Belarus held a parliamentary election last week and nobody in America paid any attention. In fact, Belarus rarely registers a blip on our radars, except to serve as a punch line, as it did when John McCain chastised his adviser Phil Gramm after calling us a "nation of whiners" and that the former senator "would be in serious consideration for ambassador to Belarus, although I am not sure that the citizens of Minsk would welcome that". All ribbing aside, should Belarus matter to Americans? That is, should we be doing more to reach out to a country Secretary Condoleezza Rice once described as "Europe's last dictatorship"? The answer is a no-brainer: Yes. And there are signs Belarus may be pulling out of its post-Soviet hibernation, or at least recalibrating its pro-Russia orientation. Among the positive signs: Belarus' erratic...
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