Clapping is an act of defiance against the government and can be grounds for arrest. Are you aware of a country where such extreme censorship is actually being carried out? It is Belarus, in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet sphere.

In 2015, an anti-ruling-party protest in Minsk, the capital of Belarus (Photo: Marco Fieber/Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0)

The country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, has clung to the presidency for more than 20 years and is called “Europe’s last dictator.”

Notorious for its harsh repression of the opposition and grave human rights abuses, the Lukashenko regime is also notable, alongside its authoritarian domestic policies, for the president’s deft foreign policy. President Lukashenko has kept his regime afloat by skillfully managing relations with major powers—the EU, Russia, and China. Below, we take a closer look at the international relations surrounding Belarus by examining the calculations of each country.

What is Belarus?

Belarus is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe with a population of 9.49 million (as of January 2018) and an area of 207,600 km². It is also known for having suffered from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in neighboring Ukraine. As is clear from the map below, it occupies a geopolitically important position between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), centered on the United States and Western Europe, and Russia.

Historically, Belarusians have had an independent state for only a short time. The region remained under various rulers—the Mongol Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Russian Empire—while maintaining its ethnic identity and language. After the Russian Empire collapsed in the revolution, Belarus briefly declared independence as the Belarusian People’s Republic, but that regime was short-lived, and a few years later it joined the Soviet Union.

Belarus regained its status as an independent state in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Three years later, in 1994, the first presidential election was held, and the country’s first president was elected by an overwhelming margin over other candidates. This was the beginning of the Lukashenko administration that continues to this day.

A dictatorship lasting more than 20 years

Alexander Lukashenko entered politics around 1980 and was elected to parliament in 1990. From the outset he tended to take a pro-Russian stance and was, at the time, the only Belarusian lawmaker to oppose the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

President Lukashenko at a press conference (Photo: The Russian Presidential Press and Information CC BY-ND 4.0)

As a politician, his skills were exceptional. In 1993 he became chair of the anti-corruption committee, denounced politicians’ corruption, and gained popular support. Thanks to these achievements and a populist manifesto during the election, he won the presidential race the following year by an overwhelming margin over other candidates.

After taking power with high public support, Lukashenko steadily strengthened his authority. First, in 1996, he amended the constitution by referendum to increase the president’s powers over parliament and the constitutional court. Then, in 2004, he amended the constitution again to remove the ban on a third presidential term, allowing himself to remain in office. After winning the 2015 election, his administration entered its fifth term.

There have been many public voices condemning his long rule, and politicians and activists critical of the regime have repeatedly staged protests, but all have been suppressed by the police, and there are no signs that the regime is wavering.

Foreign policy in the 2000s: Ignoring EU economic sanctions

Powerful authoritarian regimes often maintain cooperative relations with strong foreign countries, as in the case of Saudi Arabia, which leverages its oil resources to enlist major powers on its side (see GNV’s earlier article), or the Assad regime in Syria, which continues to fight the opposition with Russian support. So which major power supports the Lukashenko regime? That is not easy to answer. Belarus has traditionally had the closest ties with Russia, its former suzerain. However, determined not to depend solely on Russia, Belarus has also built amicable economic relations with other major powers such as the EU and China—this is the hallmark of its foreign policy. Below, let’s review Belarus’s international relations since 1994, when Lukashenko came to power.

At the start of his administration, Lukashenko took a pro-Russian stance. For example, in 1999 he concluded the Treaty on the Creation of a Union State of Belarus and Russia. Considering that only a decade earlier many Eastern European countries had staged revolutions in their fervent desire to gain independence from the Soviet Union, Belarus’s—or Lukashenko’s—stance of seeking reintegration with Russia was highly unusual. That said, after Russia’s leadership shifted to the hardliner President Putin, the drive to create a Union State stalled and has yet to be realized. Nonetheless, given Belarus’s reliance on imports of energy resources such as oil from Russia, it continued to pursue a friendly policy toward Russia for some time.

Presidents Lukashenko and Putin meet on building a Union State, 2003 (Photo: The Russian Presidential Press and Information CC BY-ND 4.0)

Now let’s look at Belarus’s relationship with the group of major powers on the opposite side from Russia—namely, the EU. Relations between Belarus and the EU in the early 2000s were hardly good. The EU took a tough stance toward the Lukashenko regime, which openly perpetrated human rights violations against ordinary citizens at home. In 2004, it imposed economic sanctions condemning the detention of political prisoners. In response, there were no particular moves from Belarus to improve its human rights situation. Even with EU sanctions, as long as it maintained economic relations with Russia, it could sustain its domestic finances and economy without difficulty.

