Obviously. I’ve also heard that, when you have been rejected for a US visa, you cannot fly from Canada to Latin America, because you cannot fly over the US.
Would the fighter have shot down the airliner if it hadn't complied? Seems like enforcement options are quite limited for such fast-moving, fragile vehicles.
The pilot must have had a range of options. Some of them might have risked the shooting of the plane. Others might have stalled, embarassed and/or documented this attack by Belarusian forces.
I had a formative experience regarding the game of chicken years ago. It might look very much off topic at first sight, but please read on and decide for yourself.
When I was in secondary school, bored teenagers repeatedly threatened local school bombings, causing the repeated evacuation of several schools. Never the one I went to school at. I later learned why from my father, a teacher at the school. The school did receive bomb threats just like the others. The school head did warn the police. After a short discussion with them, he firmly and politely informed them that our school would not be evacuated, and that was that. He was - and is, at 87- a quiet and soft spoken man, a well respected member of society, but definitely not afraid of a game of chicken.
I think your example is very apropos, but people won't just go voluntarily "die on a hill" without support.
My guess would be that the gentleman running the school in your example was widely respected and had a solid relationship with his appointing authority (school board, upstream executive, etc) -- they had his back.
Does Ryanair offer that type of confidence to pilots as commanders of their aircraft?
Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (also known as KAL007 and KE007)[note 2] was a scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, Alaska. On September 1, 1983, the South Korean airliner servicing the flight was shot down by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor. The Boeing 747 airliner was en route from Anchorage to Seoul, but due to a navigational mistake made by the KAL crew the airliner deviated from its original planned route and flew through Soviet prohibited airspace about the time of a U.S. aerial reconnaissance mission. The Soviet Air Forces treated the unidentified aircraft as an intruding U.S. spy plane, and destroyed it with air-to-air missiles, after firing warning shots which were likely not seen by the KAL pilots.[2] The Korean airliner eventually crashed in the sea near Moneron Island west of Sakhalin in the Sea of Japan. All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Larry McDonald, a United States Representative from Georgia. The Soviets found the wreckage under the sea on September 15, and found the flight recorders in October, but this information was kept secret until 1993.
I wonder how they even knew who was no board... Are airlines forced to share the passenger list with every country they fly over? That's news to me, and seems like an unacceptable intrusion of privacy...
The journalist was being followed by Belarussian KGB agents in Athens, and they boarded the flight with him. They didn't need passenger information from the airline.
what was the basis and the motive for ally countries unilaterally not to allow the plane to land? If the motives are not different, then the fighter jet could be seen as a similar "technical reason" in this case too.
Mental gymnastic you are doing there. Spain and France denied the airspace, meaning the flight couldn't gone through either of them. There is no "not to allow the plane to land". In fact an airplane calling emergency has priority to land anywhere, regardless of the political difference with the host country.
On this topic, this happened with a flight from a US's air base in Afghanistan, rerouted to Iran because of a "bureaucratic issue":
Quite contrary, I'm asking for the basis and the motive of denying one specific flight with one specific individual on board a routine procedure of air travel, something that was allowed to hundreds of other flights on that same day. "landing" vs "airspace" is a non-essential detail here, and depending on the context of a situation, either could be denied to achieve the desired goal. I'm asking about the motives of the goal.
It was US pressure obviously, for which the countries apologized. It was an asshole move by the US but this is on another level, it involves foreign civilians, KGB agents, fake bomb threats and fighter jets
it didn't even "have" to land in austtria, they landed there because it was easy. They probably had fuel enough to land in any one of a ton of other countries if they so chose.
No, they certainly didn't have to land in Austria. But somehow, god knows why, certain countries closed their airspace for that specific plane. I'm inclined to belive that more countries would suddenly close their airspace too if plane chose not to land in Austria but to go to some country where Snowden won't be in danger of being arrested - France, Spain, Portugal and Italy are hardly the only one that would bow under US pressure.
Don't you see the difference? US pressured France and Spain to deny their airspace, but landing in Vienna was pilot's call. The pilot could have returned to Russia if they wanted. They erred on the caution side, and they were greeted by Austria's president. So shady, but not illegal, compared to for example the poisoning of Russia's dissidents by FSB.
What do you think would happen if Ryanair's pilot refuse to cooperate with Belarus's request?
One was tricked into grounding, the other was forced shrug
In both cases it was to detain somebody doing an act of public service on behalf of their country - an act treated as criminal. This is the important part.
Right, so forced and tricked aren't that much different in your book.
Passengers on the Bolivia's flight were at no point in danger. They could have picked another country, Russia or Russia-friendly one to land. Can you say the same with Ryannair's ones? Did they have the choice?
What would France and Spain have done if Bolivia's jet entered their airspace? I'm betting it would have involved fighter jets. That threat is why denying someone entry into your airspace is possible. Well, that and ground-to-air missiles. There's no need to exhibit force if it is already understood that force will by applied if you do not cooperate.
I wasn't trying to draw an ethical distinction, but if I were this wouldn't be the defining attribute of an action that constitutes "better". They're both reprehensible.
I would agree, but the problem is that such sanctions hurt the population the most. This is not a good choice in dictatorships as the population has no choice who to vote for. The regime top clique will keep eating well off smuggled imports, while the general population will starve.
Pressure to stop pulling this kind of bs if they want to remain a viable economy in Europe.
Honestly, I wish the next step would be for NATO to step in and restore the country to a legitimate government. Between this, Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine, China, Israel, the world has been way too conivent with the destruction of democracy.
