Belarus: Russia as Liberator?
The need for Western realism on the "near abroad", the prospect for a symbiotic Russia-West partnership
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The headlines have been dramatic: "Belarus isolated", "Russia-NATO rapprochement leaves Belarus out in the cold".
The speculation mills are grinding fast. "Belarus might turn to the 'rogue states' for support. Or to China." "But Belarus is totally dependent on Russia for gas and other economic ties. Russian pressures will restrain it." "But Belarus might collapse under the pressure. Chaos could ensue." "Would Russia have to step in and arrange the timely toppling of Lukashenko?" "It might be the only way to get a safe transition."
What is the meaning of this speculation? It is the hope that Putin will play the good imperialist in Belarus, with behind-the-scenes actions to deliver a society from its dictator and restore the government to the people, or at least to a more moderate elite.
The role is not a new one. It is the same role that Gorbachev played in Eastern Europe in 1989, helping to topple the East German and Czech regimes and smooth the way to a new era. His and Russia's absence from such a role in Romania meant that the process had to be much bloodier there.
Is it realistic for Putin to play such a role? He has an interest in avoiding chaos in Belarus, but he also does not want to be written off as another Gorbachev.
It should have come as no surprise that, as Russia and NATO get together, dictatorships in small in-between countries would suffer isolation. It is only natural for them to be isolated in a democratic and democratizing Europe; they can escape their isolation only by playing the great powers off against each other. Russia and the West have been the great powers. When they have been competing, they have provided space for dictatorships, no matter what their intentions. Getting together is the best way to get rid of the intermediate dictators.
Lukashenko survived by playing Russia and NATO off against each other. He needed Russia-NATO competition for influence in Belarus: that way he could sell himself to Russia as the guarantee against NATO influence, and could sell himself to his people as the guarantor of ties with Russia. Now, with the adversarial Russia-West competition fading away, he has less space to play with.
There could be no more self-defeating policy on the part of the West, than to compete for influence in Belarus against Russia or define a pro-Western policy there as something based on total independence from Russia. Among the small number of Western elites that have paid any attention to Belarus, there has been a tendency to commit this mistake, perhaps under the influence of the Belarusian Popular Front, which gained moral authority among Western Cold War elites in the last years of the Soviet Union.
The Belarusian people are overwhelmingly pro-Russian and want a union with Russia. Democracy cannot be built in Belarus on an anti-Russian foundation. The real choice is between a pro-Russian democracy in Belarus, which would also be pro-Western if Russia and the West are friends, and a dictatorship in Belarus which is formally pro-Russian but actually plays Russia and the West off against each other (the Lukashenko option). Any Western policies that have obstructed the first option have served to support the second, dictatorial option. The recent rapprochement with Russia has belatedly pulled the rug out from under the second option; a new policy favoring realistic Russian and joint influence in Belarus is needed to get to the first option.
In Central Asia, too, the dictatorships have hitherto been in effect invited by Russia and the West to play the two sides off against each other. Russia and the West have competed for influence in these regions; the dictators have had their choice, maneuvering between one and the other in order to avoid effective influence by either of them.
America and Russia would seem both to prefer Kazhegeldin to the present ethno-tribal Kazakh dictatorship, but rather than jointly support Kazhegeldin or jointly put pressure on Nazarbaev, they have tended to deal separately with Nazarbaev, who is sometimes enabled by this to play them off against each other despite their agreement in substance. Genuine Russia-West political collaboration, aiming at joint influence in this region, would put an end to this double game. It would bring powerful pressures to bear both for liberalization and for stabilization.
America would be happy if Russia would play the role of good imperialist-liberator, not just in Belarus, but in North Korea, and perhaps Cuba, Iraq, and several other places around the world where Russia still has better ties than America. It would be a good turn, for which Americans would be grateful in ways that would bring long-term benefits to Russia. In Cuba, it would spare the U.S. a Latin American reaction. In North Korea, it would remove a danger to the whole world -- Japan and South Korea immediately, others in light of proliferatory North Korean arms sales. Even in Iraq, which is the most difficult case, a Franco-Russian intervention might be less explosive than an American one; the Iraqi elite might be less allergic to it. Afterwards, compromise settlements would need to be reached, as in Afghanistan, giving a decent share to all valid interests.
