Belarus: A Catalyst for Regime Change and the Peace Alternative
Opposition elements in Belarus have long planned to use the September 9
presidential election as a catalyst for regime change, and thanks to broad
and genuine discontent with president Lukashenko, they might just succeed.
by Roger D. Harris
September 09th, 2020
By Roger D. Harris
Back in the 1970s, the left, and even many liberals, were clear that Nixons
dropping of napalm on Vietnamese villages was an abomination. By the 1990s,
some thought Bill Clintons bombing of Yugoslavia was, perhaps,
humanitarian. Fast forward to the present, there is a sentiment that the US
has a global responsibility to protect the less enlightened lands in the
name of democracy. Some on the liberal-left fail to recognize the fallacy
of what Jean Bricmont exposes as humanitarian imperialism using human
rights to sell war.
In response to a peace organization advocating no foreign intervention in
the internal affairs of Belarus, a US commentator protested:
[T]here has been no US intervention in the country. Theres nothing wrong,
intrinsically, with external support of democracy. Your support for someone
who seems like a bloody dictator is dismaying.
So, several inevitable questions arise. What is a dictator? Has there been
foreign intervention in Belarus? Who has the right to intervene? And does
advocating non-intervention implicitly support a presumptive dictator?
A catalyst for regime change
Opposition elements in Belarus had long planned to use the September 9
presidential election as a catalyst for regime change. Their main base is
with upwardly mobile white-collar professionals. However, they would have
not been able to rally the tens of thousands of demonstrators had there not
been broad and genuine discontent with President Alexander Lukashenko.
Elements of the opposition leadership in Belarus are partly financed by the
European Union and the US and reflect those political interests. They have
adopted the red and white flag, flown during the Nazi occupation. Their
Resuscitation Reform Package, modeled after a nearly identical program for
Ukraine, calls for the complete neoliberal privatization of the economy and
an alignment with the NATO west.
Exit polls, conducted by the opposition, were cited to claim gross electoral
fraud with Lukashenko garnering only 3% of the vote. Other observers
accepted that Lukashenko won a majority but not by the official count of
80%. Golos, a pro-opposition election monitoring organization using data
collected by US-backed youth organizations, reported Lukashenko winning with
61.7%.
BBC News laments that the election in Belarus had no independent observers
invited. Yet there was an election observation delegation from the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which reported the August 9
election was open and competitive and ensured that Belarus citizens could
freely express their will. But the CIS report did not have the kind
conclusion or independence sought by the BBC, itself a quasi-governmental
corporation of the British state and funded by a mandatory state levy.
The voices of political tendencies and parties in Belarus and elsewhere in
Europe that consider themselves socialist or communist, but are critical of
their home governments, are excluded by western media. Even leftish outlets
such as Democracy Now! follow the flag repeating the US/NATO regime change
narrative, without providing alternative views. DN! laments the massive
crackdown on any kind of independent reporting in Belarus, while serving as
an information gatekeeper in the homeland of the empire.
Objectively, no one authoritatively knows the real outcome of the vote.
Definitions of a dictator
Being unelected or fraudulently elected is not the only definition of a
dictator. The functional definition for the US government is a leader
disloyal to the empire.
Washington considers the democratically elected President of Venezuela
Nicolás Maduro a dictator. While Juan Guaidó, who proclaimed himself
president of Venezuela on a Caracas street corner and was immediately
recognized by the US government, is considered a legitimate head of state.
Lukashenko Mohammed bin Rashid
Lukashenko, pictured left, with US ally and absolute monarch, Mohammed bin
Rashid of the UAE. Photo | WAM
The monarch of Saudi Arabia is considered legitimate by Washington, even
though the ruling House of Saud does not even bother to conduct sham
elections. This is a country where women do not have basic rights, where
slavery is practiced, and where those who run afoul with the law are
routinely beheaded. But Saudi Arabia is the largest purchaser of US military
equipment in the world, eclipsing the next contender by a factor of 2.6. So,
the Saudi monarch is not on the official US list of dictators.
Then there are the leaders chosen and installed by the US after coups, such
as Ukraine in 2014. There, the US literally handpicked the post-coup leader
for Ukraine from a rogues gallery of neo-Nazis.
Intervention in Belarus by the West
The US does not have boots on the ground in Belarus and, so far, has
refrained from drone attacks on funerals or wedding parties. Despite this
praiseworthy restraint by the worlds sole superpower, it would be wrong to
assume that the US is not intervening in Belarus. A US hybrid warfare
program has been in effect since at least 2004 when the US passed the
Belarus Democracy Act creating anti-government NGOs in Belarus and
prohibiting loans.
Belarus is under unilateral US sanctions, illegal under international law,
but justified by a presidential declaration, which bogusly claims a
national emergency because Belarus constitute[s] an unusual and
extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the
United States.
