The European Union's ideas about aiding democracy movements are all wrong.

VILNIUS, Lithuania—The Belarusian opposition leaders who drove 90 minutes from Minsk to huddle here late last month for 48 hours of political strategizing were sure of just two things: Upon returning from their weekend getaway, the KGB would be paying them a visit. And, no matter what, come fall 2006, when President Alexander Lukashenko is all but certain to "win" a third five-year term, democracy will remain a distant hope.

To quote Lenin: What is to be done?

The United States and the Eastern Europeans, particularly the Lithuanians, understand the only way to change Belarus is to fight Lukashenko—to aid the opposition, to discourage investment in the country, to do everything short of arming an insurgency. The Western Europeans, the so-called Old Europeans—the Europeans who think that Slobodan Milosevic deserves his day in court and that the Iranian mullahs can be talked out of building a nuclear bomb—have yet to figure this out.

For a bit of guidance, they ought to pay attention to the activists who came here, to the Karolina Hotel, on the periphery of this cobblestoned, snow-capped city that embodies freedom in the former Soviet Union. The Belarusians' mission was clear: to agree on a nominating process that would culminate in the selection of a presidential candidate to challenge Lukashenko.

Progress was made. The opposition leaders, who range from socialists to supply-siders and whose only common denominator is faith in free elections, agreed that a series of low-profile caucuses would give the eventual nominee legitimacy without generating too much attention. The plan is to be finalized later this month. In September, the reformers hope to hold a convention in Kiev, Ukraine.

But none of this, by itself, can change the facts on the ground.

For now, Lukashenko has near-total power. There is hardly any independent media or private sector. There are no obvious opposition candidates to challenge the president. And unlike former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, who could be sensitive to world opinion, Lukashenko garners strength from flouting it.

Even Western European diplomats—always patient, always touting "intergovernmental dialogues" and "cultural exchanges," always frowning (or smirking) at Americans who don't seem to grasp the "complexities" of international relations—concede that Belarus is becoming more closed. "The more Lukashenko is afraid of Western influence, the more difficult it has become," one European diplomat with experience in the former Soviet Union told me.

True, Russian President Vladimir Putin isn't particularly fond of Lukashenko, who is widely regarded as untethered to reality and who retains the power to shut down pipelines pumping oil from Russia through Belarus to central Europe. But in the wake of the Ukrainian uprising and fears that Russia is losing its grip on the "near abroad," Putin is unlikely to do anything to compromise Lukashenko. If nothing else, the former collective farmer and confidant of Saddam Hussein is an enemy of the West.

So what can Westerners do to help Belarusians achieve their own revolution—the kind of bloodless, bottom-up sea change that swept Serbia, and then Georgia, and then, of course, Ukraine?