I would like to comment on Budapest Memorandum technicality. You probably already know this since you conceded Russia has a point, but other readers may not. The following is trying to be a neutral summary.
In 1994, in return for Belarus and Ukraine giving up nuclear weapons and joining NPT, US promised to “refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the signatory of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind”.
In 2013, US sanctioned Belarus. Belarus notified US that US broke Budapest Memorandum. US replied it didn’t (what?), because sanctions are for human rights, and not designed to subordinate etc.
In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea.
I am not sure what US was thinking in 2013. If US thought Budapest Memorandum was at all valuable, they should have paused and thought twice about it. Given their frankly absurd reply, I think they didn’t consider it valuable.
I live in South Korea, so my specialty (I am not at all special in South Korea, but that immediately makes me an expert in the global internet) is North Korea. US and North Korea reached an agreement called Agreed Framework (done in Geneva, so better known as Geneva Agreement in South Korea) in 1994. (See the pattern? 1994 was an important year.)
In return for North Korea dismantling nuclear reactors in Nyongbyon and remaining in NPT, US promised to deliver 500,000 tons of heavy oil every year to North Korea for energy production, until non-proliferating nuclear power plant is completed, since North Korea insisted nuclear reactors were for energy production, and there was even some truth to it. North Korea was severely deficient in electricity.
US didn’t deliver heavy oil because Congress didn’t fund it. What were they thinking?! To North Korea, non-proliferation promise was directly linked to delivery of heavy oil.
In 2002, president Bush declared North Korea an Axis of Evil, and the agreement formally broke down.
I see a pattern here. I consider US-Iran relation to be similar. When US makes a deal with another country to join or to remain in NPT, they are willing to promise a lot. Once the deal is done, US does not keep its promise. It’s almost as if US thinks it does not need to keep its promise, since another country should have remained in NPT anyway! US seems to think, why should I pay for it? I must scream now: US must pay for it, because US agreed to. In faith whereof the undersigned plenipotentiaries etc.
I have a recommendation to US. Keep your words. Do not sanction if you promised not to sanction. Do deliver heavy oil if you promised to deliver heavy oil. It’s not that difficult. Thank you.
I agree. I wouldn’t trust USA to keep their promises after something disappears from the news headlines.
I have no idea—is this a specifically American problem, or a problem of democracies in general? Because in democracy, the person expected to fulfill the promise is often not the person who made the promise; often it is actually their opponent. Solving a problem by making a promise gives you political points, keeping a promise made by your opponent does not. Do other democracies have a better track record?
I vaguely remember a BuzzFeed series “inside the secret international court that …” or something. One of the things I picked up from it is that this is a problem democratic regimes can face when taking over from horrifying dictators. The sequence (according to my memory of what the articles said) is something like:
Horrifying dictator signs agreement with Western company to build him a ridiculous vanity project costing significant amount of country’s GDP.
Gets overthrown.
New regime decides that the vanity project won’t be needed after all.
Company is like, but you (as a country) made a deal with us. We’ve committed funds to this vanity project. (I don’t remember but wouldn’t be surprised at: if you rescind now you’ll trigger a bunch of break clauses, that no sane regime would have agreed to in the first place but horrifying dictators maybe don’t even bother to read.)
There’s a court that gets to enforce things like this, at penalty of exclusion from significant parts of the international monetary system, or something.
Court treats new regime as continuous with old regime, enforces agreements signed by horrifying dictator.
You don’t even need a horrifying dictator. Suppose that Trump decides to build a huge wall on the border with Mexico, and signs (in the name of the government) a 20 years project with some construction company to build that wall. Then Biden wins… but he is still required to keep paying the money to the construction company. Hypothetically, imagine that the contract is so expensive that it does not leave Biden enough money to pay for his programs—the things that people who elected him want.
