Venezuela's Petro-Diplomacy: Hugo Chávez's Foreign Policy

6. Strangest Bedfellows: The Belarus-Venezuela Connection

6 Strangest Bedfellows The Belarus-Venezuela Connection Ralph S. Clem William Safire, known for his etymological genius as well as for his incisive conservative commentary, provided us with both the background and an excellent definition of the much-used phrase, “Politics makes for strange bedfellows.” As is so often the case, Safire tells us, the expression traces back to Shakespeare (in this case, to The Tempest), but its present-day usage is defined as “members of an unlikely alliance, often attacked as an ‘unholy alliance ,’ forced by circumstances to work together.”1 The subject of this discussion —the increasingly close friendship between the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Republic of Belarus (formerly, in English, Belorussia)—is about as unlikely an alliance as one might find, and is, in the minds of many, also unholy. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez ardently pursues contacts and alliances with a variety of countries, some out of ideology and others as a matter of convenience. Russia has made huge multi-billion dollar arms sales to Venezuela ; China, in its relentless pursuit of hydrocarbons, is a growing presence in the country; and Iran finds a kindred spirit in Chávez’s anti-U.S. rhetoric. These relationships, involving major players on the international stage, are fairly straightforward and not difficult to understand. But Venezuela and Belarus? Why have these two countries, separated by great distance and very different cultures, become so closely linked, to a degree that early skeptics certainly misjudged? A related question is, Are these ties meaningful, in the sense that they satisfy some genuine needs, or is the relationship ephemeral and without real substance? Strangest Bedfellows: The Belarus-Venezuela Connection 93 To frame these questions, the discussion that follows focuses on three topics: regime legitimacy, economic cooperation, and military assistance. As will be clear below, the second topic is an important element of the first, and the third is actually a subset of the second, but because of the high visibility and sensitivity of foreign military involvement in Latin America, it will be given special attention here. The emphasis will be on the Belarusian side of the association, as so much expertise is available in this volume on Venezuela . Given that relatively little is known in general about Belarus, some general background on the country is included, especially its recent (i.e., post-Soviet) political and economic situation. Belarus: Legitimizing an Accidental State If, for whatever reason, one decided to fly from Caracas to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, the journey would traverse some 5,820 nautical miles (9,365 kilometers ) as the crow flies; or, as the airlines fly (according to Expedia.com), it would take a minimum of 16 hours and 25 minutes, with two intermediate stops required. The trip would also, in many respects, take one back in time. Belarus presently can be described as a Stalinist state, arguably “the land where the Soviet Union never really went away,” and it is often referred to as “Europe’s last dictatorship.”2 Belarus today is about the size of Kansas, with a population of around 9.7 million. As a glance at the map will reveal, the country is wedged into the historically hazardous territory between Poland and Russia, a region that, unfortunately for its inhabitants, is astride the corridor through which invading armies have flowed at least since the time of the Mongols. Napoleon and Hitler came this way, moving east; the Russian Imperial Army and later the Red Army pushed them back to the west. Controlled by the medieval Lithuanian Kingdom, then by Poland, the Belarusian lands were annexed by Russia in the late seventeenth century and became part of the USSR after the transition to Soviet rule.3 Sometime around the turn of the twentieth century, at least a modicum of Belarusian ethnic consciousness was coalescing. Belarusians are a Slavic people, close linguistically to the Russians to the east and, less so, the Ukrainians to the south.4 This ethnic distinctiveness was sufficient to warrant the creation of a Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, as part of the Soviet federation, from 1922 until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, after which the Republic of Belarus became an independent state. 94 Ralph S. Clem After independence, Belarus flirted briefly with democracy until 1994, when Aleksandr Lukashenka (sometimes written as Lukashenko) was elected president. In 1996, Lukashenka engineered a referendum that greatly enhanced the power of the...