At the end of the Cold War, the European states (including the Soviet Union at the time) agreed in several documents that respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and democratic principles should no longer be viewed as an internal affair of states, but as an international issue.
Behind this determination, which was made in the high spirits after the collapse of the communist dictatorships and was probably only possible in this situation, was a consideration that the later Czech President Václav Havel, as a persecuted opponent of the regime, had formulated in the mid-1980s as follows: “A state who denies his citizens the basic human rights, is also dangerous for his neighbors: the internal arbitrariness inevitably grows into arbitrariness in external relations. "
The hijacking of the Ryanair flight Athens – Vilnius to Minsk was spectacular evidence of the correctness of this statement.
In order to get hold of an opposition party, the regime of the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko intervened in civil aviation with a means that is otherwise only used by terrorists.
What is the dictator's calculation?
No one should be surprised at Lukashenko's unscrupulousness - he demonstrated it long before the brutal crackdown on the democracy movement since the fraudulent election last summer when he simply made several opponents disappear in the 1990s.
However, the dictator's calculation raises questions: Did he believe that after the hijacking of the aircraft, the EU would leave it at a symbolic extension of those sanctions against his apparatus of power that do not really hurt him?
Is he so much on the defensive in his struggle for his own power that such a signal to his opponents at home and in exile outweighs the possible international consequences?
Or are we - as it seems most likely - a bad mix of the two?
It is good that the EU reacted so quickly by closing its airspace to the Belarusian airline; and if the announced further sanctions actually go to the money sources of the regime, she will have done much of what is possible for her at the moment. In fact, she currently has few instruments to influence the rulers in Minsk. It is completely unthinkable that Lukashenko will respond to the EU's demand for the release of the kidnapped opponent Roman Protassewitsch. In doing so, he would commit political suicide because it would expose the security apparatus, which is the most important pillar of his rule - in addition to the backing from Moscow.
But with Lukashenko's patron, the Europeans have even fewer opportunities to bring about an immediately recognizable, positive change in behavior. At most, they can prevent worse things by putting a price tag on human rights violations and aggression against neighboring states. Therein lay the effect of the sanctions against Russia for the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine
One can rightly criticize the EU for not making consistent use of the opportunities it offers.
But that is not their real weakness.
This consists in the fact that it almost always only reacts to the challenges posed by authoritarian regimes in its immediate neighborhood when they are forced to do so.
After the eastward enlargement of the EU, which is a success story despite all the difficulties associated with it, it only half-heartedly tried to draft and promote a positive agenda for Eastern Europe.
Half-hearted initiatives from Brussels
The various concepts that have been presented since the beginning of the century suffer on the one hand from the fact that a grid with Brussels standards was laid over a complicated and contradicting reality that could not be captured in it. This led to misjudgments and disappointed hopes. Above all, however, the systemic conflict between democracy and authoritarianism, which has been an essential driving force of political developments in Eastern Europe since the orange revolution in Ukraine in 2004 at the latest, was not discussed as such. In the endeavor to keep channels of conversation open and to remain in dialogue, it has been neglected for too long to identify contradictions and to draw conclusions from them for an active and not merely reactive policy. One has shied awayto draw the conclusions from the correct diagnosis from the early 1990s.
That is why it is no longer enough to make Lukashenko pay a “bitter price” for hijacking the aircraft, as Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said. This incident is another reminder to the EU to work flat out to defend its own integrity. Because once the Russian regime is in a position like Lukashenko is now, it could be too late.