The USAID, the above-ground face of the CIA, states in Orwellian language
the US regime change plans for Belarus:
[P]romote the emergence of a
market-oriented Belarus
USAID works
to
stimulate the countrys transition to a market-based economy through
programs that support
private business.
Such is the imperial mindset that the US brazenly takes upon itself to
transition a supposedly sovereign state into a neoliberal dependency.
The website of the quasi-governmental National Endowment for Democracy
(NED), a CIA cutout, lists some three dozen current projects in Belarus for
what are euphemistically called strengthening independent online media,
civil society, culture, and public discourse. NEDs years of hard work were
on display in the media sophistication of the opposition in Belarus.
The runner-up in the Belarus presidential election with 10% of the official
vote, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, fled to Lithuania, where she met with US
Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun. Although self-described as
apolitical with no prior political experience, she proclaimed herself ready
to lead Belarus. Indeed the 37-year-old has all the qualifications for a
puppet president, being photogenic and speaking English. On September 4, she
addressed the UN Security Council calling for punishing sanctions on her own
people.
The European Union is playing an even more overt role in promoting regime
change in Belarus and is planning to extend sanctions. The openly
anti-Semitic government of Poland, with which Belarus shares a border, has
an irredentist interest in recovering portions of the country which were
once part of a Polish empire.
The Russian legacy
Belarus was a Soviet republic, which did not become a sovereign country
until 1990 after the breakup of the USSR. Belarus has strong historical and
cultural affinities with its Russian neighbor to the east. Some 70% of
Belarusians speak Russian at home. In 2000, Belarus and Russia established
the Union State, a supranational confederation for economic integration and
common defense.
The US and the European Union yearn to use the color revolution in Belarus
to complete the military occupation of Russias western border. Belarus is
the last piece in that puzzle now that Latvia and Estonia are in the NATO
camp and Ukraine is on its way.
Russias involvement has largely been in reaction to this hostile military
encirclement. Escalation of tensions only motivates Russia to be more
defensive. The best antidote to Russian intrusion is détente rather than a
new cold war. Besides, the government that the US peace movement can best
influence is its own.
The current impasse in Belarus
The color revolution in Belarus is now stalled and the opposing forces
appear to be stalemated. Without getting into a debate over Lukashenko, the
salient question is how the working people of Belarus can best determine
their destiny.
The opposition claims Lukashenkos 26-year rule of Belarus has degenerated
with questionable elections, mismanagement, and corruption. But the cure
could be worse than the disease, as in the case of Libya, especially if it
is left up to the tender mercies of the US empire to dictate the new
democratic leader and the form of government to follow.
Belarus has enjoyed a low level of unemployment, public housing, almost no
homelessness, and accessible and affordable healthcare and education. These
social welfare factors compare favorably to the harsh neoliberal austerity
and civil disintegration of its neighbors, now drawn into the NATO bloc. The
critical issue is how can the Belarusians defend their gains in a
contentious international milieu.
Tony Kevin, the former Australian ambassador to Poland, sums up the current
impasse:
Belarus is at risk, because in the Lukashenko political twilight there is
confusion and fear: the people have lost their ideological moorings, and
there is no coherent national vision as was recovered in Russia under
Vladimir Putin starting in 2000. Belarusians hopefully are coming to see
the danger they will be in if they depose Lukashenko without knowing what
comes after.
Regardless of what the security forces might do, Lukashenko could easily be
deposed if the workers in the major industrial enterprises went on a wildcat
strike. Some discontented workers have walked off their jobs, but a majority
look to the cautionary examples of the turncoat Solidarity in Poland, the
sellout Yeltsin in Russia, and the neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
In those and other examples, state enterprises were sold off at bargain
basement prices to new oligarchs and western financiers. Factory equipment
was ransacked, work forces drastically downsized, and labor rights
abrogated. Absent the specter of another US-backed coup like in Ukraine with
its severe neoliberal austerity, Lukashenko would likely have been history.
The peace alternative
The principle of non-intervention is enshrined in the UN Charter. There is
no unilateral right to intervene into the internal affairs of another
sovereign state. The greatest violator of this fundamental international law
is the worlds sole superpower. The consequence, according to the late
Uruguayan political analyst Eduardo Galeano has been: Every time the US
saves a country, it converts it into either an insane asylum or a
cemetery.
A non-interventionist stance should not be confused with an endorsement of
Lukashenko. Opposing US/NATO interventionism is no more an endorsement of
Lukashenko than opposing the invasion of Iraq was an endorsement of Saddam
Hussein. Belarus needs more than the binary choice of Lukashenko and the
failed Ukrainian option. To have that space requires no foreign intervention
in Belarus.
For those of us in the US, that means keeping our own government from
fishing in troubled waters and letting the people of Belarus decide. They
have the power and dont need to be told what democracy looks like by those
of us who will choose between Trump or Biden in November.
