By Alan MACLEOD

Quietly, the U.S. national security state is turning up the heat on Belarus, hoping that the ex-Soviet country of 9 million will be the next casualty of its regime-change agenda. This sentiment was made clear in President Joe Biden’s recent speech at the United Nations General Assembly. Biden announced that the U.S. would pursue “relentless diplomacy” finding “new ways of lifting people up around the world, of renewing and defending democracy.” The 46th president was explicit in whom he meant by this: “The democratic world is everywhere. It lives in the anti-corruption activists, the human rights defenders, the journalists, the peace protestors on the frontlines of this struggle in Belarus, Burma, Syria, Cuba [and] Venezuela,” he said, putting Belarus first on the list of states in desperate need of a change in government.

This builds on the back of previous statements the administration has released. In June, a joint announcement by the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom and the European Union essentially pronounced the death penalty on the Lukashenko government, in power since 1994. “We are committed to support the long-suppressed democratic aspirations of the people of Belarus and we stand together to impose costs on the regime for its blatant disregard of international commitments,” they wrote, as they announced new sanctions.

A “modest but significant contribution”

Covertly, Washington is taking far more wide-ranging action. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is spending millions of dollars yearly on Belarus and has 40 active projects inside the state, all with the same goal of overthrowing Alexander Lukashenko and replacing him with a more U.S.-friendly president. Although not a single individual or organization is named, it is clear from the scant public information it reveals that Washington is focusing on three areas: training activists and civil-society organizations in non-violent regime-change tactics; funding anti-government media; and bankrolling election-monitoring groups.

Earlier this year, on a Zoom meeting infiltrated by activists and released to the public, the NED’s senior Europe Program officer, Nina Ognianova, boasted that the groups leading the nationwide demonstrations against Lukashenko last year — actions that made worldwide headlines — were trained by her organization. “We don’t think that this movement that is so impressive and so inspiring came out of nowhere — that it just happened overnight,” she said, noting that the NED had made a “modest but significant contribution” to the protests.

On the same call, NED President Carl Gershman added that “we support many, many groups and we have a very, very active program throughout the country, and many of the groups obviously have their partners in exile.” Gershman also boasted that the Belarusian government was powerless to intervene and stop them: “We’re not like Freedom House or NDI [the National Democratic Institute] and the IRI [International Republican Institute]; we don’t have offices. So if we’re not there, they can’t kick us out.”

The NED was set up by the Reagan administration as a front group for the CIA, to continue the agency’s work in destabilizing other countries. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,” Gershman said, explaining its creation. Another NED founder, Allen Weinstein, was perhaps even more blunt: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” he told The Washington Post.

Belarusians are largely ignorant that this is going on beneath the surface. A poll taken by the NED’s sister organization USAID found that around two-thirds of the public were unaware of the actions of any NGOs inside their country, let alone where their funding came from.

The chosen one

The U.S. and Europe have not only decided Lukashenko must go, but have even agreed on his replacement. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a 39-year-old former schoolteacher and wife of anti-government activist Sergei Tikhanovsky, is the D.C. establishment’s clear candidate of choice. Described almost universally in corporate media as a pro-democracy activist, Tsikhanouskaya emerged from obscurity last year after her husband was barred from standing in the 2020 elections. Sergei is currently on trial for his role in organizing the nationwide demonstrations last year, an event the government sees as a coup attempt.

The government reportedly detained tens of thousands of people, and it was this heavy-handed response that added fuel to the flames of protests, turning them into a demonstration against political repression.

If convicted, Tikhanovsky faces up to 15 years in prison. Sviatlana ran in his stead, officially winning 10% of the national vote (although she maintains that she actually won an overwhelming victory and that the contest was rigged). In recent months, she has been doing the rounds in the West, meeting with foreign leaders in an attempt to convince them to support her. In July, she traveled to Washington for a meeting with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who conveyed the U.S.’ “respect for the courage and determination of the opposition” in Belarus.

Later that month, Tsikhanouskaya received what she was looking for: an endorsement from the president of the United States. After an in-depth meeting with Joe Biden, he promoted her as the true leader of her country. “The United States stands with the people of Belarus in their quest for democracy and universal human rights,” he said in a statement. She also received NATO’s blessing, meeting with senior figures from its think tank, the Atlantic Council, on several occasions.

At a recent event with the Council on Foreign Relations, Tsikhanouskaya made it clear that she was dependent on foreign support to continue her campaign. “We don’t have a lot of space inside the country. That’s why we are so [grateful for a large] amount of help from outside,” she said, telling the audience of business figures, state officials and media personalities that she and they “shar[ed] common values.” Perhaps the clearest indication that she had won the favor of the Western establishment were the rumors of a Nobel Peace Prize. At the time of its awarding, she was equal third with the bookmarkers, but ultimately lost out to journalists Dmitry Muratov and Maria Ressa.

I was honored to meet with @Tsihanouskaya at the White House this morning. The United States stands with the people of Belarus in their quest for democracy and universal human rights. pic.twitter.com/SdR6w4IBNZ

— President Biden (@POTUS) July 28, 2021

Despite the official endorsements, there are strong indications that Tsikhanouskaya enjoys little public support in Belarus and that her position is largely buoyed by foreign backing. A study conducted by Chatham House and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) found that only 10% of Belarusians believed she would be a good president (as opposed to 25% for Lukashenko). Both Chatham House and RUSI are directly funded by NATO and its member states like the U.S., and both have previously advocated for regime change in Belarus.

