Sometimes even somebody as distasteful Belarus’s dictator Alexander Lukashenko may have a point. Reacting to news that the U.S. may be considering further sanctions against Belarus, Belarus’s ambassador to the United States, Mikhail Khvostov, held a press conference to denounce the U.S. sanctions as illegal. The further sanctions against Belarus will likely target other state-owned companies in the same fashion that sanctions were imposed earlier this year on Belarus’s state-controlled oil-processing and chemicals company, Belneftekhim.

Khvostov pointed to the Memorandum on Security Assurances signed by the United States and Belarus in 1994. The U.S. entered into this Memorandum in exchange for Belarus agreeing to accede to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The relevant provision is this:

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to [Belarus], in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the Republic of Belarus of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

According to Khvostov, the imposition of economic sanctions on Belarus notwithstanding this provision “shows that at any time the Bush administration can roll back the U.S. security assurances given to a legally binding instrument.” Not surprisingly, David Kramer, a State Department spokesman, countered that “We consider our actions to be wholly consistent with our political commitments and our obligations.”

It’s hard, however, to square the sanctions with the Memorandum unless one accepts one of two possible, but untenable, arguments. First, it might be argued that the sanctions are aimed at Lukashenko, members of his regime, and one state-owned company and not at Belarus itself. But the Memorandum prevents economic coercion broadly without making an exception for economic coercion targeting regime members and state-owned companies rather than the entire country. Second, it might be argued that the anti-democratic activities of Lukashenko which serve as the basis of the sanctions are not rights “inherent in sovereignty,” but this argument seems strained as well since sovereignty means, in the broadest sense, the right for a country to do what it wants, including things that are not necessarily democratic.

Permalink


Copyright © 2007 Clif Burns. All Rights Reserved.
(No republication, syndication or use permitted without my consent.)