Theres Enough Blame to Go Around in Belarus
August 20, 2020
There are many similarities to what is happening in Minsk today to what
happened in Kiev in 2014, but there are also significant differences, writes
Joe Lauria.
U.S.-backed, violent coup in Ukraine, 2014. (Wikipedia)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
The unrest in Belarus that is threatening President Aleksandr Lukashenkos
hold on power invites comparisons with the 2014 overthrow of President
Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, another state bordering Russia (and Ukraine).
In Ukraine, there is strong evidence that the United States intervened
directly in a coup to oust the democratically-elected Yanukovych, whose
election was certified by the OSCE. For one thing, U.S. officials appeared
in the Maidan in Kiev to openly show their support for the protestors.
The then Senator John McCain addressed the crowd standing alongside Oleh
Tyahnybok, the leader of the neo-fascist party Svoboda.
Victoria Nuland, then undersecretary of state for European and Eurasian
Affairs also traveled at least three times to the square, handing out cakes
to the demonstrators with then U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt at her side.
Nuland was captured in an intercepted telephone call with Pyatt discussing
who the new Ukrainian leaders should be weeks before Yanukovychs ouster, as
they worked to midwife his overthrow. Nuland said that then Vice
President Joe Biden would play a key role in the coup.
Biden then became Obamas virtual viceroy in Ukraine.
As booty from this 19th Century-style takeover, the sitting vice presidents
son, Hunter Biden, soon got a seat on the board of Ukraines biggest gas
producer, Burisma Holdings. This can only be seen as a transparently
neocolonial maneuver to take over a country and install ones own people.
But Bidens son wasnt the only one.
A family friend of then Secretary of State John Kerry also joined Burismas
board. U.S. agricultural giant Monsanto got a Ukrainian contract soon after
the overthrow. And the first, post-coup Ukrainian finance minister was an
American citizen, a former State Department official, who was given
Ukrainian citizenship the day before she took up the post. To top this off,
Nuland said in a speech in December 2013 that the U.S. had spent $5 billion
over two decades to bring democracy to Ukraine.
All this is the equivalent of a high profile member of the Russian Duma, the
Russian ambassador to the U.S. and a Russian deputy foreign minister showing
up in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan to support the Occupy Wall Street
protests of 2011. Then a leaked phone call emerges between that minister and
the ambassador discussing who should replace Barack Obama after he was
overthrown. And afterward the Russian prime minister installs his son on an
American oil company board, a Russian foreign ministry official becomes
treasury secretary and Russia says it spent $5 billon to bring democracy
to the United States. Would Americans suspect Russia of staging a coup?
Whats Happening in Belarus
Protest in Minsk, Belarus, Aug. 16. (Maxim Shikunets/Wikimedia Commons)
In Belarus, the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, which was created to
undermine and overthrow governments the U.S. does not like, has 34 projects
running to bring democracy to the country. An array of current and former
U.S. officials have made ominous statements both before and after the Aug. 9
presidential election, won by Lukashenko with 80.1 percent of the vote.
On the day after the election, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: As
friends of Belarus, we support Belarusian independence and sovereignty, as
well as the aspirations of the Belarusian people for a democratic,
prosperous future.
Biden, now poised to challenge Donald Trump for the White House in November,
wrote: My administration will never shy away from standing up for
democratic principles and human rights, and we will work with our democratic
allies and partners to speak with one voice in demanding these rights be
respected. The European Union agreed to impose sanctions on Belarusian
officials.
The U.S. certainly wants to pry Belarus away from the Russian orbit as it
did in Ukraine to put more pressure on Moscow. There can be little doubt
that the U.S. is meddling in Belarus. Pompeo showed how important Belarus
is to the U.S. in February by making the first visit to the country by a
U.S. secretary of state in decades.
He offered U.S. oil sales, which Belarus purchased after Russia cut the
subsidies on Russian oil when Lukashenko continued to delay an agreed upon
political union between the two countries. The U.S. also formalized
relations with Minsk and nominated an ambassador in April.
The Differences
Despite this, there are significant differences between what happened in
Ukraine in 2014 and what is happening so far in Belarus.
U.S. officials have not yet openly intervened by appearing in person with
the protestors to egg them on. The nominated U.S. ambassador, Julie Fisher,
faced confirmation hearings only two weeks ago and said: What we are
trying to get done is basically to ensure that there is space, to ensure
there is space for more than one voice in this country.
Julie Fisher (Wikimedia Commons)
Lacking a leaked telephone call it is difficult to know what the U.S. may be
up to covertly.
Unlike in Ukraine, there are no influential neofascist groups in Belarus.
Another difference is that Lukashenko is not Yanukovych. The latter won the
presidency in 2010 in an election declared free and fair by the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The process was transparent
and offered voters a genuine choice between candidates representing diverse
political views, the OSCE reported.
Lukashenko is in power for 26 years, having won elections since 1994 by
around 80 percent, with international election observers voicing strong
concern.
It is important to point this out. One can acknowledge U.S. meddling and
regime change efforts as well as the undemocratic nature of the targeted
leader at the same time. They do not negate each other. In other words even
the worst leader does not justify the U.S. or anyone else interfering in the
internal affairs of a sovereign state (a pillar of the UN Charter).
Lukashenkos blatant authoritarianism has created a varied and legitimate
protest movement that a carpetbagging U.S. is likely trying to manage
towards its own ends, such as bringing Belarus into the neoliberal West, if
not into NATO one day, whether Belarusians want that or not.
Russia, which has not had the best relationship with Lukashenko, is clear
about the West butting out.
Some Protestors Share the Blame Too
By chanting pro-Western slogans, some protestors are tainting their demands
by associating themselves with the U.S. and handing Lukashenko a reason to
crush them. Lukashenkos authoritarianism is also handing the U.S. an
excuse to interfere, claiming it is bringing democracy to Belarus, though
democracy has never really mattered much to Washington.
Post-war America has overthrown more democratically-elected leaders than
dictators. That in itself puts the lie to spreading democracy. The first
CIA coup in Syria in 1949 overthrew an elected leader for a military
government. Four years later in Iran the U.S. carried out a reversal of
1776overthrowing a democratically chosen prime minister, Mohammad
Mossadegh, to install a king back to the throne.
Mohammad Mossadegh. (Wikimedia)
Mohammad Mossadegh. (Wikimedia)
(A new document released in time for Wednesdays 67th anniversary of the
Iran coup, shows that Britain led the operation. The Truman administration
refused to join it, believing that Mossadegh would not allow communists to
takeover, as Britain was arguing. Only after the election of Dwight
Eisenhower and his appointment of Allen Dulles as CIA director in February
1953 did the U.S. take part in the coup six months later.)
The following year the U.S. toppled the reformer Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala
to put in place a military junta, just as the CIA did in Chile in 1973,
ousting the democratically elected socialist Salvador Allende to put in
place the fascist Augusto Pinochet.
Everybody Plays the Game
Though it will probably never change, I dont entirely agree with what
former British diplomat Craig Murray wrote in an article republished today
on Consortium News. He draws the line on foreign meddling at assassination
and coup détat, but accepts the game diplomats play interfering in the
domestic politics of the nation to which they have been sent.
He admits to having done so himself.
A higher standard should be called for. Whatever happens in Belarus should
be entirely up to the Belarusian people. A people cannot be independent any
other way.