Expert explained why Belarus suspended its participation in CFE Treaty

The draft law of the Republic of Belarus on the suspension of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) was adopted at first reading during the first session of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the eighth convocation. In his talk with Alfa Radio, Vadim Yelfimov, the Head of the Social Policy and Ideology Department at the Academy of Public Administration under the aegis of the President of Belarus, explained why our country was forced to react this way.

“Belarus was one of the last to take such a step. Russia has already withdrew from the CFE Treaty. This fact signals our angelic patience and goodwill, as well as our desire to preserve the security architecture in Europe. This agreement was signed back in the 1980s, when the Warsaw Pact and NATO existed. With its dismantling, the CFE Treaty lost all meaning. Nevertheless, of our own free will, we adhered to the same parameters, although the countries that were previously part of the Warsaw Pact had already joined NATO – nonsense. All the advantages were on the side of the North Atlantic Alliance, but they decided to abandon this agreement. They did not fulfil it, which clearly indicated their aggressive plans. Meanwhile, we wanted to preserve a platform or an opportunity for at least some kind of dialogue, from which we could move to more or less interaction,” the expert asserted. “Anyway, this last legal hypostasis was also destroyed by NATO members. So why should we keep what they don’t need? From the point of view of common sense, we should have abandoned this treaty long ago, because it maintained an absolutely unequal ratio of conventional armed forces in Europe.”

Mr. Yelfimov also explained what the violation of all norms of documents related to security and regulation of the armed forces leads to from a global perspective. After all, new documents are not expected to replace these in Europe...

“The new document won’t appear, because another strategic line is being pursued now. US President Joe Biden says that they are moving away from laws and start using their own rules; the same applies to the EU and NATO. They will live according to their own concepts now. They will come up with some rules – not fixed anywhere and not agreed with anyone. They want to live according to the principle – ‘we do what we want to do’ – and fix it as a certain norm. We won’t agree to this in any case. Moreover, this is done in order to clear the last legal deterrents for the very aggression that they are carrying out nowadays,” summed up the expert.