In some sense, a “long-term contract” and “democracy” are in contradiction. Democracy assumes that every 4 years you can change the government. Long-term contracts mean that despite doing that, in certain aspects you remain de facto governed by the old government (or pay the penalties specified in the contract, which may be insanely big).
Not sure what this all means… You can’t have democracy without breaking promises?
Or maybe we need a new mechanism for long-term promises? For example, you can create a fund, as a legal entity separate from the government, put some amount of money there, and provide an algorithm such as “every year, if the condition X is met, send Y of this fund’s money to South Korea, otherwise return all the money to US government and disband this fund”. But you cannot contractually make the future governments put more money into this fund. So it is clear to everyone that the fund operates with a limited budget. (And maybe, if the future governments decide so, they can put more money into the fund. But they are in no way required to do so.)
In 2013, US sanctioned Belarus. Belarus notified US that US broke Budapest Memorandum. US replied it didn’t (what?), because sanctions are for human rights, and not designed to subordinate etc.
The US claim is that it did not sanction Belarus in order to secure its own advantage. At face value that claim looks plausible: it seems like they have a plausible case that Belarus leadership is suppressing dissent and running fraudulent elections, this does seem to be a major motivation for US conduct, and sanctions do look like they were targeted at offending officials. If that claim is true it seems like US behavior is compatible with the text of the memorandum (at least the parts quoted here).
I feel like I’d have to dig into this more to have an actual view because it’s very easy for people to have a plausible story even if they are behaving quite badly. But this comment didn’t help me see why this should be considered an absurd reply.
US didn’t deliver heavy oil because Congress didn’t fund it. What were they thinking?! To North Korea, non-proliferation promise was directly linked to delivery of heavy oil.
I wasn’t able to quickly substantiate this claim; I’d be interested in a link to some kind of discussion of the background. E.g. what was the actual content of the promise and then what happened? Your description of this situation is different from my understanding, but my understanding is super rough and comes from US sources (which focus on late deliveries of oil, e.g. delivering the last of the 2017 oil in December instead of October, though my sense is that the first year was rougher than that) and so I’d be quite interested in checking out a clear and reasonably-substantiated account of the bad behavior.
That’s astonishing, if the text of the Budapest Memorandum actually reads
refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the signatory of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind
then the US sanctioning Belarus in 2013 really was violating it first. ‘secure advantages of any kind’ leaves no wiggle room for even a ‘human rights’ argument. Especially since it wasn’t even cleared through the UN first.
I don’t understand why “secure advantages of any kind” leaves no wiggle room for a human rights argument. I think I may just not be understanding what you are saying.
I have no idea if the US argument was right, but it seems completely legitimate to argue that sanctions against government officials who are perceived to run fraudulent elections and suppress dissent are intended to protect the people of the country rather than to “secure an advantage” for the US. That feels like it has to come down to actual empirical claims about what happened rather than definitional moves. (For example, I don’t know whether sanctions were in fact mostly targeted at officials, though that seems to be the US story, and I don’t know how credible the case against Belarus was, but it doesn’t seem like anyone in this thread has addressed any of that and at face value the US case is plausible.)
A charitable (for Russia) interpretation is that USA judges human rights abuses unfairly—looking the other way when the dictator is pro-American, using sanctions when he is not. This provides an incentive for dictators to be pro-American. From that perspective, (selectively) applying sanctions against human rights abuses is just another way to increase American power.
I can totally see an objection along these lines and think that there might very well be something to it. But I don’t see why you’d call this response absurd, or think that there is “no wiggle room.”
A moral victory, or at least one side publicly claiming they have the moral high ground, is still an advantage of some kind.
If you think that implies ‘advantages of any kind’ covers an incredibly broad swath of actions, then yes, that’s the point. This is incredibly broad language for a serious document.
The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the united States of America reaffirm their commitment to the Republic of Belarus, in accordance with the Principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate their own interest the exercise by the Republic of Belarus of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus secure advantages of any kind.