More worryingly, Tsikhanouskaya appears to be among the least trusted and most disliked people in the entire country, the poll finding that even among people who supported the 2020 protests her trustworthiness score is negative.

Furthermore, the poll was carried out by an organization that makes blatantly clear throughout the report that it wants Lukashenko overthrown, and was conducted largely online, among tech-savvy, younger Belarusians in large cities — all groups that trend heavily towards being pro-protest and anti-Lukashenko. As such, the survey could barely have been designed any more favorably for Tsikhanouskaya. That even under these circumstances her popularity is so low is telling. Moreover, the polling was carried out before she began touring the West, asking for more crippling economic sanctions on her own country.

Washington’s woman

Why, then, has the West decided to champion her, and not other opposition leaders, many of whom have a far greater support base according to the poll? One explanation is that the Lukashenko administration has already imprisoned them. Viktar Babaryka, for example, was sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony for a host of financial crimes. Amnesty and other Western organizations have described the ruling as “politically motivated.” Other opposition figures, such as Maksim Znak and Maria Kalesnikava have also been jailed.

Another reason could be Tsikhanouskaya’s seeming total willingness to be a representative of the U.S. government in Belarus. Her senior advisor, Franak Viačorka, for example, is a consultant for the U.S. Agency for Global Media; the creative director of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an organization described by The New York Times as a “worldwide propaganda network built by the CIA.” He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council, a NATO-linked organization that boasts no fewer than seven former CIA directors on its board. At an Atlantic Council event in July, Tsikhanouskaya called on the West to do more to overthrow her opponent, saying “I think it’s high time for democratic countries to unite and show their teeth.” According to the NED’s Gershman, the U.S. continues to work “very, very closely” with her.

Tsikhanouskaya’s ascension from obscurity to political stardom mirrors that of Venezuelan politician Juan Guaidó, whom the U.S. contends is the country’s rightful president. According to Cuban intellectual Raul Capote, whom the CIA recruited to become president of the country after what it hoped would be a successful regime-change attempt, the U.S. prefers to work with unknown figures because of their lack of political baggage and Washington’s ability to shape them in a manner it sees fit. Tsikhanouskaya apparently sees herself in the same mold as Guaidó, describing him as “inspiring.” Meanwhile, Venezuelan anti-government demonstrators can be seen flying the flag of the Belarusian opposition at rallies.

Sviatlana @Tsihanouskaya líder de la alternativa democrática en Bielorrusia, es un ejemplo de resistencia y dignidad para quienes luchamos por libertad y democracia. Ambas son causas globales. La lucha de uno, sin importar las fronteras, es lucha de todos. #TIME100NEXT https://t.co/ZiP26j1mG4

— Juan Guaidó (@jguaido) February 18, 2021

Tsikhanouskaya fashions herself merely as a “transition president” who would not run for re-election after Lukashenko falls. This is eerily similar to how Jeanine Añez, the U.S. backed Bolivian leader who came to power after a coup against Evo Morales in 2019, described herself. Like Tsikhanouskaya, Añez was also an obscure political figure held up by the United States as the savior of democracy. Despite describing herself as the “interim president,” she immediately began radically transforming the country’s economy and foreign relations, privatizing state assets and moving Bolivia closer to the U.S. She also suspended elections three times before being forced to concede after a nationwide general strike paralyzed the country.

While in the United States, Tsikhanouskaya made sure to publicly meet with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland. To those in the know, this was another clear message. Nuland was the brains behind the U.S.-backed Maidan Insurrection in Ukraine that overthrew the government of Viktor Yanukovych, bringing in a far-right, pro-Western administration. Nuland flew to Kiev to personally participate in the demonstrations herself, even handing out cookies in Independence Square in the city center.

At the Council on Foreign Relations, Tsikhanouskaya said she saw “a lot of parallels” between her situation and the Maidan, adding that “the Belarusian people will fight till our victory.”

Journalist or Neo-Nazi paramilitary poster child?

A second Ukrainian connection is the case of the arrest of opposition figure Roman Protasevich. In May, the Belarusian government forced a Ryanair flight between Greece and Lithuania that Protasevich was on to land in Belarus so that they could arrest him. By way of an excuse for the flagrant breach of international law, the government claimed it had received a credible bomb threat.

Video footage has now emerged of so-called ‘Belarus Journalist’ Roman Protasevich who it appears was in fact part of the neo-Nazi ‘Azov’ Battalion and fought in the #Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/MUyOc9tng3

— Dean O’Brien – BA (Hons) (@DeanoBeano1) May 26, 2021

Western nations strongly condemned the move, imposing sanctions on Belarus in retaliation. Left unreported in Western media, however, were Protasevich’s ties to both the Maidan Revolution and to Western governments. Universally described as a courageous journalist, Protasevich had, in fact, been a member of the infamous Azov Battalion, a Neo-Nazi paramilitary that did much of the heavy lifting to overthrow Yanukovych. He was literally the group’s poster child, appearing on the front cover of its magazine Black Sun in full fatigues and holding a rifle. The Azov Battalion has since been absorbed into the Ukrainian armed forces.

