An awkward question: should we deal with Lukashenka?

Western strategy for toppling the authoritarian and murderous regime in Belarus is roughly this: "Have meetings, give the opposition money, have more meetings, give more money". You have to be pretty optimistic to think it is working.

A photo-op with George W. Bush on the fringes of the NATO summit for two of the best-known opposition leaders, Alyaksandr Milinkevic and Michail Marynich, may have been a morale booster and protests in support of the other main opposition figure, Alyaksandr Kazulin, who has just finished a hunger strike, are inspiring. But they are not rocking the regime.

The real question is what to do about the deep and growing split between Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his Kremlin counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

The paradoxical result of 12 years of Lukashenka’s eccentric and paranoid rule has been to entrench Belarusian national identity. It may be perverse, retrograde and have a strong Soviet whiff about it in places. But support in Belarus for a simple merger with Russia has collapsed. That creates the potential for a real row.

This is accentuated by the current trade war. Russia is exerting eye-popping pressure on Belarus over gas. In return for keeping prices at around half the rate it charges real foreign countries, the Kremlin’s crony companies seem likely to get 50% of the Belarusian gas network.

Next year, presumably, Russia will bargain for the other half. Now it has started blocking imports of Belarusian sugar. The always flimsy tent of the Russian-Belarusian Union, which was supposed to bring the two countries together in a marriage of equals, is so tattered that it seems beyond repair.

So the current arrangement where the two countries share a free trade zone without free trade, under a supranational institution with no authority, can’t last. Russia no longer wants to subsidise its backward western neighbour. But nor does it want, at least right now, the trouble and expense of toppling the regime and swallowing it up.

As ties with Russia go from cool to icy, the Lukashenka regime is desperate to find new friends: Iran, Azerbaijan, China - anyone who will help shelter against the cold wind from the Kremlin. Belarus is even putting out feelers westwards, albeit rather clumsy ones.

So far, these have been firmly rebuffed. The West doesn’t think about Belarus very often. But when it does, it wants to isolate the regime, not befriend it. But outside the officialdom people are talking about a new approach, variously described as "more astute" and "more realistic": that the West should stop trying to isolate Lukashenka and instead offer him a deal. At its most cynical, this would aim simply to keep him in power but as a Western ally rather than a Kremlin one: creating a kind of Azerbaijan on Europe’s eastern fringe. More idealistically, the West might buy him out: offering immunity and a dignified retirement in exchange for a peaceful transfer of power - and eventually democracy.

A third option would be to keep political ties frozen, at least for now, but try to boost trade, investment and cultural links.

But betraying the Belarusian opposition looks morally impossible. What do you say to people who have been beaten and jailed, and seen their loved ones murdered? "Sorry old chap. Given the geopolitics, it’s too good a chance to miss." There’s another problem too: capricious, paranoid and devious, Lukashenka is not a dealmaker.

Shunning Lukashenka’s approaches feels virtuous and may be right. But events in Belarus are unfolding remarkably quickly. There may soon come a time when doing nothing and wishing hard will look the worst option, not the best.

Western strategy for toppling the authoritarian and murderous regime in Belarus is roughly this: "Have meetings, give the opposition money, have more meetings, give more money". You have to be pretty optimistic to think it is working.

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