Gorbachev gave the West many such a good turn in Eastern Europe. But the good turns deserve reciprocation.
The Gorbachev policies of semi-active liberation of former totalitarian satellites in 1989 did bring good long-term results for Russia. They engendered a tremendous improvement in the Western attitude toward Russia, making for a turn from Cold War to a Western policy of assistance to an emerging democratic Russia and support for some of its interests. However, they did not receive reciprocation on the immediate, visible, strategic level. The result: they came to be viewed at home in Russia as sell-outs or give-aways (despite getting tens of billions of Deutsch Marks for East Germany), and after a certain point could not be continued.
What kind of reciprocation would make sense? The West ought to help in getting a faster, smoother, healthier replacement for malignant regimes about which Russia is particularly distressed. For example, the fundamentalist-evangelist, terrorism-financing regime (or rather royal family) of Saudi Arabia is one where the West needs to push harder for change. Or the ethno-nationalist regimes of Latvia and Estonia.
The U.S. has actually done this, in a sense, in one case: it has taken active measures to replace an anti-Russian regime in Afghanistan. It fought a war against the Taliban and solved Russia's problem there. The effects have been very good for U.S.-Russian relations; but not nearly as good as they could have been, if it had been done earlier and as an explicit form of support for Russian interests. If it had been done in 1999, it could have been seen as a fair reciprocation to Russia. Instead, it was done only after the Taliban had first hit the U.S. with mass terrorism. The U.S. let it be known in 2001 that it was acting in its own survival interest and made it seem like it was requiring Russia to go along with U.S. interests rather than the other way around. This deprived the action of more than half of its potentially beneficial effect on U.S.-Russia relations.
More reciprocation will be needed -- more cases of it, and making it explicit that the U.S. is supporting valid Russian interests and reciprocating for cases of Russian good deeds.
It would be a good time to consider scenarios like these:
1. As Russia "isolates" the Lukashenka regime, the West "isolates" the Latvian and Estonian regimes. I.e.: Russia keeps making clear that it is not going to sacrifice its economy and global relations for the sake of political union with Belarus. NATO makes clear that it is not going to sacrifice its global security for the sake of strategic union with an ethno-nationalist regime in Latvia or Estonia.
2. Russia pressures Belarus to open up. The West pressures Latvia and Estonia to end their ethnic and linguistic discrimination -- not just repeal the most extreme discriminatory measures, but implement measures for genuine equality of Russian-speaking residents. These regimes are not personal dictatorships, but their "democracy" has an element of ethnic dictatorship. It is a case of tyranny of the majority, the opposite of the Madisonian democracy that the U.S. is supposed to be teaching.
3. If these regimes become unstable in their isolation but do not give evidence of changing peacefully, Russia and the West find ways to mediate the transition to a normal regime. It would be Russia's responsibility to mediate in case of a crisis of regime in Belarus; it would be a responsibility of the West (U.S., NATO, EU) to mediate a transition if it came to the point of crisis in a Baltic state, without Russian involvement since that would produce an allergic Baltic reaction.
4. Consultations could begin between Russia and the West immediately on appropriate policies in this region, and on appropriate responses to possible contingencies and crises. Adventurism in intervening and liberating countries is to be avoided; so is negligence of obligations for effective stabilization measures in a crisis. Coordination of policy and mutual moral support on stabilizing measures on the part of the two great power systems flanking the Baltic/Belarus area: this is what is needed in order to avoid adventurism or irresponsibility in either direction.
Such scenarios would amount to what might be called a "symbiotic partnership". They would serve real U.S. interests -- moral interests in democratization, and practical interests in stabilization and good ethnic relations -- far better than the current trend in the West of planning on inviting Latvia and Estonia half-reformed into NATO.