After leaving the Azov Battalion, Protasevich was awarded the Vaclav Havel Journalism Fellowship in Prague and worked for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Thread. Re Protasevich and Azov. Here’s what’s out there to be analyzed against other evidence, commentary: 1st photo is Protasevich, 2nd photo is the cover of Azov’s “Black Sun” publication July 2015 issue #15. 3rd photo is what @azure says: “0.70 confidence” (that’s high-ish). pic.twitter.com/ucrjma8GEd

— Oleksiy Kuzmenko (@kooleksiy) May 25, 2021

Protasevich had traveled to Greece to attend a meeting with Tsikhanouskaya, the president of Greece, and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt. Officially, he was there as a photographer. However, these connections certainly suggest there could be more to this story than meets the eye and that perhaps Belarusian authorities suspected something about the meeting, taking a calculated decision to detain him at all costs. What they found out or what information Protasevich was carrying will likely never be made public.

Посчастливилось поснимать @Tsihanouskaya в ходе её визита в Афины.

Было безумно круто получить такой опыт! Больше фото — в официальных аккаунтах Светланы Георгиевны. pic.twitter.com/ugHVHXLzrQ

— Roman Protasevich (@pr0tez) May 16, 2021

US supports plenty of tyrants, just not those who won’t play ball

The primary reason the U.S. government opposes the Lukashenko administration is not its authoritarianism, real as that might be. Even by its own definitions, the U.S. actively supports around three-quarters of the world’s dictatorships. Instead, Lukashenko’s steadfast refusal to privatize state assets, join NATO, or open the country up for foreign exploitation are Washington’s principal objections. Lukashenko has directly controlled the country since 1994; and, unlike the other former republics of the U.S.S.R., he has retained state control over industry and the comprehensive welfare state built up in previous decades.

As a result, there is essentially no extreme poverty in Belarus; according to a report by the World Bank and European Union, only 0.4% of the population live on less than $5.50 per day, with no one living on less than $3.20. This cannot be said for its neighbors; the number of people per capita living on less than $5.50 per day is 10 times higher in Lithuania and 18 times higher in Russia. In some other ex-Soviet countries that took different paths, such as Armenia and Georgia, the vast majority live in poverty, with fewer than 10% earning $10 or more per day.

Much of this reduction in poverty occurred in the 2000s. As most countries were entering a protracted recession after the 2008 financial crisis, Belarus was going from strength to strength. Between 2003 and 2014, the number of people unable to spend more than $5.50 per day dropped from 38.3% to 0.4%, while those making a middle-class income (defined by the World Bank as being able to spend more than $10 per day) rose from under 20% to over 90% over the same period, a feat the World Bank — no lover of Belarus or the U.S.S.R. — described as “impressive.”

The government continued to provide universal healthcare and socialized housing while developing new industries such as the tech sector. During this time, economic inequality actually decreased, Belarus becoming as equal as the Scandinavian countries much feted for their progressive societies.

Since 2015, however, the economy has struggled. The World Bank’s advice to Belarus was predictable: privatize, cut benefits (particularly heating allowances) and allow business to do its job. The Lukashenko administration has actually partially moved in that direction, a decision the World Bank described as “encouraging.” For the first time, the state now directly employs fewer than half the workforce. However, this has led to increases in poverty and a reduction in support for Lukashenko, who once seemed untouchable. Nevertheless, a survey conducted by hostile neighbor Poland still found the 67-year-old former state farm boss had a 41% approval/ 46% disapproval rating (not dissimilar to that of Trump and Biden).

Hardly helping this have been the U.S. and European sanctions that have targeted the country. While billed as an effort to “get tough” on the Lukashenko “regime,” sanctions, as the United Nations notes, “disproportionately affect the poor and most vulnerable.”

In August of this year, the U.S. announced a new round of sanctions, specifically targeting state-owned businesses in an attempt to make them less profitable. The European Union did likewise, also promising to pull Belarus out of its downturn if it overthrew Lukashenko. “Once Belarus embarks on a democratic transition, the E.U. is committed to help Belarus stabilise its economy, reform its institutions in order to make them resilient and more democratic, create new jobs and improve people’s living standards,” they announced, adding, “The E.U. will continue to support a democratic, independent, sovereign, prosperous and stable Belarus. The voices and the will of the people of Belarus will not be silenced.”

The government heavily restricts polling, so any gauge of the public mood in Belarus is far from precise. However, judging by the Chatham House/RUSI survey, it is clear that significant portions of the country support Lukashenko while other significant portions oppose him, along with some who are unsure. Opposing Lukashenko, however, does not necessarily translate into backing Tsikhanouskaya. Russia is by far the most popular country among Belarusians, 32% of whom want to formally unify with their larger neighbor. Only 9% want to join the E.U. and only 7% wish to join NATO. The U.S. is the most distrusted country, even among the young, urban tech-savvy citizens Chatham House and RUSI polled. Thus, while Tsikhanouskaya consistently claims to be the authentic voice of Belarus, it appears her prime constituency is in Washington and Brussels.