VI. Non-intervention in internal affairs The participating States will refrain from any intervention, direct or indirect, individual or collective, in the internal or external affairs falling within the domestic jurisdiction of another participating State, regardless of their mutual relations.
They will accordingly refrain from any form of armed intervention or threat of such intervention against another participating State.
They will likewise in all circumstances refrain from any other act of military, or of political, economic or other coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by another participating State of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
Accordingly, they will, inter alia, refrain from direct or indirect assistance to terrorist activities, or to subversive or other activities directed towards the violent overthrow of the regime of another participating State.
I would like to comment on Budapest Memorandum technicality. You probably already know this since you conceded Russia has a point, but other readers may not. The following is trying to be a neutral summary.
In 1994, in return for Belarus and Ukraine giving up nuclear weapons and joining NPT, US promised to “refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the signatory of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind”.
In 2013, US sanctioned Belarus. Belarus notified US that US broke Budapest Memorandum. US replied it didn’t (what?), because sanctions are for human rights, and not designed to subordinate etc.
In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea.
I am not sure what US was thinking in 2013. If US thought Budapest Memorandum was at all valuable, they should have paused and thought twice about it. Given their frankly absurd reply, I think they didn’t consider it valuable.
I live in South Korea, so my specialty (I am not at all special in South Korea, but that immediately makes me an expert in the global internet) is North Korea. US and North Korea reached an agreement called Agreed Framework (done in Geneva, so better known as Geneva Agreement in South Korea) in 1994. (See the pattern? 1994 was an important year.)
In return for North Korea dismantling nuclear reactors in Nyongbyon and remaining in NPT, US promised to deliver 500,000 tons of heavy oil every year to North Korea for energy production, until non-proliferating nuclear power plant is completed, since North Korea insisted nuclear reactors were for energy production, and there was even some truth to it. North Korea was severely deficient in electricity.
US didn’t deliver heavy oil because Congress didn’t fund it. What were they thinking?! To North Korea, non-proliferation promise was directly linked to delivery of heavy oil.
In 2002, president Bush declared North Korea an Axis of Evil, and the agreement formally broke down.
I see a pattern here. I consider US-Iran relation to be similar. When US makes a deal with another country to join or to remain in NPT, they are willing to promise a lot. Once the deal is done, US does not keep its promise. It’s almost as if US thinks it does not need to keep its promise, since another country should have remained in NPT anyway! US seems to think, why should I pay for it? I must scream now: US must pay for it, because US agreed to. In faith whereof the undersigned plenipotentiaries etc.
I have a recommendation to US. Keep your words. Do not sanction if you promised not to sanction. Do deliver heavy oil if you promised to deliver heavy oil. It’s not that difficult. Thank you.
I agree. I wouldn’t trust USA to keep their promises after something disappears from the news headlines.
I have no idea—is this a specifically American problem, or a problem of democracies in general? Because in democracy, the person expected to fulfill the promise is often not the person who made the promise; often it is actually their opponent. Solving a problem by making a promise gives you political points, keeping a promise made by your opponent does not. Do other democracies have a better track record?
I vaguely remember a BuzzFeed series “inside the secret international court that …” or something. One of the things I picked up from it is that this is a problem democratic regimes can face when taking over from horrifying dictators. The sequence (according to my memory of what the articles said) is something like:
Horrifying dictator signs agreement with Western company to build him a ridiculous vanity project costing significant amount of country’s GDP.
Gets overthrown.
New regime decides that the vanity project won’t be needed after all.
Company is like, but you (as a country) made a deal with us. We’ve committed funds to this vanity project. (I don’t remember but wouldn’t be surprised at: if you rescind now you’ll trigger a bunch of break clauses, that no sane regime would have agreed to in the first place but horrifying dictators maybe don’t even bother to read.)
There’s a court that gets to enforce things like this, at penalty of exclusion from significant parts of the international monetary system, or something.
Court treats new regime as continuous with old regime, enforces agreements signed by horrifying dictator.
