Foreign Policy Blogs

Lucky Lukashenko

Hard to say Monday’s election results that keep Alexander Lukashenko in charge of Belarus for at least another four years were surprising. What have been surprising are the calls from heads of several former CIS countries voicing approval of the election results, which the OSCE called “bad,” “very bad,” and “non-transparent.”

Most conspicuously, Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili phoned Lukashenko on Tuesday to express his support. That would have been after at least one opposition candidate was arrested, beaten and dragged to a Belarusian secret services prison, according toreports.

At first blush, it’s difficult to know what to make of Saakashvili’s call, given how he himselfcame to power. The two countries did sign a number of mid-level bilateral agreements this year, so Saakashvili might simply believe it would be poor form to not acknowledge his counterpart in the wake of their warming relations. It also appears to be a low stakes from the perspective of Georgian-Russian relations: the on again/off again relationship between the Kremlin and Minsk seems, if not exactly back on, then definitely not off. President Medvedev was quoted as having “reacted positively” to the news of Lukashenko’s extended mandate.

Saakashvili’s phone call can perhaps be best understood in the context of the US and EU’s response, or lack thereof. Lady Ashton’s statement — jointly issued with Hillary Clinton — condemned the violence, called for the release of detainees and announced a review of ties with Minsk. Stern, yes, but a far cry from anything resembling Condoleeza Rice’s characterization of Lukashenko as “the last dictator of Europe.”

It appears Western nations (and aspiring Western nations like Georgia) may have simply decided they have bigger fish to fry these days than raise a big stink over another Lukashenko term. In the first place, a report from the Prague-based Transitions Online suggests Lukashenko’s support levels among Belarusians is great enough that that he had run the election cleanly, he may have won anyway. And as the US works to win concessions from Russia on issues like Iran, the word appears to have come down to not annoy Moscow by meddling with the country it considers most directly in its sphere of influence. Finally, with most of the EU’s energy still devoted to managing its own economic basket cases, Lukashenko finally appears to have picked the right time to meddle with elections and quash opposition with near impunity.