Foreign policy in the 2010s: Breaking away from dependence on Russia alone

As summarized above, Belarus’s economy in the 2000s was, broadly speaking, dependent on Russia alone. This foreign policy began to change around the 2010s. Several events served as triggers, one major factor being Russia’s invasion of Crimea. In 2014, amid armed clashes in Crimea in southern Ukraine, Russia intervened militarily under the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians and annexed the region. Such Russian military actions sparked alarm across the former Soviet region, including in Belarus.

In addition to the Ukraine crisis, events such as the three energy disputes between the two countries up to 2010 influenced Belarus to distance itself from Russia and move closer to the West. Lukashenko promptly released six long-detained political prisoners, relaxed restrictions on the opposition and anti-government newspapers, and allowed opposition candidates to participate in the electoral process. In addition to these domestic conciliatory measures, Belarus also lifted visa requirements for citizens of EU member states and the United States, thereby signaling clearly its intention to build friendly relations with Western countries.

The EU’s biggest move was lifting most of its sanctions on Belarus in 2016 (maintaining only the arms embargo). According to an EU document, unlike previous presidential elections that were accompanied by violent repression of the opposition, the 2015 election was conducted peacefully without violence, and the Lukashenko administration had released six political prisoners, which justified lifting the sanctions.

Does this mean Belarus’s human rights situation improved to the extent the EU initially demanded? Judging by the facts, it is hard to say yes. In 2017, a large protest against a tax law was violently suppressed and hundreds of citizens were arrested, indicating that the system that brooks no criticism of the regime remains intact. How does the EU view these human rights abuses? According to EU diplomats, Lukashenko must carry out reforms, but they will not rush him so as to avoid a repeat of Ukraine. In Ukraine, the toppling of the pro-Russian Yanukovych government prompted Russia’s military intervention in Crimea and led to instability. For the EU, rather than provoking Russia by pushing too hard for reforms inside Belarus, it seems more intent on temporarily overlooking the country’s human rights problems and drawing it into its own camp.

President Lukashenko with world leaders. At the Minsk talks in 2015 (Photo: The Russian Presidential Press and Information Office CC BY-ND 4.0)

As described above, the Lukashenko administration initially prioritized relations with Russia, and when ties with Russia deteriorated it improved the human rights situation and struck a friendly posture toward the EU—adroitly maneuvering among great powers. Recently, however, there has been another new development: a rapprochement with China. The friendship between China and Belarus began to take shape with the 2013 agreement on a comprehensive strategic partnership, and the strengthening of ties has accelerated in the last two or three years. In 2016, Lukashenko himself visited China and agreed to deepen cooperation in areas such as the defense industry. These agreements are being implemented; whereas Belarus previously imported most of its arms from Russia, in recent years it has begun prioritizing purchases of Chinese-made weapons. Chinese media have also reported favorably on the strengthening of relations with Belarus, and it is certain the two countries will build an even closer partnership in the future.

The road ahead for Belarus

As recently as February 2018, three bloggers who wrote pro-Russian articles were arrested, showing that human rights abuses continue. Although human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, condemn this situation, there is little sign that the Belarusian government will take action to improve it, and foreign countries are effectively putting off human rights issues. As noted above, what makes this possible are the complex international relations surrounding Belarus and the Lukashenko administration’s foreign policy, which skillfully exploits them.

Streetscape of the capital, Minsk (Photo: WikimediaFree/Username1313 CC BY-ND 3.0)

This article has attempted to shed light on the reality of the Lukashenko regime, which has maintained a long-term dictatorship in Belarus, by focusing on its foreign policy of carefully maneuvering among great powers. Interventions in neighboring countries are intense and unpredictable, but while maintaining deep ties with Russia, its traditional friend; dealing with the EU, which is particular about human rights yet has a geopolitical incentive to draw Belarus into its orbit; and cultivating a relationship with the distant, rising power of China, Lukashenko’s dictatorship has sustained itself by skillfully managing relations with multiple major powers.

Writer: Shunta Tomari

Graphics: Hinako Hosokawa