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Belarus wants out - Foreign Affairs
Russias partners are understandably spooked. Early in the Ukraine crisis, when pro-Western protesters were camping out in Kiev, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarus president, seemed happy to see Russia encourage the Ukrainian regime to crack down. Like Putin, he had no desire to see Ukraines fellow Slavs in Russia or Belarus copying the slogans and tactics of the Ukrainian protestors. (Lukashenko is still scarred by the demonstrations that followed the controversial 2010 elections, in which he won a fourth term in office.) But Russias military intervention in Crimea was a very different matter. Lukashenko pointedly refused to send observers to Crimeas March 15 referendum. He has also defied Moscow by saying that he will work with the new pro-Western government in Kiev (which Putin has described as illegitimate).There are good reasons for Belarus to feel threatened. It does not have any single enclave with a majority ethnic-Russian population like Crimea, although approximately eight percent of the population in eastern Belarus is ethnically Russian. But Russia is the dominant language across all of Belarus. According to Putins reasoning for seizing Crimea, even Belarus could one day be a target of Russian pressure. (Its similarly plausible, if not even more likely, that Russia would stage an intervention in Kazakhstans Russian-speaking north.) Even if it is unlikely that Russia would invade Belarus anytime soon, Lukashenko does have reason to worry about the consequences of joining Putins Eurasian Union. For one, Lukashenko may already sense that the Eurasian Union wont be the economic boon for Belarus that he had once imagined. Although he may have hoped that it would provide an open market for cheap Belarusian goods, its precursor, the Customs Union, has so far underscored that Belarusian goods have difficulties competing in a free market, even with goods produced in Russia or Kazakhstan. Further, even as Russia talks of creating a mutually beneficial partnership, it has been trying to weaken the states around itself. Ukraine is not the only such example. Georgia and especially Moldova have come under pressure as they try to tie up their EU Agreements in 2014. The last thing that Lukashenko wants is to become another weak leader challenged by domestic revolt, often fomented by Russia, who then becomes dependent on Russia to survive -- as Yanukovych would have become if he had not overreacted to the protests in Kiev and been forced to flee, or as Serzh Sargsyan has already become in Armenia. Even worse, Lukashenko knows he could end up as a tin-pot dictator of a mini-state, like Yevgeny Shevchuk, the president of Transnistria, or Sergei Aksyonov, the new prime minister of Crimea. Posted by: Besoeker 2014-03-23 |
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