The battle for Belarus

How many times have we heard since the start of the Ukraine crisis that every nation has the sovereign right to choose its allies? U.S. Vice President Joe Biden most recently said it at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 7. The argument in the case of Ukraine was that it was Viktor Yanukovych, and not the Ukrainian people, who chose Russia, so it was legitimate to remove the president in a coup one year ago. The same argument, at least indirectly, is being used in the case of Armenia and Belarus. Those two countries made their choice. They chose their allies. They signed treaties for acceding to the Eurasian Economic Union last year, and they became members on Jan. 1 and Jan. 2 of this year. Yet at the foreign-policy meeting at the Castle last week, Czech leaders issued a statement that included Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus as countries to be included in an EU free-trade zone. Is this a battle the Czechs really want to fight?