Trump’s State Department Has Wooed “Europe’s Last Dictator,” But Are They Doomed To Failure?
When the Trump administration announced the most recent batch of countries adding to its ever-expanding list of travel bans, many of them were what one might call usual suspects for drawing his ire- either African or majority-Muslim countries that the President tends to lump in the “shithole” category- Sudan, Tanzania, Eritrea. But one country in particular perplexed many observers by its presence on the list- the small Eastern European nation of Belarus. This action puts the spotlight on a country that, while often overlooked, has taken on a critical role in the geopolitical struggle between the United States and Russia- the so-called “New Cold War.”
If Belarus is known to anyone in America, it is for its reputation as the so-called “last dictatorship in Europe.” This is due to the fact that the country has been governed since 1994 by one man, its President Alexander Lukashenko. A border guard officer and collective farm director in his early career, Lukashenko was an independent deputy in Belarus’ parliament when it broke away from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991. Early on, he stood out in local politics for being the only parliament deputy to vote against ratifying the Belovezha Accords, the agreement between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus that formally dissolved the USSR.
Similarly in some ways to his future Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Lukashenko’s rise to power was a reaction to the lawlessness and corruption that gripped most of the former Soviet republics, with Belarus being no exception. The head of newly independent Belarus’ parliamentary anti-corruption committee, he gained initial popularity when he investigated many high officials for misuse of state funds for personal gain, including then-Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich.
Lukashenko then ran for President in 1994 and won by an overwhelming margin, helped no doubt by the fact that Kebich himself was his opponent in the election. Reading American reporting from back then in outlets such as the L.A. Times, Lukashenko is acknowledged as being a genuinely “fiery anti corruption crusader,”language that might today be used in the Eastern European context to describe Russian anti-corruption activist and political dissident Alexei Navalny, a favorite of the Western press.
On the other hand, even then Western media was to a degree wary of Lukashenko. He was ominously compared to Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an infamous Russian nationalist politician known for his fiery, provocative style, openly campaigning for President on a platform against democracy and for authoritarianism, and strong support for notorious international politicians such as Saddam Hussein and Jean Marie Le Pen.
Unlike Zhirinovsky (who has run unsuccessfuly for President in every post-Soviet Russian election save one), Lukashenko did come to power, and has governed much differently than his alleged Russian doppelganger likely would have. Zhirinovsky, a staunch anti-communist, is strongly in favor of purging Russia’s leftover Soviet cultural and political DNA; his party program when he last ran for President in 2018 proposed renaming the cities in Russia that still retain their Soviet era names, (as Leningrad was changed back to St. Petersburg in 1991), whereas Lukashenko’s Belarus wholeheartedly embraces the Soviet cultural legacy- its state security service still goes by the name KGB, the only former Soviet Republic to do so.
However, Lukashenko does share some of Zhirinovsky’s penchant for bombastic public statements, seemingly designed for maximum provocation. In response to charges of vote rigging in the 2006 presidential election, Lukashenko sarcastically “admitted” to a gathering of Ukranian journalists that he had falsified the results- to give himself a lower total more in line with European standards (he still won with 84 percent of the vote). In 2012, Lukashenko infamously retorted “better to be a dictator than to be gay” in response to critical comments from Germany’s then-foreign minister Guido Westerwelle (who is openly gay). Faced with a backlash abroad from those comments, Lukashenko “softened” his stance in his trademark style- by telling Russian news channel RT that he did not dislike lesbians as much as gay men.
All of this being said, there is a reason why Lukashenko has lasted in power as long as he has without being deposed by a popular uprising, like his onetime Ukranian counterpart Viktor Yanukovych. That is because, in some measure at least, he has delivered the results he promised back when he was a populist outsider in 1994. While Russia, the Ukraine, and other post-Soviet states were ravaged by economic “shock therapy” and corrupted mass privatization in the 1990s, Belarus preserved more of the old Soviet economic model- what a 2019 Bloomberg article described as “transition from command to semi market economy, delivered at the speed of a mud bound tractor.”
