Belarusian-American Relations: The limits of rapprochement

Andrei Fyodorov

Summary

Belarusian-American relations continued to show certain progress. Minsk put forth a lot of efforts to expedite their normalization and achieved success in some aspects, but still failed to obtain the desired result. It seems that in the current situation the target remains basically unachievable.

Trends:

Improvements without breakthroughs

The forecast that significant changes in Belarus-US relations are highly improbable proved to be true in 2018. Events differed little from those that occurred before.

Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Kravchenko made several trips to the US, looking like an interim Belarusian ambassador to Washington, actually. His boss, Vladimir Makei, held a number of routine meetings, including with a delegation of the American Jewish Committee, Chairman of the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad Paul Pecker, and political analyst of East European affairs for the Jamestown Foundation Vladimir Socor. Alexander Lukashenko’s talk with a group of representatives of US think tanks was not something new either. Similar talks took place a couple of years ago.

The countries continued cooperation to prevent the illegal transit of nuclear and radioactive materials.

Although Belarus was called an “authoritarian state” again in the annual Country Report on Human Rights Practices by the US Department of State, the American embassy made critical statements regarding the Belarusian authorities only twice, first on the noncompliance of local elections with international standards, and then on the police searches in media offices and arrests of journalists. This did not prevent the next round of bilateral dialogue on this topic in October.

The sanctions against ten sitting and former Belarusian officials (the president being at the top of the list) extended by the US president, and the reaction of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry were also routine.

In the summer, the US appointed Jenifer H. Moore charge d’affaires at the embassy in Minsk, the sixth one over the past decade. She said in one of her first interviews that her task was to bring back the full embassy staff and a plenipotentiary ambassador to Belarus. If she succeeds, the first and the most recent US charge d’affaires will be namesakes.

There is no ground to assert that massive changes occurred in the economic sphere. As usual, for unknown reasons, the data provided by American and Belarusian sources differed significantly. According to the US,1 over the first 10 months of the year, the trade turnover reached almost USD 450 million, Belarus having a USD 217 million surplus. According to the National Statistics Committee of Belarus,2 the turnover amounted to USD 560 million and Belarus had a 152 million deficit. Although the Belarus-US turnover grew by 19%, it still constituted less than 1% of Belarusian foreign trade, which can hardly be considered a remarkable achievement.

In March, the United States quite expectedly introduced import duties on steel and aluminum, which, among others, hit the Belarusian Steel Works. As a result, Belarus can lose this segment of the US market.

A delegation of the Investigative Committee of Belarus visited the FBI Headquarters in January to discuss practices aimed at combating organized crime, corruption and high-tech crime and violent crimes investigation.

The situation with human contacts was no longer at an impasse: after a ten-year break, Belarusian nationals were given the opportunity to obtain all types of US visas in Minsk. The eleventh Information Resource Center of the US embassy opened in Mogilev to provide objective information about America.

Also, thanks to the visa-free regime in Belarus, the number of American visitors significantly increased.

Mitchell’s visit: field reconnaissance

In fact, the visit of Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Wess Mitchell to Belarus was the only really significant event of the past year. On October 31, he met with President Alexander Lukashenko and Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei. Two weeks earlier, at the conference of the US Atlantic Council, Mitchell said, “Today, it is the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of frontier states like Ukraine, Georgia, and even Belarus that offer the surest bulwark against Russian neo-imperialism […] We must be willing to use diplomacy to aggressively advance the national interest.”3

The Belarusian leader did not respond to this, at least publicly, and, at the above-mentioned meeting with Mitchell, expressed “keen interest in good relations with the United States.”

Such moderation was typical of all official comments concerning America last year. Even when the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs “strongly condemned” missile strikes of the coalition led by the United States in Syria, the US was not explicitly mentioned.

On the contrary, there were several attempts to show Washington sincere amiability. At the Minsk session of the Munich Security Conference Core Group, Lukashenko spoke about the advisability of involvement of the United States in the Normandy Four talks.4

At the meeting with Mitchell, the Belarusian president made an unexpected statement, which caused ambiguous responses. “Should we advance in our relations, I promise you that Belarusians would be the most reliable, conscientious and sincere partners of yours. If we agree on something, and if we promise you something here in Belarus, I'll warrant you that we would do that, even to the detriment of ourselves,” he said.5 It is not quite clear what he meant, but he was apparently eager to say something nice to his vis-à-vis.

