The international community will do exactly NOTHING, as always. Hundreds of people have been tortured in Belarus by a crazy dictator, and nobody actually gives a shit. The only thing they can do is to say how “worrying this situation is”. Leaders without the balls. Maniacs like Lukashenko and Putin will do whatever they want while the only reaction is talking.
> international community will do exactly NOTHING, as always. Hundreds of people have been tortured in Belarus by a crazy dictator
There is a huge difference between diverting an international flight and terrorising one’s own citizens. The latter is a humanitarian crisis. The former is a threat to me and my family. That’s a material difference.
At the very least, Belarusian air space and air access rights should be curtailed. It would also be reasonable to scramble NATO assets to protect those airways.
Russia would not permit NATO to control Belarusian air space. Despite some recent strained relations, Russia would see such a move against Belarus as a move against Russia. The western world's love of "no fly zones" only works with the weakest of opponents that have few friends. This isn't Iraq or Libya, this is Russia's front porch. This type of saber rattling is the type that starts act hot wars.
> Russia would not permit NATO to control Belarusian air space
Nobody proposed NATO air dominance over Belarus. What I proposed is restricting international flights through Belarusian ATZ, denying Belarusian flights international overfly, escorting international flights that get close to Belarus with armed NATO platforms and denying neighbouring airspace to Belarusian armed platforms.
Russia is becoming increasingly irrelevant and powerless. The economy is tiny for it's size and Europe has been reducing its dependence on Russian natural gas.
That also makes me worried, because they're a nuclear nation and when someone is cornered or has nothing left to lose they can become seriously dangerous.
They're waiting for climate change to kick in in earnest and free the northern passage. Then I guess they can act like rentiers and charge shipping for using it.
Other than that as long as Putin stays in power nothing will ever change. Maybe the next czar will be more progressive. Who knows.
Is there anyone willing to try them? I don't think so. We will see some new sanctions and that's all. There were strong words about Russian occupation of Crimea - who really cares about it now? There will be some sanctions and we will forget about this act of terrorism in few weeks, unless they decide to kill that poor guy, maybe then we will see some additional sanctions. And honestly I have no idea what more could anyone do within current geopolitical landscape.
Ryan Air should stop all flights in and out of Belarus until this guy is released and go somewhere where he is free. Then some other companies could follow their lead.
What do you want them to do? Do you think people anywhere are willing to go to ( potentially nuclear ) war over Belarus? And even if there's a war, ans the "good guys" win, how does that guarantee that things will be better than before, and won't devolve into chaos and civil war, like they did in Iraq or Lybia?
I want them to freeze bank accounts and immovables of the Belarusian establishment, including the most powerful elites.
Look at Putin - doesn't matter what he does, his retinue does what they want. They are enjoying super-yachts, parking them without any issues in European ports, their kids are still “almost gods” and do whatever they want.
The western world gratefully takes the money from dictatorship regimes, and they don't give a shit where money comes from.
While it happens, dictators will not stop. As soon as dictators lose their establishment support, they’ll be overthrown.
All of the “sanctions” are so ridiculous, that it looks like these sanctions were made to calm down the own citizens, not to stop this devastating money flow.
Yeah basically those wars have shown that unless the locals want democracy and you are willing to suppress all rebellion with an iron fist (like USA in Japan) then as soon as you leave, if you even win, it will go back to the way it was before just under a new dictator. It just seems like some societies just don't care if they're run by a dictator. Sure some will rise up but it's usually no more than a few percent.
1945 is probably a good counterexample. If Hitler had kept his regime and genocide locally and not invaded neighbours, there would be no WW2, everybody would let him do that.
Just like in Cambodia, or Rwanda, or North Korea, or many, many other examples - as a rule, the world does not intervene with violent regime change just because a regime is abusing their people. Like, nobody in power batted an eye when Saddam gassed Kurds in his territory, intervention happened only when he invaded Kuwait. I'm not even sure if I have seen a single exception in 20th-21st century history; it feels like humanitarian aspects have been only used as a pretext or justification if there were other politic/economic reasons that mattered more than that.
What about Libya, Syria, etc? IMHO none of these are examples where the world intervened with violent regime change just because a regime was abusing their people.
Libya 2011 was a civil war/revolution, the "boots on the ground" were locals, western nations weren't willing to risk their own soldiers in an actual intervention and it's highly debatable whether the civilian abuse was ever a reason for the western support (aerial and otherwise), IMHO it was essentially about oil.
Syria is again a good counterexample - Assad's totalitarian suppression of human rights and torture of opposition was notorious and one of the triggers for the uprising in 2011, but noone considered an intervention before 2011 or at that time for these reasons - Assad's regime is a clear demonstration that no, the world is not going to intervene just because your police is e.g. literally pulling fingernails off highschoolers who have been reported as criticizing the regime. The west was ready to intervene only a few years later in 2014, when the civil war had already raged for years and again it seems to have been done for entirely different reasons e.g. Islamic State, geopolitical tug-of-war with Russia and, again, oil - those things matter for likelihood of intervention, unlike just abusing your civilians.
Afghanistan and Vietnam are obviously irrelevant, IMHO noone is seriously asserting that preventing regime atrocities against their own people was the main driver for these wars, other reasons were clearly dominant there.
So in my view all those are just examples that the world is not going to do anything serious just because a dictator is murdering or torturing internal opposition. They may invade for various other reasons, and they may opportunistically support one side or the other once some conflict or revolt is already happening (war doesn't seem as horrible if it's all done by someone else's people fighting and suffering), but as long as the totalitarian state is in control, nobody is going to come and bust the oppressed out of their prisons just to help them.
Boots on the ground is an incredibly narrow interpretation of what constitutes intervention, especially with modern warfare tactics that rely on local organizing, arms supply, air support and very few actual boots on the ground. If your original comment had been "rarely does the int'l community put boots on the ground for solely humanitarian reasons", I think it would have been more defensible.
I don't think the evidence is there to support that Libya was "essentially about oil." There is evidence for that possibly being a major motivation for France, but that was only one of multiple large players in the intervention. Libya was invaded with UN security council authorization pretty explicitly focused on humanitarian concerns.
Your timeline on Syria is wrong. Sure, much more extensive intervention began against ISIL in 2014, but there was support for early rebel forces in Syria starting in 2012.
I'll trust the friend I have from Belarus, along with videos and reporting I've seen from Minsk, that this was in fact a wannabe dictator kidnapping his political opponent by forcing down an international flight.
.. so unless you think that I must not be allowed to express my opinion, because the only Russians allowed to express their opinions here would be Navalnyi followers and the like, bear with me.
Well, if you support a gangster wannabe KGB agent like Putin, you're certainly in the wrong. But go ahead and express yourself. Welcome to American free expression.
What about forcing the plane of the Bolivian president to land in 2013; what that justified? Lukashenko is doing what "international community" did then -- trying to catch an inconvenient person that the state cannot legally reach otherwise.
I am not claiming that such things should be left with no response. In fact, I suspect this might hasten Lukashenko's downfall (quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi), but he is just taking a page from the "western civilization" playbook. My 2c.
If we're trying to set up international norms, it kinda seems relevant to what those norms are. Are we distinguishing between those two events or are they equally illegal? What should the punishment be?