The United States might be able to hurt the Belarusian economy through economic warfare, but it is unable to make the people accept Washington’s chosen candidate. Living under an authoritarian system, Belarusians understandably dream of a more democratic future. However, they should be extremely careful whom they align themselves with: the U.S., NATO and the World Bank’s vision of democracy and prosperity might not align with what they naively had in mind.

mintpressnews.com

It is no surprise that the downing of the Ryanair flight in Belarus, supposedly due to a bomb threat which took Mr. Protasevich into custody, caused a storm of international fury from the West. But the big question is why did Lukashenko decide to do this? The likelihood that this was truly a bomb threat from Hamas is very low as they are unmotivated to attack neutral Eastern Europe and have publicly denied putting any explosive device on that plane. This means that it is not unreasonable to break down this situation from the standpoint that the objective of the action was not connected to any bomb threat. On the surface it seems that the goal was to nab Western-funded babyface journalist/terrorist/genocide fanboy Roman Protasevich. But is the life of this one man worth the blowback for Minsk? Or is the blowback exactly what Minsk wanted?

Image: Lukashenko smiles and shakes hands with one man responsible for the genocide of Russians in the Donbass, who supports potential revolutionaries in Belarus like Protasevich. Pre Color Revolution Minsk was very naive or overly polite.

Proving the motivation behind one’s actions is very difficult. During the Trump period it was always up for debate whether his actions were motivated by long-term planning, his massive ego, the advisors around him, the Liberal theory that he is an insane monster, or some mysterious factor unseen to the majority of journalists. The truth is that his decision making as a human being comes from a whole mess of different factors making it impossible to determine why he would choose to do one thing over another. But what is possible to determine is what the results of Trump’s actions would be. So we can never truly know why Lukashenko chose to down that airplane but we can look at what the results of this action are likely to yield.

Firstly, Protasevich just like all other Liberal-Nationalist ghouls in Eastern Europe is expendable and very often the death of this type of person gets more value out of them, than their actual work does. Kiev found a hero in Stepan Bandera not because of any successes he had, because he had none, but because of his death, assassinated by the evil Russians making him a martyr. Because activists of this type are replaceable, and executing Protasevich will only turn him into a folk hero, it seems to be a terrible idea to take him into custody by downing an international flight. If this is a game of risk and reward then the risk seems to vastly outshine the reward. Why would someone who has been politically isolated for many years and is considered “the last dictator in Europe” want to bring all the economic heat of the USA/EU down upon themselves over one small expendable man?

Perhaps this is because the desired result is actually to be shoved out of Washington’s sphere of influence forever and Protasevich is a means to that end. For those in Belarus with pro-Russian leanings (definitely the majority of the public) then this move should look like a moment of triumph. Belarus finally has absolutely no choice left but to go East.

For over two decades now Russia and Belarus have existed on paper as a “Union State”. From within Russia this was hailed as a major victory in restoring a greater civilization, but after many years this big win remains mostly theoretical and on paper. Yes, there is no factual border between the countries and the ease of living and working between citizens of the two nations is palpable compared to other former Soviet Republics, but there has been no great merger. The desired results for the pro-Russian side would be to at least have the nations become as intertwined as those in the EU and at the most just melt into one nation with one currency, one army and one everything.

Image: The signing of the creation of the Union State. The big question is why has it stagnated for 20+ years?

This Moscow-Minsk daydream has not happened. Although Russians tend to do things in a pokey manner with many smoke breaks, 20+ years has been plenty of time to get this all worked out. The blame for the delay has been put on the treacherous nature of many local politicians, power plays by Washington, gross governmental inefficiency on both sides and/or the seemingly two-faced politics of “Dad” aka Lukashenko despite Russia basically keeping Belarus afloat via seemingly endless loans.

The classic Color Revolution attempt recently carried out against Lukashenko should have proved to him that in the 21st century the politics of a balancing act do not work. The classical idea of a smaller nation trying to balance itself between great powers for their own benefit is obsolete in a Monopolar World. It’s Washington’s way or the highway and Dad nearly paid the price for living in the Cold War from a foreign policy standpoint. Today the rules are a zero-sum game – you must submit to Washington 100% to stay in power. Any value of submission less than 100% is the equivalent of 0% and your days are numbered, ask Gaddafi.

Whether he knows it or not, whether it was planned or not, Lukashenko has now completely put all of his chips down on Russia via the delaying of the Ryanair flight and arrest of Western asset Protasevich. There is no going back and the end result of this decision is that Belarus has no choice but to orient itself 100% towards Russia. This means that the bureaucratic stagnation of the “Union State” will surely magically clear up in the near future.

Western economic and travel isolation of Belarus gives them really only one option and perhaps this was by design as a form of revenge or pragmatism after the Color Revolution flared up in support of Tikhanovskaya. Just like everything in Russian civilization this should have been done years ago, but when Russians do finally take action they go hardcore. The stars have aligned, by the pen of Lukashenko. Belarus is most likely to go back home with no looking back either by absorption or as part of some new EU-like structure.

