Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 13 – Alyaksandr Lukashenka
and his regime have maintained themselves in power via the cultivation and dissemination
of three specters, all of which are intended to frighten Belarusians into
passive support. But “this practice has ceased to produce the desired fruits,”
Pavel Usov says; and “the specters may become real nightmares” there.
The three specters are revolution,
civil war, and Russian expansion. The Belarusian people are afraid of all
three, but what matters in the current context is that they appear to becoming
less afraid of such outcomes even as the Lukashenka regime becomes more afraid
of what it thought it could use but finds it can’t (belaruspartisan.org/politic/373380/).
But instead of
backing away from the use of such specters, the regime as the economic
situation has continued to deteriorate has doubled down on all of them,
something that the Belarusian analyst suggests makes these specters less
frightening then they were and instead simply feeds the growing anger of the
population.
And that pattern carries within
itself a most serious risk: “None of the citizens of [Belarus] want a
repetition of the tragic scenario in Ukraine in 2014.” Indeed, they do not want
any outburst of force. But the regime by its actions and propaganda may be
pushing people in precisely that direction, Usov says.
“Civil war is an armed conflict
among citizens of one state. But as a rule, it is the result of longstanding
socio-economic and political contradictions and conflicts … which are in
essence a cold civil war. In such a conflict, the population doesn’t take up
arms, but residents of the country already fight one another with the help of
other kinds of weapons including ideology, propaganda, information and political
pressure.”
According to Usdov, in such
conflicts, “the key player is the authoritarian state” because in such states “the
war of the state with its own citizens never ends.” Belarus tragically is “a clear example of
such a country where over the curse of many years, internal conflict has grown
intentionally and artificially.” Such a society is easier to rule, at least up
to a point.
The current government is “actively involved
in a war with society,” and the society has responded with all the kinds of
passive aggressive behavior, some of it like alcoholism self-destructive. “Every day in the country there have been
victims of this undeclared civil war, but few write about them and in practice
few know about them.”
What that means is that Belarusians
have been participants in a cold civil war for a long time; and they are thus
in a position to move into a move active phase of such a conflict more quickly
and dramatically than many might suspect, especially if the regime instead of
seeking to find a common language with them becomes ever more insulting as with
the vagrants tax decree.
Unfortunately, Usov says, history
suggests that authoritarian regimes like Lukashenka’s are typically “politically
irresponsible and prefer to solve problems with force.” But that means that “revolution
becomes the natural end of the life cycle of such authorities.” And it means
that the more the regime resists a popular challenge, the more destructive will
be the consequences of revolution.
“A moment is coming,” the Belarusian
analyst says, “when the state will already be incapable of fulfill its control
functions and the tensions which have been building up for many years will come
out into the public sphere in the force of a destructive explosion.” When that
happens, it is critically important to remember who is to blame.
Not the Belarusians which have put
up with more than anyone should have to; but Lukashenka who has governed irresponsibly
out of the belief that he can run things forever by using one or more of the three
specters he continues to like to deploy.
No comments:
Post a Comment