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May 21, 2021 - 10:35am
It doesn’t seem all that long ago that we were reading about the protests in central Minsk after the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko won reelection for the umpteenth time under dubious circumstances. For a week, maybe even a little more, the press carried images of crowds demanding the resignation of the strongman with a combover, and then…. well, the situation in “Europe’s last dictatorship” fell off the radar somewhat.
What happened? Well, the bad guys won. All the stern op-eds in the world mean little when you can pass laws allowing police to shoot protestors. But what other lessons does Lukashenko’s survival have for fellow strongmen looking to extend their reigns in the face of mass unrest?
1. Never acknowledge your opponents have even the tiniest atom of a point. A weaker leader confronted with large crowds demanding change might be tempted to waver, acknowledge their frustrations, and offer to listen. Not Lukashenko, who, along with his next-door neighbour Vladimir Putin, comes from the Millwall F.C. school of leadership, that is to say they are guided by the principle of “no-one likes us we don’t care.” Of course, one might assume that even the most hardcore of Millwall supporters back in the day liked each other at least a little bit, but the crucial thing was that they did not care about what outsiders thought of them. Thus, Lukashenko makes no concessions to the claims of liberals, democrats or foreign governments; in fact, it serves his interests that they all read from the same message sheet as he can accuse the opposition of being in cahoots with external forces, and thus not representative of Belarusian society.
2. Make sure you have the local heavy in your corner. Up yours attitude notwithstanding, even the likes of Lukashenko might struggle to sustain so uncompromising a stance if he did not have backing from some serious hard men both at home and abroad. Fortunately for him, he can rely not only on his own security forces, but also on his frenemy Putin to virulently oppose any attempt by the EU or US to impose their values on or exercise influence over Russia’s “near abroad”. That said, it’s not much fun being a little bully backed by a big bully, and not just from the lack of self-respect it induces. Putin’s help doesn’t come for free, and he immediately pushed for the otherwise friendless Lukashenko to submit to closer ties with the far larger Russian state.
3. Always remember that the West is highly unlikely to go beyond a few symbolic gestures. Russian and Belarusian elites are accustomed to being insulted, sanctioned and placed on various blacklists and no doubt this is a bit annoying, but they are also pretty good at getting around the rules. In addition, Lukashenko is obviously aware that he presides over a land of farms and forests, 25% of which was heavily contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster, so he has nothing anybody really wants (except perhaps Putin). Cosmic indifference on the part of the US et al provides further insurance against the threat of regime change. And so he carries on dictating.
Daniel Kalder is an author based in Texas. Previously, he spent ten years living in the former Soviet bloc. His latest book, Dictator Literature, is published by Oneworld. He also writes on Substack: Thus Spake Daniel Kalder.
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SubscribeUnfortunately, point 3 is the most important, and correct one.
“remember that the West is highly unlikely to go beyond a few symbolic gestures.”
Good. None of our business.
And anyway, what you going to do? Actually maybe the Dems could sent their A Team over to help Lukashenko’s opponent get creative at the polls, worked in USA.
Yea, well the self loathing of the Western leaders, and their system of making the citizens self loathing too, is not much prettier a sight. There can be no doubt the Western leaders from JFK and Harold Wilson forward have been out to destroy their own nations through institutional ‘Self Harm’.
sooooo
JFK/Macmillan – – LBJ/Wilson – – Nixon/Heath – – Ford/Wilson – – Reagan/Thatcher – – Bush/Major – – Clinton/Blair – – Bush/Brown – – Obama/Cameron. They make a great set of couples, but what a lineup of looses as the Heads of the Free world (except for Reagan/Thatcher) AND NOW ****** Biden/Boris!!!!!! whooho.
There is definitely a kind of Synchronicity in which person UK and USA select.
Daniel seems a little snide in writing: “Lukashenko is obviously aware that he presides over a land of farms and forests, 25% of which was heavily contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster, so he has nothing anybody really wants.” It is also a natural trans-shipment route for pipelines and like Ukraine, makes a lot of money from trans-shipment fees. If you just look at the raw data, it is the 69th economy in the world in 2021 according to IMF GDP on a PPP basis estimates, ahead of EU members Slovakia (70th) and Bulgaria (73rd). I never followed those events closely, but I was a little surprised that Lukashenko did survive the attempts to oust him. Follow the link to read how Bad Vlad has supposedly tightened the vice on Lukashenko and it seems Lukashenko has been reasonably successful in maintaining Belarusan autonomy. Whatever happens, when Lukashenko goes, the NATO idiots should never ever try to get Belarus to join their alliance. We have seen what such efforts did for Georgia and Ukraine.
It’s interesting to contrast how quickly and vehemently Western politicians and media have denounced the arrest of Roman Protasevich with their rather muted and belated responses to the USA’s ‘extraordinary renditions’, or to the forcing down of Evo Morales’ plane because Edward Snowden was thought to be a passenger – with which many European governments actively colluded by denying it entry to their airspace.
ProtestErs
Belarus is to Russia is as North Korea is to China, except for the nuclear weapons.
Why don’t we just recognise that the history of continental ‘Europe’ (both east and west) has been largely the history of this type of Government, which seems to suit ‘Europeans’, since they keep on choosing it?
Odd ‘liberal’ episodes aside, it will always be the same. The only thing that changes is the man in the military uniform (Hitler, De Gaulle, Franco, etc. etc. etc.)