Craig MURRAY

There is a misperception in western media that Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s man. That is not true; Putin views him as an exasperating and rather dim legacy. There is also a misperception in the West that Lukashenko really lost the recent election. That is not true. He almost certainly won, though the margin is much exaggerated by the official result.

Minsk is not Belarus, just as London is not the U.K. Most of Belarus is pretty backward and heavily influenced by the state machinery. Dictators have all kinds of means at their disposal to make themselves popular. That is why the odd election or plebiscite does not mean that somebody is not a dictator. Lukashenko is a dictator, as I have been saying for nigh on twenty years.

My analysis is that Lukashenko probably won handily, with over 60 percent of the vote. But it was by no means a free and fair election. The media is heavily biased (remember you can also say that of the U.K.), and the weak opposition candidate was only there because, one way or the other, all the important opposition figures are prevented from standing.

Engineering Popular Opinion

The West is trying to engineer popular opinion in Belarus towards a “color revolution,” fairly obviously. But they are on a sticky wicket. Western Ukraine was genuinely enthusiastic to move towards the west and the EU, in the hope of attaining a consumer lifestyle. Outside of central Minsk, there is very little such sentiment in Belarus. Most important of all, Belarus means “White Russia,” and the White Russians very strongly identify themselves as culturally Russian. We will not see a color revolution in Belarus. The West is trying, however.

Aleksandr Lukashenko in 2015. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Unlike many of my readers, I see nothing outrageous in this. Attempting to influence the political direction of another country to your favor is a key aim of diplomacy, and always has been. I was a rather good exponent of it on behalf of the U.K. government for a couple of decades.

The BBC World Service has always been funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and its entire existence has been based on this attempt to influence, by pumping out propaganda in scores of languages, from its very inception. The British Council is not spending millions promoting British culture abroad from a pure love of Shakespeare. Government funding is given to NGOs that aim to influence media and society. Future leaders are identified and brought on training and degree courses to wed them to pro-British sympathies.

I do not have any trouble with any of that. It is part of what diplomacy is. It is of course amusing when the British state works itself into a frenzy over Russia carrying out exactly the same type of activity that the British do on a much larger scale. But it is all part of an age-old game. If I were ambassador to Belarus now, I would have no moral qualms about turning up to support an anti-Lukashenko demo. It is all part of the job.

Murkier Aspects

There is of course a murkier aspect of all this, where activities are hidden rather than open. The British state funded Integrity Initiative’s work in secretly paying foreign media journalists, or creating thousands of false social media identities to push a narrative (the latter also undertaken by the Ministry of Defence and Government Communications Headquarters among others), is more dubious.

So is MI6’s more traditional work of simply suborning politicians, civil servants and generals with large bundles of cash. But again, I can’t get too worked up about it. It is the dirtier end of the game, but time-honored, with understood boundaries. Again, my major objection is when the U.K. gets ludicrously sanctimonious about Russia doing precisely what the U.K. does on a far larger scale.

But then we get into a far darker area, of assassinations, false-flag shootings and bombings and false incrimination. Here a line is crossed, lives are destroyed and violent conflict precipitated. Here I am not prepared to say that time-honored international practice makes these acts acceptable. This line was crossed in the Ukraine; for reasons given above I do not think that the tinder exists to trigger the striking of such a spark in Belarus.

I should be very happy to see Lukashenko go. Term limits on the executive should be a factor in any decent democracy. Once you have the levers of power, it is not difficult to maintain personal popularity for many decades, barring external shock; popularity is not the same as democratic legitimacy. I should state very plainly, as I have before, that I think it was absolutely wrong of Putin to outstay his two terms, irrespective of constitutional sophistry and irrespective of popular support.

The ideal would be for Lukashenko to go and for there to be fresh elections, as opposed to the Venezuelan tactic of the West just announcing a president who has never won an election. The best result for the people of Belarus and for international stability would be the election of a reform-minded but broadly pro-Russian candidate. Putin has used the crisis to re-assert the “union” of Russia and Belarus – signed 20 years ago this is a single market and free trade area. Few would doubt, crucially including few Belarussians, that the future of Belarus lies with integration with Russia rather than the EU.

Vladimir Putin, left, and Alexander Lukashenko, during a friendly ice hockey match, Feb. 7, 2020. (President of Russia)

History’s greatest criticism of Putin will be his failure to diversify the Russian economic base and move it from raw commodity exporter to a high value-added economy. His aims for Belarus will be to ensure it fits neatly with the template of massive commodity exports controlled by a tight knit and highly wealthy oligarchy. Putin will have no interest in the economic reforms Belarus needs.

My expectation is that Lukashenko will hang on, reorienting the economy back towards Russia. Putin’s long-term policy goal has always been the reintegration into Russia of majority Russophone areas of the old U.S.S.R. That has been his policy in Ukraine and Georgia. Belarus is a major prize. He will seek to bind Belarus in tighter, probably through increased energy subsidy (Putin’s economic arsenal is very limited). Getting rid of Lukashenko is going to move up Putin’s to do list; I give it three years. The current demonstrations in Minsk have no major economic or social effect, and will pass.

Also, I just wrote the following in response to a reader’s comment, and I think it usefully explains an important bit of my thinking: and not just on Belarus.