Perhaps, the most detailed analysis of Belarusian-American relations was made in the Minsk Barometer.6 According to its authors, the new US strategy indicates increased interest in the region, including Belarus, and the main purpose of Mitchell’s visit was to inform the Belarusian leadership of this strategy. They particularly noted that Mitchell was the highest ranking US official visiting the country in a long while. “The Belarusian-American relationship was given a strong impetus for their further development. For the first time, the events of the period under review give reason to talk about significant progress towards the normalization of relations,” reads the review.

Among the most serious threats that could have a negative impact on development of cooperation with the United States the Barometer pointed at (1) Poland’s willingness to arrange a military base for an American armored division on its territory and (2) the United States’ withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty).

The forecast made in the Barometer was quite optimistic, though. Bilateral communication will increase in the coming months. Minsk will be able to convey its position on the possible deployment of the American base in Poland and the security situation in the entire region. Also, the parties will expedite the reinstatement of the full personnel in their embassies.

The main obstacle is in the east

We cannot but agree with many conclusions drawn in the review. For example, the possible placement of the American base in Poland and withdrawal from the INF treaty has a negative impact on bilateral relations.

At the same time, the importance of the status of the official visitors seems to be overestimated. In fact, the level of contacts does not guarantee a bright future. In the first years of independence, Belarus was visited by Secretary of State Warren Christopher and U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, not to mention President Bill Clinton, although the latter visit was largely demonstrative. And everyone remembers what happened next.

It seems that the purpose of Mitchell’s visit was not so much to inform the Belarusian leadership of the essence of the American initiative, as to find out how the Belarusian leadership would react to it. From this point of view, the pleasantries were hardly enough. The guest apparently wanted to hear what real measures could be taken to protect the sovereignty of the country.

One can be sure that the Belarusian leadership would very much like to fully normalize relations with the United States, first of all, being guided by purely pragmatic considerations, to be able to take loans and attract investments, as well as to develop trade and economic cooperation, of course on condition that the other party will drop the accusations of human rights violations and finally lift the sanctions.

Another important task is to enlist Washington’s support as the Minsk-Moscow relationship gets increasingly worse. At the same time, it is unclear what exactly the government can do in order to convince the United States of the sincerity of its intentions without provoking Russia’s aggression.

In the 2019 forecast released in mid-November, Stratfor predicted that Minsk would be offered economic incentives to divert it from building up military ties with Moscow. However, to obtain such preferences, Minsk would have to somehow participate in the creation of an anti-Russian “stronghold”. In this case, Belarus would face great risks, since its “main ally” would categorically disagree with this scenario and insist on the execution of the assumed obligations and on new strategic concessions, including an expansion of its military presence in the neighboring state.

Given that the Kremlin and the Belarusian regime remain ideologically close despite all disagreements, there’s no question about which side the latter would take. In these circumstances, even the reinstatement of the full embassy personnel does not fundamentally change the situation, although, of course, it can only be welcomed.

Conclusion

The current improvement of Belarusian-American relations is a consequence of the more or less neutral position that Minsk has taken in relation to the Russian aggression against Ukraine. If Minsk continues to adhere to it and does not return to harsh repressive measures inside the country, Washington will continue showing some interest in Belarus.

However, due to Donald Trump’s pragmatism, Belarus is of no great interest to him either politically, or economically. Therefore, the Department of State will continue to play the leading role in the Belarusian direction, although there will hardly be any grounds for pivotal changes.

Belarus’ political weight is too small for the world’s leading players to consider it in the current international situation. In other words, its opinion on the possible deployment of the American base in Poland or the future of the INF Treaty will not be really taken into account, regardless of whether Washington will be aware of it or not.

The Belarus-US relationship is going round in circles. Washington’s current interest in Minsk is clearly dominated by the aspiration to build up the Western World’s defense against Russia. Belarus is so strongly dependent on Russia in almost all domains that, even with the greatest desire (which, by the way, has not yet been manifested in any way), the Belarusian government will not risk keeping its ears open to American proposals.

If the global confrontation suddenly ceases (which is not totally impossible, since the American president is not very much predictable), the United States’ interest would get even weaker again, because, generally speaking, Belarus in its current status has nothing significant to offer in other areas. Accordingly, one can hardly expect increased cooperation in the foreseeable future. Moreover, there is a strong suspicion that the parties have reached the limits of their rapprochement.

Nevertheless, amid the increasing global tensions and taking into account the longtime discouraging experience of bilateral relations, even today’s level maintained for a while would be nowhere near the worst case scenario.