Hardly fans of this type of economic system, the authors of the Bloomberg piece concede that the Lukashenko system has yielded many positive results; Belarus has lower economic inequality than any EU country, and fewer people living in poverty (according to World Bank estimates) than any other former Soviet republic, half of the EU, and the United States. While visiting Belarus to record a short documentary critical of the Lukashenko government and noting its political abuses, BBC journalist Ben Zand found himself forced to admit that the capital city of Minsk “doesn’t feel like Europe’s last dictatorship… I could well and truly be in Italy or something.”
Just as crucial to his staying in power as the KGB or the economic benefits he hands out is the fact that Lukashenko has shrewdly leveraged Belarus’ strategic position on the world stage, sitting directly between the borders of the EU and NATO (in the form of Poland and the Baltics) and Russia. In fact, his geopolitical maneuvering may be the most critical factor to his reign of them all.
By treaty, Belarus is a Russian ally as part of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a military alliance ecompassing most of the former Soviet Republics and de facto led by Russia. The two nations conduct regular joint military exercises, and on a personal level, Lukashenko has been known to enjoy a hockey match- as participants, not spectators- with his longtime Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The Russian language also predominates in Belarus, even over the native Belarusian language- according to a 2013 survey conducted by the Belarusian government, roughly 70 percent of the population speaks Russian at home, rather than Belarusian.
In spite of this fact, relations between these two countries are more complex than they appear, perhaps now more than ever. This can be traced back to Belarus’ geopolitical positioning in the wake of the 2014 Euromaidan uprising in Ukraine, and that country’s subsequent civil war with Russian-backed separatists. Lukashenko positioned himself as a mediator between the two sides, and it was in his capital city where the Minsk Protocol, a initial framework to stop the fighting in Ukraine, was signed by representatives from Ukraine, Russia, and the breakaway republics in Eastern Ukraine, in an agreement primarily negotiated by Germany and France.
At the same time, Lukashenko’s government began to quietly remove figures most sympathetic to Russian nationalism from its ranks. Lukashenko’s positioning paid off roughly a year after the Minsk Protocol was signed; in 2016, the European Union lifted most sanctions against his country, including those against Lukashenko himself.
Since then, Lukashenko has continued to make overtures first to Europe and then to the United States, with his motives for this being somewhat unclear. It may be a fear of a pro-Western uprising displacing him, as happened with Yanukovych in the Ukraine. If Belarus were to be hit with the same level of Western sanctions as Russia has been since 2014, then the economic benefits that enable most Belarusians to at least tolerate his rule would be in jeopardy, and Lukashenko’s own position with it.
With its vast natural resources and land mass, Russia has been able to weather the sanctions (though they have had a negative effect on its economy), and some sectors (such as agriculture) have actually boomed since the sanctions were imposed. Russia also has the ability to pivot economically more towards China, building the Power of Siberia pipeline to pump natural gas directly to the world’s largest nation for the first time.
Comparatively tiny Belarus has less ability to do this- although he has done what he can by signing Belarus onto China’s Belt and Road initiative, with Minsk in particular as a key hub. In February of 2018, Lukashenko had his teenage son Nikolai, considered a possible eventual successor, record a Chinese New Year greeting video during which he played piano alongside a Chinese opera singer, then addressed a message of congratulations to his “Respected Uncle and Aunt” Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan, Xi’s wife. The message, clear for all to see, received prominent airplay on Chinese state media outlets when it was uploaded by Belarus’ ambassador to China.
In the past two years, Belarus’ geopolitical pivot has intensified, now incorporating the United States. In August of last year, Lukashenko hosted then- U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, saying that he hoped for a “new chapter” in Russian and Belarusian relations. This came on the heels of a similar visit by A. West Mitchell, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, in 2018. Even more surprisingly, Lukashenko said that he would consider buying U.S. oil, which before would have been nigh unthinkable.
This would have been unthinkable because Belarus’ economy largely depends on the fact that it purchases nearly all of its oil from Russia at subsidized prices- this, as the Bloomberg article linked above notes, is the real reason that Lukashenko’s neo-Soviet economic model has been as successful as it has. Russia, for its part, has turned off the tap- literally- in the past when differences have arisen between the two countries. As if to call Lukashenko on his bluff, Russia has now suspended oil deliveries to Belarus once again; Vladimir Putin had just weeks earlier warned that the discounts would come to an end should Belarus not implement its previously signed agreements on increased integration with Russia.