I think the difference between myself and many of my readers is that while we both recognise “western” government as plunder by the capitalist elite exploiting the working class and a fake democracy controlled by a media serving the elite, you and others seem to think that governments are a lot better just because they are anti-Western.
Whereas I believe that many anti-Western governments – Lukashenko, Assad and yes Putin – are also plunder by the capitalist elite exploiting the working class and a fake democracy controlled by a media serving the elite. Just organised a bit differently. And with a still worse approach to civil liberties.

consortiumnews.com

When America was still very young and completely on the Atlantic coastline the powers that were set up the process by which new pieces of land could go from being organized territories to full states. At that time the US saw vast potential to acquire new territory by pushing west. The Native Americans didn’t pose much threat and all those unknown quantities of virgin land were America’s for the taking. This policy of planned organized expansion made sense for post-colonial America but would not have made much sense for some sort of landlocked German state like Bavaria surrounded by well armed and apt competitors of the European geopolitical chessboard.

Going forward and going beyond national borders, both NATO and the European Union (including its currency the Euro) have built-in bureaucratic procedures/standards for expansion. We all saw how directly after the fall of the USSR these organizations’ “expansion templates” allowed the former Eastern Bloc to jump full force towards the West relatively quickly. Give up some percent of your GDP, sign some treaty about refugees and boom you’re in.

Some recent statements made by Russian President Vladimir Putin at his yearly press conference with the public make it seem as though Russia’s integration deals with Belarus are developing into some sort of expansion template or were always that way by design. His statement which exploded over the Russian media is as follows…

“At the present time, the question is not uniting into a single state. We are talking about making deals happen that were agreed upon many years ago about creating, what we call a Union State. This is not a single state, this is not the same.”

He continued describing this Union State by saying that there are…

“New elements up to and including a new parliament and currency…”

These words caused a stir because previously the Union State between Russia and Belarus seemed like some sort of bureaucratic platitude. After many years of its discussion and public knowledge the only results that the masses can see are that there is an open border between the countries. Besides the trains from Moscow not having to stop at the border for two hours, not much has changed in the eyes of the common man. The same things could be said for the Eurasian Economic Union (which at this point is purely economic and abstract) or the seemingly pointless and pathetic Commonwealth of Independent States.

There are hopes around Moscow that Russia and Belarus are developing an expansion template via a currency, new parliament and possibly a new/joint military (they train together often and are both key members in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) that could be applied to many of the trouble regions of the former Soviet Union that are strongly pro-Russian, dependent on Russia for survival, and/or are under threat of extermination by “nationalists” of the former Soviet Republic they are trapped in. This would apply to regions like Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and of course the Donbass.

Some things like Russia giving citizenship to people in the break-away republics in the Donbass is another drop in the evidence bucket that Russia is looking to integrate at least more people if not territory, but for those inside of Russia there have been many years of talk about integration and partnership with former territory with Russia only taking reactive action – the Georgians started the 2008 war, with Russia only taking the territories which Saakashvili wanted to slaughter, Russia only acknowledged the Crimean referendum allowing most of Ukraine to suffer under the hands of Russophobic psychopaths, etc.

A set of standards for this Union State concept allowing Russia to put back many key pieces of its shattered puzzle would of course gain massive public support from a wide variety of political viewpoints. For many this new united currency and super government that would allow it to finally start to grow and protect Russian speaking people (who really need protection from brutal racism) sounds almost too good to be true, which makes one fear that it is.

One of the worst things we can do for the public is conflate wish-fulfillment fantasies with projections based on analysis, so at this time, we need to keep the rational part of our brains active and not give in to emotions – thus all Russian plans to integrate or expand have not yielded direct tangible results.

The Union State has been a horribly slow process and there is no indication that something amazing will happen tomorrow. It is odd that Putin said these bold public statements but even he didn’t hide the fact that even if they stay on course there is tons of bureaucracy still left to be dealt with.

The Union State may be an expansion template being worked out and drawn up right as you read this, but Russia’s actions over the last 10-15 years show that it may be too gun-shy or bureaucratically slow to use it at any point in the near future, although it would be very nice to be proven wrong on this issue.

The same is not always true in economic and diplomatic matters. Just recently, several critical messages were directed toward Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko by two Russian officials, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Russia’s ambassador to Belarus Mikhail Babich.

The Western press immediately rushed in to try to drive a wedge between the two countries, repeating its headlines from a few years ago about Lukashenko no longer being “Russia’s dependable ally” and even claiming: “Belarus preparing for a hybrid war with Russia” (The Week).

Experts warn against this simplified black-and-white Western approach, pointing out that a composite approach is possible, consisting of healthy alternatives to “puppet state” or “hybrid war.”

“I understand that the United States and the EU want a pro-NATO regime in Minsk, and they are eager to see a looser bond between Russia and Belarus as a first step in that direction,” explains Vladimir Zharikhin, the chief expert on Eastern Slavic states at the Moscow-based Institute of the Community of Independent States (CIS). “The truth is that there has not been a dramatic loosening. Due to the need to contend with the sanctions, Russia had to reform its economy and cut expenses. So, Russia expects Belarus to shoulder part of the burden and cooperate. Unfortunately, Mr. Lukashenko is not always very understanding about this.”

