After the parliamentary elections in Belarus Washington increases political pressure on Minsk, at the same time, leaving Minsk a space for political involvement. On the one hand, the US is not going to lift the sanctions against Belarus and to return to Minsk, the American Ambassador, on the other hand, the state Department notes positive developments in the political system of Belarus, the American experts hinted at the need for a foreign policy of neutrality for the restoration of relations between Minsk and Washington, and the IMF offers loans to Belarus. The Americans are working with Alexander Lukashenko as well as thirty years ago, worked with Mikhail Gorbachev, though Lukashenka is not Gorbachev and the policy of “concession after concession” for the sake of beautiful promises will not do.
The United States notes positive changes in Belarus, but to lift the sanctions against Minsk is considered premature. This statement was made by press Secretary of US state Department mark Toner at a briefing on 15 September, discussed the results of the parliamentary elections in Belarus.
The state Department welcomes the peaceful nature of the elections and the fact that “alternative voices will be represented in Parliament for the first time in 12 years” – that is, that the House of representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Belarus passed two representatives of the opposition. Nevertheless, the Belarusian election was again declared not in conformity with international commitments of Belarus towards the holding of fair democratic elections. Therefore, to cancel, suspend, or even to soften us sanctions against Minsk – prematurely.
The sanctions regime continues to be tied to issues of democracy and human rights in the Republic of Belarus. “If Belarus will take in these areas, the steps we will rate as significant, the United States will consider the possibility of easing the sanctions,” – said on this occasion, mark Toner. At the same time, “if Belarus will take actions contrary to its international obligations, we also retain the flexibility to ramp up sanctions or to revoke their suspension”.
In other words, the United States still considers himself the measure of all things in terms of democracy and human rights, reaffirmed their commitment to its tactics to blackmail Minsk by the possible lifting of sanctions, building in this way the interaction with the Belarusian authorities.
“We continue to evaluate day after day, week after week. Parliamentary elections, in our view, give grounds for hope, but we want to see more, concludes the spokesman. – Briefly, we see some improvements, and it always allows us to gradually increase our bilateral dialogue with Belarus, but we haven’t gone all the way. However, we continue to see positive signs.”
At the same time in Belarus continue to exert political pressure and leave a window of opportunity for political involvement. Washington is not going to lift the sanctions or to return to Minsk, the American Ambassador, however, American diplomats and experts stubbornly bring the Belarusian leadership thinking about the need to distance themselves from Russia and to adhere to the foreign sovereignty. If Belarus is neutral, and the human rights and democracy, the situation will start to improve, and that lifting the sanctions is not far.
The ongoing diplomatic game is not for US something new: it’s just another round of the game, which Washington deals with Minsk for many years. Today, Americans forge the iron is hot: a geopolitical reorientation of Belarus is becoming a critical need in a “new cold war” with Russia, and ongoing recession in the Belarusian economy creates for this reorientation necessary conditions – financial assistance from the West and the opening of Western markets in exchange for abandoning a strategic ally.
Therefore, in Belarus in recent years, frequent of the IMF mission. Another International monetary Fund mission, headed by Peter Dolman began work in Minsk on September 19. The government of Belarus hopes to receive from the IMF a loan of 3 billion dollars at 2.28 per cent per annum for 10 years. The conditions of international creditors, under which the IMF agreed to give Minsk the amount requested, the standard: acceleration and deepening of structural reforms in the Belarusian economy, liberalization, privatization, the refusal of the state from social commitments and absolute payment by the population housing prices.
President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has called the demands of the IMF and humiliating for the Belarusian society and contrary to the social model of the Belarusian state. “Yes, I want to get three billion of cheap credit. I’m in. But the price is completely unaffordable for us and unfair to the people negates all of the policy that we have had until now,” – said Lukashenko.
However, the crisis in the Belarusian economy is objectively there, the country needs the money, so the negotiations with the IMF are continuing, although the claims of the creditors, in fact, destroy the current Republic of Belarus as a unique phenomenon in Eastern Europe.
The U.S. is working with Lukashenko for the same model, which thirty years ago they worked with Gorbachev: an invitation to cooperation and commendable change for the better with consistently strict requirements and forced to make concession after concession.
As Belarus today promised respect and equality with the Western powers, neutrality and the Soviet Union in 1990 promised a demilitarized, neutral Germany in exchange for the unification of West Germany with East. As today claim that the increased military presence of NATO near the Belarusian border poses no threat to the military security of Belarus in 1989 with the collapse of the socialist camp was given the promise that NATO would not expand eastward.
The Soviet economy a quarter century ago, in crisis, exit from which in Moscow was headed “Harvard boys” – the American advisers and consultants that the economy is not reformed and saved, and finished it off. Just today, the IMF agrees to provide assistance fallen into recession for the Belarusian economy, pushing for it demands that this economy will not support, and will finish, as the proposed IMF measures fatal to the Belarusian economic model. Like Gorbachev thirty years ago, today Lukashenka in exchange for concessions to the West promise to make a full-fledged member of the Western elite club.
The main problem working on Belarus Western functionaries in the fact that Lukashenka is not Gorbachev.
In a sense, Lukashenko is anti-Gorbachev.
Gorbachev destroyed the Soviet civilization – Lukashenko recreated it on the territory of the Byelorussian SSR. Gorbachev destroyed the Soviet Union – Lukashenko since he came to the presidency of the Republic of Belarus has started work to restore the lost integration between the former Soviet republics. The Belarusian leader never value the opportunity to “hang nicely”: Lukashenko is always a relaxed attitude to sanctions against him personally, the ban on entry into the United States and the European Union. Promises to give the entry ticket to a closed elite coterie of Western leaders of the Belarusian President was not tempted.
Therefore, the technology triggered a quarter century ago with the Soviet Union, when you try to re-apply it to the rest of the Soviet civilization Belarusian fragment may fail.
