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Lukashenko is showing he's willing to go to great lengths to silence opposition and free press completely in Belarus. Arresting opposition party leaders before

• Waterluvian 5y ago
  I suspect the U.S. is already responsible for making this behaviour more common. Can certainly try to make up for it, but I think great damage has been done.
  • sthnblllII 5y ago
    You dont make up for being a brutal expansionist empire by being a "kinder gentler" expansionist empire. Until there is regime change in the US nothing it does will be good for anyone but its own ruling class.
• paiute 5y ago
  They/we could start by removing the fisa courts.
• pydry 5y ago
  >The USA, in my opinion, should show leadership and step in to make it clear that such affront against democracy The US is rarely interested in affronts against democracy unless there's a geopolitical advantage to be had by leveraging it. From a practical standpoint, US interventions almost always make things worse for the people who live there, and in a lot of cases less democratic.
  • kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    The US only intervenes if a rich American has a profit motive that benefits them. Standing up for the Bosnians was the last rare instance where this wasn't the case. Selling bombs to both sides to maintain perpetual conflict is the usual favorite play.
    • dnautics 5y ago
      The US intervenes in plenty of places where there is no profit motive outside of the standard military industrial complex. I think, for example, it's hard to argue that there was a profit motive in somalia, or bombing that pharmaceuticals factory in the sudan, going back further and getting out of africa, Grenada, e.g. Not that these interventions weren't stupid for other reasons.
      • pydry 5y ago
        Not sure about Sudan but Somalia is a key shipping chokepoint. There very much is a profit motive there.
        • sthnblllII 5y ago
          Then why did piracy spike after the US intervention?
          • pydry 5y ago
            I didn't say it was a success. The US is no stranger to strategic military intervention that costs lives and money and achieves nothing very substantial - from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan.
• croes 5y ago
  The US is not the world police. Maybe should start with their ally Saudi Arabia first to dispel any doubts, it was not about democracy. Raif Badawi is still imprisoned.
  • Ericson2314 5y ago
    Maybe the US is world american-style police? :D
  • ethbr0 5y ago
    Anything involving the Saudis is in fact an adjustment of the world economic petro-dollar system. The US and Saudis both have a very large gun to each other's heads... so that's a pretty constrained situation. It will be curious to see what happens in the next 10+ years as oil-as-energy demand begins to wane.
    • sthnblllII 5y ago
      >The US and Saudis both have a very large gun to each other's heads Thats just not true. Saudi family rule over Arabia is predicated on US support. If all SA oil production stopped it would not topple the US government. If the US decided to back a political opposition like it did in Syria the Saudi regime would implode in days.
      • jessaustin 5y ago
        Saud family have a lot in the bank, so they could hire someone else if USA politics got rid of their lobbyists who control much of Congress. Are they so weak that they would simply collapse without USA support? I would think they could just hire e.g. some ex-Pakistani military to keep the populace cowed. Or do you mean to say that USA could easily replace the regime with a different, more-favored one? How did that work in Syria? We're withdrawing from Afghanistan now, and at this time Taliban control more territory than they held in 2001. USA military is a bit of a paper tiger, when it comes to achieving results via military action.
        • deleted 5y ago
• bosswipe 5y ago
  It's sad that USA has been seen as the international beacon for freedom and the defender of democracy for so many international struggles but USA has abdicated this role after it was abused by greed and the CIA so many times. Now isolationist voices have gained power domestically. We could have been the super heroes for freedom and democracy that the world needed. Being viewed that way was a big part of our super power's soft power and our loss of it is a big win for China and Russia.
  • splithalf 5y ago
    Soft power and American exceptionalism; like apple pie with ice cream, always somehow greater than the sum of the parts. The reality is that our soft power is moderated (mediated?) by the narratives exported by the couple of big media companies that dominate our airwaves (and thoughts.) These narratives have intentionally not, worked to undermine American soft power while promoting the soft power of international organizations like the WHO. Any discussion of soft power that omits the media is hopelessly incomplete. The soft power is being reallocated by our elites, because it was their power to begin with.
    • bosswipe 5y ago
      We created the WHO and the UN out of an idealism and optimism that derived from an honest belief after WWII that we were the good guys that were going to use our power to spread freedom and democracy. That idealism is what gave us the power. That's why so many popular struggles around the world have used the statue of liberty as a symbol for the society they want to create.