In Central Asia, something more than symbiotic action is needed, and in a sense, more has already been accomplished. A direct alliance is needed, now that U.S. and Russian forces are both present on the ground in the same countries. The U.S. should be considering such scenarios as these:
1. to make a point of supporting the rights of Russian-speakers in the region. To support the social and political role of Russian-speakers in the region, since they have been a modernizing influence. To support the influence of Russia itself, which has been the decisive modernizing factor in the region.
2. to should support the role of the Russian language, which has been a lingua franca for the region and the language of intercourse with modernity. This vital role of Russian is in danger of being lost, as part and parcel of the onrushing demodernization of the region.
3. to demand that Russian TV be carried on the local networks, keeping the region a part of a greater Russian TV space. Russian TV is still a bearer of a discourse that is vastly more open and democratic than that of the national TV cultures in Central Asia.
4. to have Donald Rumsfeld meet first with Sergei Ivanov, or Colin Powell with Igor Ivanov, to form joint plans before going on to meetings with Central Asian figures. To make joint visits to leaders of region.
5. to consider joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as Russia has suggested, thereby removing its anti-American flavor.
6. to form a triangle of three great regional democracies, U.S.-Russia-India. This could produce innovative common strategies for solving the problems of the region in-between Russia and India. I should note that I first proposed this in 1999, when it could have led to proactive removal of the Taliban and saved us all a lot of trouble. I am pleased to see that something like it has recently been taken up by Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Federation Council.
"We should look at a new military alliance that would include the United States, Russia, Turkey maybe, India maybe, for Central Asia," Margelov told Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post (April 28, 2002). Vladimir Lukin of the Duma has spoken in favor of an India-Russia-America triangle. India gives every evidence that it would welcome it. De facto, it has been emerging step by step for several years; America has gradually warmed up to India bilaterally, as to Russia, ever since the end of the Cold War, and in 1999-2000, three bilateral working groups on terrorism were formed between the three countries: Russia-India, India-U.S., and U.S.-Russia. These three bilateral groups, if linked (one could picture them as three open line segments that merely need to be closed or allowed to touch at the endpoints), would immediately form the triangle. It is only a matter of carrying out more intelligently and efficiently what is being accomplished anyway by the pressure of events. The U.S. has a golden opportunity here to build an arrangement in which its influence can be combined much more effectively with its major budding partners in the region.
7. The substance of joint regional policies together with Russia could include more closely coordinated anti-terrorism measures, promotion of stabilization and preservation of modern society in the region, and gradual political reform in the region. This might include cautiously and selectively supporting development of democratic secular opposition, and joint pressure on regimes to open up and perhaps in some degree this opposition. It means working out a single list of clients to support, whether they be regimes in power or moderate oppositions or both, rather than the disaster of two opposing lists, one supported by Russia, the other by the West, which is a formula for confrontation and disaster. In case of crisis of a regime, it would mean having joint Russia-West plans about whom to support and how to act in order to ease the way out of the crisis with minimum of chaos.
To answer our original question: Russia can play a major role as liberator in Belarus, probably by peaceful pressures and measures of facilitation. It is most likely to play this role if the West recognizes that democracy in Belarus cannot help but have a pro-Russian character, and if there is some reciprocation from the West in return for beneficial Russian measures. With adequate reciprocation, there would emerge a symbiotic Russia-NATO partnership in the Belarus/Baltic region. This would dramatically upgrade the ability of both sides to realize their interests in the region -- the moral interest in liberation from tyranny, as well as the practical economic and strategic interests on both sides -- and lay a basis for a genuine Russia-NATO alliance without the mutual suspicions of the past. However, Western policy has not been moving in this direction; it runs some risk of wasting the opportunity to ease out Lukashenko.
In Central Asia, cooperation has begun advancing since 2001, already resulting in some upgrading of the ability to realize interests on both sides. There is plenty of space for further progress in the region; a Russia-U.S. alliance, with closer collaboration in applying pressure and with greater U.S. attention to the virtues of Russian influence in the region, could accomplish a dramatic further upgrading of the interests of both sides. Adding India as a third partner could turn it into a minor diplomatic revolution.