In their statements, Russian Prime Minister Medvedev and Ambassador Babich merely asked for more clarity from Lukashenko regarding his intentions about what is known as the Union State, an entity which Russia and Belarus agreed to create at a Yeltsin-Lukashenko summit back in 1999.

In mid-December while Medvedev was at a working session of the Union State of Russia and Belarus Council of Ministers in Brest (a historic city on Belarus’s border with Poland), he urged Lukashenko to choose between two options. Option one is to further integration at a conservative pace within the current framework. Medvedev, however, said he preferred the second option, which is to proceed with the Union State project. That project assumes that both Russia and Belarus will preserve their state sovereignty, but couples this sovereignty with far-reaching economic and legislative integration. Since 1999, many of the Union State’s projects have been tabled, such as the proposal to establish a single currency and a joint “money emission center” (both were to be finalized by 2005). Now Medvedev is suggesting the synchronization of taxation, customs, and tariffs policies.

Lukashenko reacted to Medvedev’s suggestions nervously, seeing in them some hint of a threat to the sovereignty of Belarus. “What do we need this for? Why is this issue being raised now?.. If the idea is to divide Belarus into several regions and absorb these regions into Russia — this will never happen,” Lukashenko said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, attempting to assuage Lukashenko’s fears, explained on December 17 that no merger between Russia and Belarus into one state is on the agenda. Peskov made it clear that what is being called the Union State is actually a “format for cooperation.” “Belarus remains our biggest ally,” Peskov told journalists.

The Russian ambassador in Minsk, Mikhail Babich, however, complained that Belarus had accomplished only a “tiny fraction” of what had been planned in 1999. Babich also noted that Russia would like to improve its trade balance with Belarus.

“Right now, trade between Russia and Belarus amounts to $30 billion, which makes Belarus one of Russia’s primary trading partners, trailing only the EU and China,” Babich explained. “However, out of the $18 billion of goods exported to Belarus from Russia, almost $10 billion consists of Russian fuel exports. So, subtracting that, Russia is exporting less than $9 billion worth of finished products to Belarus. This is even less than Belarus’s non-energy exports to us, which are worth $10 billion. So, the trade balance is not to our advantage.”

Bogdan Bezpalko, the head of the Center for Belarusian Studies at Moscow State University (MGU), notes that the Western media is so eager for Belarus to follow the sinister Ukrainian example of dramatic “regime change” that it is overlooking the real changes occurring in Belarus. Lukashenko is being presented as a “pro-Russian dictator,” which he simply isn’t.

“The reality is that both in 2009 and now, in 2018, Lukashenko has been trying to make a breakthrough in his relations with the West. Between 2009 and 2010, Lukashenko was visited by the then-head of the EU’s diplomatic service, Javier Solana, who was followed by the German and Polish foreign ministers, Guido Westerwelle and Radoslaw Sikorski. It looked like the end of Belarus’s estrangement from the EU,” recounts Bezpalko. However, the EU was trying to stage a local version of the Orange Revolution as early as December 19, 2010, the day of the presidential election in Belarus,. At the time, the Western media was supporting a violent attack on government buildings in Minsk by an angry mob of “liberal” protesters, who were unhappy about the election results. Glass was smashed and doors were damaged. Lukashenko arrested and punished the perpetrators.

But he never quite forgot his dream of a “breakthrough” to the West. Between 2014 and 2018 Lukashenko mended his country’s ties with the Ukrainian regime of Petro Poroshenko and advertised the fact that Minsk had been chosen as a venue for negotiations about how to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Western sanctions were lifted, and in 2017 Lukashenko was invited to a summit of the EU’s Eastern Partnership in Prague, an invitation he graciously refused, thus sparing the EU another round of internal discussions on this invitation to the “last dictator in Europe.”

At a recent meeting with journalists, Lukashenko praised his own efforts at mediation between Putin and Poroshenko in a way that is unlikely to please the Russians: “I told Vladimir Putin: in a few years we may be praying to God to have NATO on the border between Ukraine and Russia instead of the crazy Ukrainian nationalists with their guns.”

The Russian experts were unanimous in their criticism of such a view of the problem. “The expansion of NATO into Ukraine is unacceptable for Russia, this is understood by both the elites and the people,” explains the prominent Russian expert and head of the Moscow-based Council on Foreign and Defense Policies, Sergei Karaganov. “The fact that some of the Ukrainian nationalists are indeed crazy does not make the presence of NATO in Ukraine any more acceptable for Russia.”

The question that remains is: does Lukashenko realize how dangerous it is to flirt with the West at the cost of trying Russia’s patience on integration projects? Or has the cunning Belarusian leader once again shown himself an expert at trying to have his cake and eat it too? In 2015 and 2016, Belarus profited economically on the mutually imposed sanctions between Russia and the EU, by refusing to join the fray and instead becoming a “transit zone,” but this period is reportedly coming to an end.