• splithalf 5y ago
  “great powers don't care enough to defend democratic rights anywhere outside their own borders” Could they not draw the same conclusion from our very pro trade friendly policies toward for example China?
• hourislate 5y ago
  Can you imagine the pressure he is under, knowing full well that Russia stands ready to take the entire country if the possibility of a Pro Europe/Pro Western Party was elected. You don't have to look back too far to see what lies on the horizon, Ukraine was a perfect example of that. Unfortunately Europe (France and Germany mainly)/West (USA) has shown that they are more interested in maintaining a business relationship with Russia than defended against their aggression. They won't even support none aggression treaties they were all a party to. Is Lukashenko a dictator, for sure, but he is in an impossible situation. The Russians are making sure of that and as long as Western Governments show an indifference to the sovereignty of countries like Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, etc there is no way forward.
  • ivan_gammel 5y ago
    He is in impossible situation not because of Russia, but because of corrupt and violent regime he created. Majority of population in Belarus is pro-Russian, so the alliance between countries would persist after the transition of power (see Armenia, Kyrgyzstan for recent examples of how this works). His personal risks are loss of all assets and the fact that the new government will likely demand his extradition from Russia for criminal investigation. Probably the only reason why Lukashenko is still there is that Russia will not revoke its support until there are signs that opposition wins.
• zpeti 5y ago
  > Poland and Hungary (not to mention Turkey a bit further away) are already leaning dangerously close to the kinds of abuse of power only seen in dictatorships Please show me examples in Poland or Hungary of opposition voices being silenced or arrested. The worst that has happened is withdrawing government financing or grants to entities that aren’t pro government. That’s not exactly a dictatorship. In Hungary almost all the online press is anti government. No one gets arrested. Their are 5 opposition parties now uniting against government, no one is silenced. Yes the state TV is pro government. But this is not unique to Poland or Hungary. In fact I’d argue the pinnacle of state TV, the BBC is very much leaning to one side of the political isle right now too.
  • thih9 5y ago
    > Please show me examples in Poland or Hungary of opposition voices being silenced or arrested. Some examples for Poland that I'm aware of: - August 2020 mass arrest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2020_LGBT_protests_in_Poland#7_August_mass_arrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2020_LGBT_protests_in_P... - Poland’s constitutional court not a “tribunal established by law”, rules ECHR: https://notesfrompoland.com/2021/05/07/polands-constitutional-court-not-a-tribunal-established-by-law-rules-echr/ https://notesfrompoland.com/2021/05/07/polands-constitutiona... Sure, the situation seems not as bad as in Belarus, but still it looks bad.
  • e3k 5y ago
    really? Népszabadság, the biggest printed newspaper was bought and closed by government/its allies. origo.hu and index.hu, the biggest Hungarian online portals was also bought, and converted to progovernment outlets.
• TravelnSalesman 5y ago
  > The USA, in my opinion, should show leadership and step in to make it clear that such affront against democracy on a neighbour of its closest allies The USA showed leadership when it contrived a situation where the president of Bolivia's plane was made to land in Austria, to search for someone who leaked to journalists that the US government was monitoring virtually all domestic phone calls, texts, Internet connections etc. Leadership in an affront against democracy, as you put it.
• parsimo2010 5y ago
  It is not normal to interfere in the affairs of other sovereign nations unless one of the affected nations requests help. And even then the other nations have a lot of additional considerations beyond doing anything but making a sternly worded speech. Most of the time when the USA inserts itself into other affairs people complain about the USA being a bully and sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong. The EU needs to craft a strong response to this by itself or lose a lot of credibility on the world stage. Edit: just to clarify, some of the USA’s other considerations would be the risk of getting called out for being a hypocrite- it has done a few shady extraditions in the past.
  • 0x426577617265 5y ago
    So true. Both Greece and Lithuania are EU members. Part of the EU mission is to provide freedom & security for the members. So here we are, do something.
    • belatw 5y ago
      Ireland is also involved in this. All three entities are members of the eu, Greece and Lithuania are in NATO and Ireland is a “partner” of NATO.
• supergirl 5y ago
  The USA did exactly this themselves. they forced landed Bolivia's presidential airplane in Austria thinking Snowden is on board. Also, the USA is hunting down the likes of Snowden and Assange. So Belarus is following the lead