ANALYSIS: Presidents of Belarus and Ukraine fall short of Euro-Atlantic standards (11/24/02)

ANALYSIS

Presidents of Belarus and Ukraine fall short of Euro-Atlantic standards

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

Two scandalous political developments have burst onto the international agenda prior to the NATO summit in Prague on November 21-22. The first concerns the Czech Republic's denial of a visa to Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, effectively preventing him from coming to the country to participate in a sitting of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC). The second is NATO's decision to hold a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission at the summit at the foreign-minister level in an apparent attempt to prevent Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma from coming to Prague.

While Mr. Lukashenka will definitely not appear in Prague, Mr. Kuchma has preferred to keep NATO in suspense until the very last moment. According to what appear to be deliberately unconfirmed media reports from Ukraine, Foreign Affairs Minister Anatolii Zlenko will come to Prague at the head of a Ukrainian delegation to the NATO-Ukraine Commission talks, while President Kuchma is considering leading another delegation to a session of the 46-member EAPC.

It is no wonder that media always seek sensational and spicy aspects of any event, irrespective of how serious or historically momentous that event might be. Therefore, their focus on the turmoil caused by Presidents Lukashenka and Kuchma in the context of the Prague summit is understandable. But it is also true that, in general perception, the NATO summit in Prague - which is expected to extend NATO membership invitations to as many as seven post-Communist states and has been labeled in advance a historic event - lacks the momentousness it would have had if NATO membership had been offered to those seven Central and Eastern European states 10 years ago.

The past decade has greatly blurred the Cold War division line in Europe, while the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States have radically redefined the North Atlantic Alliance's military goals and priorities. In fact, the upcoming expansion of NATO seems to be a political move rather than a military one, while the military consequences of this step might more greatly affect other parts of the globe than Europe itself.

As in the case of the three Central European states (Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary) that were admitted to NATO in March 1999, it will take years before the next group of new members - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria - are able to make a palpable contribution to NATO's "firepower." This aspect of NATO enlargement is obviously understood by NATO planners and strategists, and it has also spawned a great deal of ironic commentary in Russia as well as in the United States, which now seems to uphold NATO's military reliability completely with its own efforts.

However, the political significance of the current NATO expansion should not be underestimated. In actual fact, the inclusion of these seven new countries into NATO is in reward for the progress they made toward shaking off their "Eurasian" political legacy and acquiring new, "Euro-Atlantic" identities. It is also a clear sign of how greatly the realm of democracy and political stability in Europe has expanded since the breakdown of communism in Europe in 1989, including headway into what was formerly known as the Soviet Union.

For the countries that were admitted to NATO in 1999 or are to be admitted in the second wave following the Prague summit, NATO membership is firm evidence that they belong to the West. Their future membership in the European Union will only confirm and seal this eventuality.

"We are convinced that fundamental human rights and freedoms are not being protected and respected in Belarus, and that is one of the basic values upon which the Euro-Atlantic alliance was founded," Czech Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda said in justifying the visa denial to President Lukashenka.

Few would deny that human rights in Belarus are abused, freedom of speech is suppressed and political choices are limited. Similar accusations, however, can justly be made with regard to some regimes in post-Soviet Central Asia that will be represented by their leaders at the Prague summit. Does this mean Lukashenka is correct in claiming the West resorts to "double standards" in assessing the level of democracy in Belarus in comparison with post-Soviet Central Asian countries? To a certain degree, yes.

But it also should be taken into account that none of NATO's "partners for peace" in Central Asia has been suspected, as has Belarus, of rendering military assistance to Saddam Hussein's regime and training Iraqi anti-aircraft gunners who could conceivably be asked to down NATO aircraft.

It seems that NATO applied a similar rationale in not inviting Ukraine's president to Prague. The record of human rights abuses and suppression of media under the rule of Mr. Kuchma actually puts him on par with Mr. Lukashenka. But here, too, the decisive reason for snubbing the Ukrainian leader appeared to be the U.S. allegation that President Kuchma approved the sale of an early-warning radar system to Iraq - potentially putting the lives of NATO pilots at risk through the work of another NATO "partner for peace."

On the other hand, if Mr. Kuchma chooses to come to Prague in defiance of NATO hints that he is not welcome, it seems unlikely that he will be denied a Czech visa the way that Mr. Lukashenka was. Like it or not, it was under Kuchma's rule that Ukraine has asked for and been granted a place in the waiting room of Europe. This fact alone arguably grants the Ukrainian president the right to somewhat different treatment by European leaders than that afforded Belarus' head of state.

Ukraine has essentially found the path it must pursue, with or without Mr. Kuchma. Under Mr. Lukashenka, Belarus has failed to find a place within any alignment, defying through its actions both political expediency and common sense. Most likely, the West has come to the conclusion that life will be much simpler if it ignores Belarus' current leader.

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus, Ukraine and Poland specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

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