The articles below explore these issues.
The Victors Write History
Why the West fears Belarus’s ‘bogeyman"West stands united against Lukashenko
Drama in Ukrainian poll promises surprise finale
Belarus becomes the new breeding ground of cold war between Russia and the West
Question and Answer on Bush
Reheating the cold war
See also
Mark
Almond The Guardian
"After the death of Slobodan Milosevic, the West did not need to look far to find another bogeyman," says Mark Almond. All eyes now turn to Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, who last weekend won a third term as president with 82.6% of the vote. The media often portray Belarus as a "Stalinist theme park run by a Hitler-loving tyrant who makes his opponents disappear", but that's a crude exaggeration. While the country has its problems, including serious civil rights issues, it's faring better than many of its ex-communist neighbours - thanks largely to Lukashenko's refusal to swallow the West's free-market nostrums. In countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, economic "shock therapy" has enriched a clique of oligarchs, together with "their Western advisers and money launderers", but caused mass unemployment and a collapse in public services. In Belarus, by contrast, Lukashenko's firm control of the economy is delivering steady economic growth for ordinary people. That's why he inspires such "fear and loathing in the think-tanks and foreign ministries of the West".
The Belarussian president, Alexander Lukashenko, is to be
banned from
entering the European Union and the United States.The President risks having his financial assets frozen after EU leaders agreed to take sanctions against his regime after last week's "fundamentally flawed" elections.
EU diplomats said the mood at the European Council summit had hardened against Belarus, when news arrived from Minsk that riot police had cleared from the main square an encampment of young opposition activists. Hundreds were arrested early yesterday.
Tension mounted in Minsk's Oktyabrskaya Square again yesterday evening, ahead of a planned opposition rally today, with police showing that the hard line would continue.
About 30 opposition supporters holding flowers gathered at twilight at the square where the tent camp had sprung up. However, they were pushed away by black-clad police.
Mr Lukashenko joins the ranks of international pariahs, including President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and the Burmese junta, already on the EU visa travel ban list. The Belarussian leader will formally be added to the list when EU foreign ministers meet early next month.
The White House welcomed the EU decision, and pledged to take parallel sanctions, including "targeted travel restrictions and financial sanctions". US officials said privately that they were relieved European leaders had named Mr Lukashenko, rather condemning the regime.
The heads of government and state of the 25 EU nations denounced the clearance of the opposition protesters from the heart of Minsk.
The same demonstrators were visited by a handful of EU ambassadors earlier this week. In formal conclusions to the spring summit, the leaders declared: "On a continent of open and democratic societies, Belarus is a sad exception."
Six Belarussian officials are already on EU travel ban lists, in connection with the disappearance of opposition activists. Despite their united front, some EU leaders were more vigorous than others in their condemnations. France demanded the deletion of wording saying that Europe would work closely with the US on Belarus.
Austria, which holds the EU presidency, was more reluctant to agree a travel ban, diplomats said. The Austrian foreign minister, Ursula Plassnik, said economic sanctions were not being considered.
Poland, which has a border with Belarus, led the campaign against Mr Lukashenko. The Polish foreign minister, Stefan Meller, said the new restrictions could involve more than a dozen people, and could include economic sanctions on Belarus firms linked to Mr Lukashenko's regime.
"It's a penalty for [Lukashenko's] sins," he said. "This is a fight of good against evil."
David
Rennie in Brussels
The stars: a tarnished hero, a redeemed villain and a spurned beauty. The extras: a group of shady oligarchs in Armani suits. The plot: a tale of betrayal, dashed expectations and shady, backroom deals.
The candidates in tomorrow's parliamentary elections in Ukraine have been accused of many shortcomings. Stinting on melodrama has not been one of them.
In the 15 months since hundreds of thousands of
protesters swept Viktor
Yushchenko to power during the Orange Revolution, Ukraine has
experienced turbulence and disappointment.Even so, the likely outcome of the poll seems staggering: the party headed by Viktor Yanukovich, the Moscow-backed politician accused by the West of trying to steal the election last time round, is projected to win the largest number of seats.
His backers are suspected of having slipped dioxin into Mr Yushchenko's borscht, disfiguring his face and very nearly killing him. It is now possible that Mr Yanukovich could become Mr Yushchenko's prime minister.
The president may not be enthused by the idea, but there is little he can do about it. Unlike most elections in the former Soviet Union, the build-up to the poll has been the most free and vibrant in Ukraine for 90 years. Rigging on election day itself, western diplomats say, looks highly unlikely.
A walk down Kiev's main street bears testament to the fact that the Orange Revolution's greatest legacy is the introduction of democracy. The capital has been turned into a sea of colour, with tents bedecked in the liveries of rival parties jostling for every bit of pavement space. Compared with the drab election in neighbouring Belarus last week, fought against a backdrop of intimidation and a pre-determined result, Ukraine is in a different world - one of liberty and razzamatazz.
Yet the prime architect of all this is set to receive a rebuff from the voters tomorrow, reflecting disillusionment among many Ukrainians who believe that the Orange Revolution has not really borne fruit.
Promised reforms have been slow to materialise, while allegations of corruption have re-emerged. Hurt by a fall in international steel prices, economic growth has also slowed. But Mr Yushchenko has probably been most hurt by the internal bickering within the Orange team, ending with his dismissal of Yulia Timoshenko, his charismatic prime minister, in September last year. For the Orange supporters the two were inseparable. He was quiet, professional and disfigured; she was fiery, passionate and beautiful.
The differences extended to policy, however. As prime minister her grasp of economics often seemed erratic; her public spending sprees profligate. She introduced benefits for new mothers that were virtually unmatched in their generosity anywhere in the West.
She promised to re-examine thousands of dubious privatisations in the early 1990s, from which she herself benefited.
Foreign investors, alarmed by this assault on the sanctity of property rights, were alarmed and stayed away, to the disappointment of the pro-western Mr Yushchenko, an enthusiastic free-marketeer.
But her crusading was popular with many Ukrainians who yearned for justice and she won further points by campaigning against a group of oligarchs who had created a powerful circle around the president.
The bickering has played into the hands of Mr Yanukovich, whose popularity ratings virtually sank into single figures after his ungracious acceptance of defeat. Now polls give his party more than 30 per cent of the vote, 10 points ahead of the president's party, Our Ukraine, and Mrs Timoshenko's bloc.
That will delight the Kremlin, which is desperate to prove that the Orange Revolution was a fiasco. Mr Yanukovich's party can probably assume the premiership only if it enters a coalition government with Our Ukraine as its junior party - a move that would drive Mrs Timoshenko into opposition.
That, says analyst Vladimir Malinkovich, could be excellent for the country, serving to heal some of the divisions that have broadly split the industrialised, largely pro-Russian east and south from the pro-European west.
Adrian Blomfield in Kiev
United States will join the EU in imposing sanctions on Belarus over the country's contested elections, a U.S. official said. Russia has asked US to stop trying to export American version of democracy all over the world. The March 19 elections, which gave Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko a landslide victory and third term, have been condemned as fraudulent by Western governments and Belarusian opposition groups.
The sanctions will likely take the form of travel restrictions, as well as additional "targeted" sanctions on individual Belarusian leaders, White House press spokesman Scott McClellan said. In Ukraine the Parliament election may bring Russian backed leadership back in power. The world is on the verge of a new cold war between Russia and the West. China has specially covert business interest with the Western nations. As a result it will first stay away from the cold war. India is also in the same boat as China. However, it will be interesting to watch how Brazil, India, China and South Africa react to the new start of the cold war.
Matthews:
"How can you not trust" Bush?
Summary: During a
discussion about President Bush's recent public
relations campaign to rally support for the war in Iraq, Chris Matthews
said: "How can you not trust a man who says, 'I won't be able to win this war in my presidency; I'm leaving it up to other presidents in the future'?"
I cannot trust Bush because he led this country into war on a pack of lies. There have been nothing but lies before the war, during the invasion, and during the occupation, which is on its way to becoming a permanent reality. And was it not this same President who said, shortly after the invasion, "Mission accomplished"? The fact that American kids are still dying in Iraq every day puts the lie to this.
I have to wonder how many of Chris Matthews' family are on active duty right now in Iraq. Otherwise, I suspect he wouldn't be quite so willing to forgive all the lies that brought us to this point. - M. R.
Belarus becomes the new breeding ground of cold war between Russia and the West
The United States will join the EU in imposing sanctions on Belarus over the country's contested elections, a U.S. official said. Russia has asked US to stop trying to export American version of democracy all over the world.
Just the distraction the White House needs to deflect public attention from the mess in Iraq in Afghanistan. - M. R.
A "regime change" in Russia! Lieven wrote in his article featured in the Los Angeles Times of March 18 that historians of the future would look back with amazement that "hardliners within the Bush administration, and especially in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, are arguing for a new line against Moscow along the lines of a scaled-down Cold War" and that they advocate forming "anti-Moscow military alliances" and giving "overt support" to Putin's domestic political opponents.
In other words, the Western perception is that energy is being refined by the Kremlin as a far cheaper and far more effective way of expanding global influence than the tanks and missiles that the Soviet Union amassed at enormous cost, which drained resources and ultimately led to the weakening of the Soviet state structure.
See also
Orange turnaround in Ukraine
Can Ukraine survive its political and economic problems?
EU welcomes Russian - Ukraine gas accord
On nuclear energy - the solution that dare not speak its name
OSCE: elections in Belarus ‘severely flawed"
Vladimir Putin
Belarus
Belarus - training the opposition
Some World News as at 2006-02-26: A new radio station backed by the European Union has started broadcasting to Belarus in an effort to balance the country's state-controlled media.
World news briefs at 4th March 2006: Belarus police beat up journalists ahead of poll. Police in Belarus are reported to have beaten up at least nine journalists
Global gains in Freedom: At the same time, authoritarian leaderships in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, and, most importantly, Russia have adopted policies that will make it more difficult for the development of a genuine civil society and will impede the development of a democratic political opposition.