume that the Belarusian minister hoped to meet with his American counterpart face-to-face during the visit to New York. Makei was going to attend a high-level session of the UN General Assembly to review the implementation of the Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons scheduled for early May. But, apparently, this hope was wrecked, because Makei did not go to America.

Nonetheless, at the first glance, Minsk managed to achieve certain improvement. In particular, Alexander Lukashenko said addressing the National Assembly on April 19, “The United States let us know recently that it will not politicize our accession to the WTO, impede it, or oppose this process.” On top of this, in late May, the United States lifted sanctions against OJSC Belarusian Optical and Mechanical Association and ZAO BelTechExport imposed two years ago.

Full circle

However, it turned out later that the sanctions were lifted not because of appreciable political improvements in Belarus, but because the period of the sanctions had expired. In fact, no dramatic changes occurred. On June 13, Barack Obama extended sanctions against senior Belarusian officials for another year. The Belarusian Foreign Ministry disappointedly called it “the inertial decision as part of the approaches that have proved their futility” and “another missed opportunity to take our contacts onto a constructive level.”

The Belarusian leadership turned back to militant eloquence. Alexander Lukashenko used the notorious Snowden case to accuse Washington of total spying. Media reports on U.S. ambassador’s meetings with Belarusian officials were not released anymore.

Some of Lukashenko’s statements just favored the view that the year would end in the atmosphere of continuous sluggish confrontation. In an interview to the Kazakh state-run media in early October, he made stinging remarks against Obama, and, two weeks later, told students of the Mogilev State University that the people who traveled across the ocean to found the United States were “freedom-loving bandits” and that nearly 50 million people “were dying in a ditch” there without medical care.

New glimmer of hope?

Against this background, the visit of U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Eric Rubin to Minsk on December 11-12 looked really surprising. The American guest held talks at the Foreign Ministry and met with a group of representatives of the opposition and civil society. As one would expect, Rubin kept the agenda of the talks with the authorities to himself. He only said that the Belarusian government seemed to be willing to reconsider its position on the full resumption of the foreign diplomatic presence.

Since there was not even a minor improvement at the Belarusian-American ‘front’, the visit caused some confusion and even outright indignation among those who hoped for the most severe response from the West to the day-to-day realities in Belarus. The latter regarded this step as “an unambiguous offer of constructive cooperation to the dictator”,3 which would encourage the regime to continue its home policy.

Indeed, when Rubin expressed his gratitude “for having him here”, it looked like the visit was initiated by the American side. Besides, he noted that a progress in the field of human rights and democracy in Belarus would facilitate U.S. support for cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, which Minsk keenly sought. This might lead one to suspect that the U.S. was retreating from the repeatedly outspoken categorical imperative, according to which the release of political prisoners remained a fundamental and indispensable condition for the resumption of cooperation, as no progress in this matter was observed. The Belarusian government did not make this step even considering that the November Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius was close at hand and the prisoners’ release would be more than opportune.

This conclusion seems to be premature, though. The experience of many years shows that the Americans least of all deserve the criticism for overly hasty wriggling out of their commitment to fundamental values. Therefore, even if Washington was actually trying to use a different way to stimulate democratic processes, it would be unjust to throw stones at the White House, the more so because no one has yet proved that the most rigorous approach is the only correct one. Remember how West Germany bought freedom for 33,755 political prisoners kept in East Germany for money and commodities equivalent to nearly EUR 33 billion 1963 through 1989 and has never been subjected to criticism for that.

Conclusion

So, all Minsk’s attempts to normalize relations between Belarus and the United States made in the first half of the year did not produce tangible results. It is still unclear whether Rubin’s mission led to anything useful, but the fact that the Russian loan granted to Belarus at the end of the year, which slightly reduced the need for IMF support, does not instill hope for a substantial progress in this direction.

The already very limited economic cooperation continued to decline. Over the past year, the bilateral commodity turnover amounted to less than USD 200 million (255 million a year before). For reference, the turnover with Bulgaria, which is scale-wise comparable to Belarus, is almost four times larger, and the turnover with neighboring Lithuania is more than 10 times larger, the latter having a considerable trade surplus.

At the same time, unlike previous years, no major escalation was observed in 2013. Today’s relations between Minsk and Washington can be described as ‘cold peace’ without glowing prospects.

The consolidated position of American political elites on the issue of political prisoners and, in general, on the political situation in Belarus can hardly be shaken by any lobbying efforts. Accordingly, some changes may only occur if political prisoners are released that will be inevitably followed by new demands.

As concerns the Belarusian leadership with its undeniable desire to shake off all sanctions among other things to be able to meet with their American counterparts on more or less equal terms, the government does not feel an urgent need to make concessions.

But still, despite the stalemate and setbacks, a resumption of dialogue does not seem impossible. To begin with, the parties could agree on a resumption of full-scale functioning of the diplomatic missions. However, unfortunately, there is no good reason to expect more radical changes in the near future.