Many western observers of the Russia/Belarus relationship have believed that Belarus is key to Putin’s long term plan for retaining power after his constitutionally mandated last term expires in 2024. In 1997, Russia and Belarus signed a treaty for the creation of a Union State, a nominally supranational body that encompasses both nations. The theory goes, if the Union State were to be given real authority (right now it is largely a dead letter) over both nations, then Putin could appoint himself to the leadership of it and retain power while technically observing the Constitution’s requirement that he no longer be President of Russia.
However, Putin’s announced constitutional changes at the beginning of this year seem to have put this theory to rest. While he may yet use these changes to remain in power after 2024, the Union State will likely not be the vehicle by which he does so, according to Chatham House fellow John Lough. Nevertheless, this recent tightening of the screws on his erstwhile friend shows that Putin and the Russian government are determined to keep Belarus in the Russian orbit.
This outcome is critical to Putin’s worldview, as many of his great political influences- including the late Soviet dissident Aleksander Solzhenitsyn and White Russian emigre philosopher Ivan Ilyin, both regarded Belarus as part of the greater Russian nation, and it is doubtless a key strategic goal of the Russian state that Belarus’ status as such be irrevocably restored. This goal will almost certainly be one held by whoever leads Russia long after Putin is gone.
In his trademark blustery fashion, Donald Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised to match Russia’s maneuvers tit for tat. Arriving in Minsk this weekend hoping to continue the outreach begun by Bolton, Pompeo boasted that the United States could supply 100 percent of Belarus’ oil and gas needs. While not an expert in the logistics of energy transport to Europe, this statement comes off as spectacularly unconvincing to this outside observer.
While Lukashenko is doubtless happy to humor this sentiment, how could one reasonably expect the United States to be able to do this for Belarus when it cannot even do so for close NATO allies such as Germany, who have persisted in constructing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline increasing gas supply with Russia in spite of U.S. opposition?
Furthermore, Russia recently secured a gas deal with Ukraine that the Financial Times called “a boon for Russia,” and Ukraine can much more credibly call on Western support internationally and anti-Russian sentiment domestically. Russia’s “soft power” in Belarus is also far greater than mere oil price discounts- according to Foreign Affairs, ninety percent of the population consumes Russian media regularly.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported in January that Lukashenko himself had acknowledged in a government meeting that his ideal outcome for diversifying energy supply would still see Belarus importing 40 percent of said supply from Russia, a major reduction but still more than any other supplier.
The likely conclusion is that Pompeo and Trump’s State Department are an unwitting pawn in Lukashenko’s game to secure renewed discounts from Russia. As I have noted in this article and as the above linked source notes, Lukashenko has played this game many times before, and has always come back to Russia in the end once he gets what he wants.
In my writing here, I have often focused on the unintended costs of the United States’ foreign policy seeking to simultaneously spread universalist values of liberal democracy throughout the globe while attempting to make strategic exceptions for the likes of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the House of Saud. This approach did succeed somewhat during the Cold War against the Soviet Union, but events in the Middle East with regards to these countries are showing that this type of double-sided approach has lost its effectiveness.
The Trump State Department’s attempt to draw Lukashenko’s Belarus into its orbit and away from Russia is just the latest of these foreign policy misadventures, albeit one that will play out much more quickly than events with Turkey and Saudi Arabia. In the case of Belarus, it is already obvious that Lukashenko’s hints of a pro-Western turn are not genuine, or even genuinely self-serving.
Whatever outreach Lukashenko has made to the West has arguably been matched at every turn by his increasing ties with China, a country that is increasingly becoming just as much of a rival to the West as Putin’s Russia, if not more so in some ways. Mike Pompeo can boast all he want about providing Belarus with all of its energy needs, but all that it accomplishes is to make himself look on the one hand foolish for making unrealistic claims, and also hypocritical for indulging a man who U.S. policy has for so long criticized as a dictator. And so Lukashenko will carry on, playing whatever side he can for his own benefit, but an attempt at permanently turning Belarus into the Western orbit is highly unrealistic in the foreseeable future.