You don’t even need a horrifying dictator. Suppose that Trump decides to build a huge wall on the border with Mexico, and signs (in the name of the government) a 20 years project with some construction company to build that wall. Then Biden wins… but he is still required to keep paying the money to the construction company. Hypothetically, imagine that the contract is so expensive that it does not leave Biden enough money to pay for his programs—the things that people who elected him want.
In some sense, a “long-term contract” and “democracy” are in contradiction. Democracy assumes that every 4 years you can change the government. Long-term contracts mean that despite doing that, in certain aspects you remain de facto governed by the old government (or pay the penalties specified in the contract, which may be insanely big).
Not sure what this all means… You can’t have democracy without breaking promises?
Or maybe we need a new mechanism for long-term promises? For example, you can create a fund, as a legal entity separate from the government, put some amount of money there, and provide an algorithm such as “every year, if the condition X is met, send Y of this fund’s money to South Korea, otherwise return all the money to US government and disband this fund”. But you cannot contractually make the future governments put more money into this fund. So it is clear to everyone that the fund operates with a limited budget. (And maybe, if the future governments decide so, they can put more money into the fund. But they are in no way required to do so.)
The US claim is that it did not sanction Belarus in order to secure its own advantage. At face value that claim looks plausible: it seems like they have a plausible case that Belarus leadership is suppressing dissent and running fraudulent elections, this does seem to be a major motivation for US conduct, and sanctions do look like they were targeted at offending officials. If that claim is true it seems like US behavior is compatible with the text of the memorandum (at least the parts quoted here).
I feel like I’d have to dig into this more to have an actual view because it’s very easy for people to have a plausible story even if they are behaving quite badly. But this comment didn’t help me see why this should be considered an absurd reply.
I wasn’t able to quickly substantiate this claim; I’d be interested in a link to some kind of discussion of the background. E.g. what was the actual content of the promise and then what happened? Your description of this situation is different from my understanding, but my understanding is super rough and comes from US sources (which focus on late deliveries of oil, e.g. delivering the last of the 2017 oil in December instead of October, though my sense is that the first year was rougher than that) and so I’d be quite interested in checking out a clear and reasonably-substantiated account of the bad behavior.
That’s astonishing, if the text of the Budapest Memorandum actually reads
then the US sanctioning Belarus in 2013 really was violating it first. ‘secure advantages of any kind’ leaves no wiggle room for even a ‘human rights’ argument. Especially since it wasn’t even cleared through the UN first.
I don’t understand why “secure advantages of any kind” leaves no wiggle room for a human rights argument. I think I may just not be understanding what you are saying.
I have no idea if the US argument was right, but it seems completely legitimate to argue that sanctions against government officials who are perceived to run fraudulent elections and suppress dissent are intended to protect the people of the country rather than to “secure an advantage” for the US. That feels like it has to come down to actual empirical claims about what happened rather than definitional moves. (For example, I don’t know whether sanctions were in fact mostly targeted at officials, though that seems to be the US story, and I don’t know how credible the case against Belarus was, but it doesn’t seem like anyone in this thread has addressed any of that and at face value the US case is plausible.)
A charitable (for Russia) interpretation is that USA judges human rights abuses unfairly—looking the other way when the dictator is pro-American, using sanctions when he is not. This provides an incentive for dictators to be pro-American. From that perspective, (selectively) applying sanctions against human rights abuses is just another way to increase American power.
I can totally see an objection along these lines and think that there might very well be something to it. But I don’t see why you’d call this response absurd, or think that there is “no wiggle room.”
A moral victory, or at least one side publicly claiming they have the moral high ground, is still an advantage of some kind.
If you think that implies ‘advantages of any kind’ covers an incredibly broad swath of actions, then yes, that’s the point. This is incredibly broad language for a serious document.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180822045920/https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%202866/Part/volume-2866-I-50069.pdf gives you the original text:
The CSCE final act says: