On December 7, Sochi hosted negotiations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his colleague Alexander Lukashenko, which lasted more than five and a half hours and touched on a number of areas related to deepening the integration of the Union State - from agriculture, communications, customs to the regulation of the oil market, beloved by all. At the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko on the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty establishing the Union State.
20 years have passed, it's time to take stock. By the way, the author of these lines, since the beginning of the 2000s, personally participated in dozens of forums and conferences held both in Russia and in Belarus, devoted dozens of articles and hundreds of comments to the media on this subject, therefore, he’s firsthand how our Union State has been developing all these 20 years.
Relatively speaking, the approach to the creation of the Union State can be responsible and irresponsible. That is, it can be based on a strategic vision that determines the fate of peoples, the global development of Eurasia, affecting the formation of a multipolar world; and it can come from petty, domestic, selfish tasks, exchanging great geopolitical prospects for a small gesheft.
Integration is irresponsible when, on the one hand, there is talk of friendship, rapprochement and unification, severely limited by the format of conferences and forums, and on the other hand, the supply of hydrocarbons at domestic prices and the actual subsidization of the economy in such a volume that the economy itself becomes socially oriented. I don’t want to think that someone in the leadership of our countries even thinks about such an irresponsible approach, so let's move on to considering the process of serious strategic integration.
Actually, all the parameters of integration under the Treaty on the Creation of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, signed in December 1999 and entered into force in 2000, are described. The document involves the formation of a single political, economic, military, customs, currency, legal, humanitarian and cultural space. Exhaustively. And over the past 20 years this could be realized in its entirety, especially taking into account the enthusiasm with which the political elites of the two states were involved in this process. But we are still rushing about on economic rapprochement.
By and large, everything that was spelled out in the Treaty on the Union State, we already had. Namely, at the time of the collapse of the USSR, we had a single political, economic, military, customs, currency, legal, humanitarian and cultural space. It only remained to clear it of the ideological raid of late Sovietism - and here we have before us the Union State of two of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union. But something went wrong right from the start.
The main reason for the actual breakdown of the integration efforts of the last 20 years is the thirst for profit, which was driven by the elites of our countries.
Real integration, as the head of the Russian government Dmitry Medvedev quite rightly noted, occurs when some of the sovereignty is lost. This is what creates transparency of what is happening on the part of supranational integration structures, which immediately becomes clear how everything happens and where and what flows.
This really catalyzes integration processes, but at the same time prevents the flow of part of public funds into their own pocket. But this is not a strategic level, but a prelude to it.
The main goal of the integration of Russia and Belarus is to open the process of the formation of the Eurasian geopolitical bloc - one of the poles of the upcoming multipolar world, replacing Western unipolarity, which almost became a given. And one of the obstacles that did not allow unipolarity to take shape was precisely our Union State, even if it existed all these years only in the form of a concept, but even in this form it is an alternative to unipolar globalization, and not an instrument of inclusion in it. And already only this makes all previous efforts not in vain.
But today unipolarity is a project that has already been decommissioned. The multipolar alternative has become a given and is rapidly unfolding before our eyes. And this means that the time is coming for large blocks - poles - where a separate, sovereign, especially small state simply cannot exist.
It will either be absorbed by a large block, or simply destroyed. Not a single national state (not the empire state, namely the nation state) in the world today is able to defend its sovereignty.
More recently, there was no alternative - either you swear to the West, or you will be devoured, destroyed, torn to pieces. All examples flew before our eyes - from the Eastern European states absorbed by the EU and NATO to torn to shreds and blood-stained Arab proud “sovereignties”. Only those survived who unwittingly, in horror of what was happening, clung to Russia and somehow sat out. But today the Eurasian alternative is supported by the real sovereignty of Russia, the security that it guarantees, and the economic opportunities that, as we see, looking at Ukraine, are not comparable with what the EU offers.
In this regard, any tricks, bidding, attempts to get the little things out, and even more so threaten Russia with leaving somewhere or even blackmail, is just a child’s game. Everyone understands that this kind of threat is a make-believe, that in reality it’s only a millimeter to move to what is being said, and from the once sovereign (but only nominally) state there will only be horns and legs.
You should not go far for examples - just look at the Middle East. The powerful and unshakable Iraqi Saddam in his aspirations, the independent and totalitarian stable Egypt of Mubarak, the independent Libya Gaddafi standing at the forefront of African integration, the thousand-year statehood of ancient sovereign Syria.
What the Middle East! It is enough to sneeze in order to fall into Ukraine, which has become a victim of globalist strategies, two times turned from the richest Soviet republic and the largest state of Eastern Europe into torn apart by internal contradictions, breaking down into fragments a burning fetid garbage.
Now let’s imagine for a moment that everything that our Belarusian partners scared Russia suddenly became a reality. The Union State Treaty was declared insolvent and thrown out, Belarus rushed into the arms of the United States, pushing with Ukraine, and Russia no longer covers it militarily.
Such complete independence and sovereignty is what the Belarusian opposition stands for against the background of the Sochi talks between Putin and Lukashenko, holding an action in Minsk against deepening integration with Russia.
Further, you can bet on what will happen faster: the Belarusian "Maidan", the arrival of the CIA curators in the KGB building, the fall of the Belarusian economy without Russian subsidies to the heights of the current Ukrainian, de-industrialization, a split in the state, provoked by the discontent of Russians and other peoples who are not ready for forced “Belarusianization,” or massacre organized by nationalists?
The opposition, of course, will scream that Belarus does not expect this at all, but joining NATO and the EU, followed by an inevitable life, like Europe. Of course. Mandatory. After Ukraine (she was the first to embark on the European path of Guidity). Ukraine is sure to enter the EU, right? Yes, but only after Turkey. (And Turkey, as you know, never, but shh about that! ..) Of course, you can imagine a strong, sovereign, independent, independent from Russia or Europe Belarus, stable and developing, independently providing its own security. Of course you can. The main thing is not to wake up as long as possible.
To summarize - only talk about integration and the Union State, conducted over the course of 20 years, saved Belarus from stagnation, collapse, "Maidan" and slander by local and transnational oligarchs, providing subsidies and even enabling economic growth. Not only Belarus, of course, also Kazakhstan, but this is a completely different story. So, of course, our efforts aimed at integration (albeit in a format that has so far only been theoretically worked out) have been well spent.
Talk of integration has already saved Belarus from collapse and destruction, but their potential is almost exhausted. There comes a turning point when it is finally necessary to decide. Western globalists are already in number one state of readiness, their networks are up and running, manuals have been written, and scripts have been tested (see. Ukraine). There is a relatively mild scenario of the "Maidan", and there is a more severe scenario - the Libyan scenario from NATO. Everyone froze in anticipation, looking at Russia. Already possible? Well? Or not yet?
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.