The explanation behind the tendency of the Latin American liberals to keep distance vis-a-vis Moscow is that Washington keeps the whole cohort permanently short-leashed, and, for example, under B. Obama the US Administration does not even bother to disguise its efforts to tame Russia's ambitions on the continent. For the US, Russia – communist or liberal – is equally unwelcome as a country believed to be unpredictable and as a potential competitor, a perception which prompts the US strategy of shutting it out of Latin America regardless of details.  

The Russian theme never drops out of sight of the US embassies in Latin America. Russians across the continent – embassy staff, businessmen, or permanent residents – are automatically suspect, and the recurrent smear campaigns waged against Russia by the rightist Latin American media can easily be traced back to US diplomatic missions and psi-ops labs. Russia, as a result, is being portrayed as an authoritarian country run by rigid bureaucracy and criminal clans, Russian products are discounted as a priori inferior to Western analogs, and whatever business projects offered by Moscow come under fire as allegedly corrupt. If a Russian is arrested in Latin America, the case immediately gets blown out of proportions, with the plots often readable as provocations arranged by the US intelligence community and the evidence – forged by its agents. The myth of the Russian mafia is pervasive in Latin American media and largely overshadows the positive developments in Russia's cooperation with the partners across the continent in the spheres of trade, energy, the arms business, finances, and culture. 

Latin America's neoliberal leaders are keenly aware that Washington frowns on serious initiatives involving Russia, and that defying control is occasionally punishable by sanctions. Under the circumstances, Russia's potential partners exercise maximum restraint, especially when the projects on the table concern energy or the military-technical cooperation. Deals with Russian companies in Latin America go through only if endorsed by Washington and pose no threat to the US interests. Evidently, the reason why recently Russia has managed to sell copters in Latin America for counterinsurgency and counter-narcotics operations was that the US military-industrial complex was overloaded due to the Empire's being locked in military conflicts worldwide and was unable to fill in the niche. 

It must be noted that Belarus no less than Russia is confronted with the US opposition in Latin America. A. Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, is hammered in the West as “Europe's last dictator”, but the reality is that the US Administration hates the idea that the socialism-minded leader who openly criticizes US imperialist policies might find allies in Latin America. Lukashenko responded to the West's attempts to isolate Belarus by diversifying its foreign policies. A 2006 visit to Mensk by H. Chavez marked the start of Belarus' lasting rapprochement with Venezuela and, with the assistance from the latter, with other ALBA countries. Belarus is fairly successful in marketing its energy industry, petrochemistry, food processing, and agriculture products in Venezuela and clearly hopes that the country would in the long run open to Mensk wider access to the continent. At present, Belarus and Venezuela are jointly implementing a total of 85 projects in agriculture, the energy sector, and residential construction, the biggest ones being the creation of the assembly plants to output – for Venezuela's own needs and for the export to other Latin American countries – around 5,000 MAZ trucks and 10,000 MTZ tractors annually. Several impressive infrastructural deals were penned during Lukashenko's last tour of Venezuela. Belorussian companies are to construct a 600 mW co-generation plant in the Santa Ines industrial park in Cahvez's home Barinas state, plus a memorandum exists on the building of a 200-km gas pipeline to link Barquisimeto and the city of Barinas. Venezuela and Belarus are also planning a commercially viable project aimed at producing NPK fertilizer which will be exported across the continent. 

The Venezuelan leadership which has to endure constantly heightened US political pressure must be credited with an intelligent choice of international partners, with the East Slavic duo of Russia and Belarus as the key allies. The military-technical cooperation with Russia helps Venezuela maintain appropriate defense capabilities, and it is fair to say that the country's armaments have reached an unprecedented level thanks to the engagement with Russia. 

It is worth noting in the context, that Venezuela's armament record includes a deal to buy the F-16 fighters from the US. The transaction got a green light from R. Reagan's Administration in the Cold War era, the rather ridiculous motivation being to enable the country to defend its oil fields from a Cuban snap offensive. The US reneged on its obligations to service Venezuela's park of F-16 fighters – and on an array of similar arms-related contracts – after Chavez rise to power in the country, leaving Caracas no option but to altogether cut off contacts with the Pentagon. The conduct being fairly typical for the US, Latin American governments have to carefully weigh the risks of the military-technical cooperation with Washington. At the moment, Brazil is in a dilemma – it can either sign a $5b contract with the US to buy Super Hornet fighters or accept the competing Dassault Rafale offer from France – and will certainly take Venezuela's negative experience into account.

A presidential campaign is taking off in Venezuela ahead of the October 7 elections. Visiting Caracas, Lukashenko expressed confidence that his friend and ally Chavez would prevail and said new bilateral projects would be coming online within years, the opposition mounted by the foes of the two countries notwithstanding. President Putin talked to Chavez over the phone this June – as a part of the conversation, the Russian leader praised Venezuela's preparations for the presidential race, wished Chavez complete recovery, and said the Venezuelan president looked visibly healthier during his last appearances in public. A Kremlin press release said Putin and Chavez intend to meet in the nearest future. Hypothetically, keeping oil prices stable is going to be an important part of the agenda. 

For Latin America, the atmosphere of mutual respect and the openness to cooperation among the trio of Russia, Belarus, and Venezuela combine into a partnership model which has obvious advantages over the aggressive and divisive policies pursued by the US on the continent.