Sanctions only achieve that if they punish the illegitimate government (hopefully without punishing the rest of the population). Being tough for the sake of being tough without having a clear model for what leverage you’re getting is just political posturing.
Belarus is in military alliance with Russia (Collective Security Treaty Organization). Any military action against Belarus will be met with Russian army defending its territory.
Also I think that the more sanctions are put from West to Belarus, the closer it gets to become another Russia state. I'm not sure if that's the outcome West wants to see.
Belarus was within its bounds. They did not shoot aircraft, they released aircraft and all EU citizens shortly afterwards, they have legal reasons to do so (which was likely fabricated, but one can't prove that). It's a bad accident, but it's not a war.
I’m appalled. Just because they didn’t kill anyone (yet, as one passenger is on their way to the firing squad) this should be fine?
This is plain and simple hijacking of an international flight and not “within bounds” at all. Laws are to be followed in principle, not just technical merit, these are not computer games.
Yeah, you have such a great legacy when defending democracy all over the world even in cases where you were absolutely dominant military power that this one would be walk in a park - Russia would just stand down, peacefully looking NATO invading its ally on its doorstep. Fortunately no-one in NATO has such illusions.
>if they want to remain a viable economy in Europe.
About half of Belarus's trade is with Russia. All this would accomplish is making it 90%+ and deepen ties with Russia. Might as well suggest having Russia annex Belarus as a response to the situation.
> This is not a good choice in dictatorships as the population has no choice who to vote for.
The population voted for the opposition candidate, took to the streets when the results were rigged, but had no leaders willing to escalate the confrontation when the state had its pants down. The dictator has buckled his pants and has gradually reduced the opposition to posting memes in Telegram chats. And even this activity is no longer safe.
> but had no leaders willing to escalate the confrontation when the state had its pants down
Are we talking about military leaders who support the current dictator? What could the leaders of the opposition have done to escalate the confrontation further?
I know what I will write will sound like I don’t have any empathy but… hitting population hard, to the starvation even, will make them go after Lukashenko. This is why communism in Poland was defeated by the workers. They had no bread so they had to rise. Again, I would like to underline that this is not a solution that I support but history showed us this is how u make a revolution and real change
That's the point, to rile up the population so much that the regime must either cave to whatever is being demanded of them or face an uprising.
Will it work? Very iffy - often the only thing worse than an autocratic regime is whatever fills the power vacuum its fall creates. Disorderly transfers of power are bad business.
It's easy to call for a Hail Mary strategy from afar. Protest is becoming more common[1], but protests that successfully topple regimes remain rare.
I could swear I saw recent research indicating that the fraction of protest movements that lead to regime change has fallen over time, but I can't find it now.
Ultimately it's the people's responsibility to form a functional government that doesn't abuse it's neighbors or fellow citizens. Punishing the entire country is punishing the responsible party. If they have little power at this point to fix it at this point it's their fault for arriving at this point and they may need to pay the long term cost in blood for letting it get that bad.
- Drop official relations to the regime in any capacity. Diplomatic, economic, sports. Exclude it from membership in any organization where Russia has no veto right.
- Recognize Tsikhanouskaya government as interim government in exile. Insist that this government is the official venue for any engagement (exports, imports, sport event participation).
- Ban all regime officials in all branches from entry.
Tsikhanouskaya has no government and cannot be recognized as a legitimate president, only as opposition leader. There are only indications that she may have got popular vote, but until there are free and transparent elections it is only a rumor - not enough for recognition by democratic standards.
In this role the only topic that can be discussed with her is the peaceful transition of power and organization of new elections - until they happen, there is no recognized government and no negotiation party.
Active non-recognition can be a good option here: since there is no recognized government, in all applicable cases (events, elections in international organizations etc) it shall be decided that Belarus abstained from vote or was absent. Membership and contractual payments from Belarus can be rejected and considered not happening, resulting in suspensions, sanctions and cancellations and so on and so on.
Tsikhanuskaya has a competent skeletal crew that can be built into a government, that's just a technicality. And yes it absolutely can get recognized; historically governments were recognized with less. If democratic process is your only yardstick for recognition of world governments, I have bad news about a lot of places that are none the less recognized.
It is a matter of political will, which is the only thing that is practically lacking.
This won’t be an acceptable solution for EU. The core value of our Union is the rule of law and we must stick to it, taking the legalistic approach even if constraints of it feel too strong. The rule of law is currently being undermined by Russia and its satellites, exploiting every misstep of Western governments to demonstrate the internal weakness of our democracy. Lowering the bar would mean accepting their game, where laws can be bent and serve only as a formal coverup of lawless actions of the rulers.
EU member states have little problem recognizing regimes like Sisi's, post-crackdowns Iran or indeed Lukashenka's own right until the last summer. Neither of these recently were outcomes of democratic processes with statements from the monitoring institutions acknowledging that. There's hardly a room to lower the bar anymore.
It is hard to see requiring an alternative candidate (whose persecution blew up the country) register a victory in increasingly totalitarian place as anything but deflection. Bailing out on technicality.
Russia has military bases and radar installations in Belarus. What are you planning to do about them? Have NATO shoot down Russian aircraft over Belarus?
Ah, I meant from allied states. You'd probably refuse entry to planes that went directly Belarus airspace -> Russian airspace -> allied airspace as well, but you don't have the ability to deny Belarus airspace -> Russia airspace.
Poland is apparently really mad about this, and given that Ukraine is currently at war with Russia you can probably get them on board. Just those two are a pretty good "wall". Maybe add in a few states blocking northern routes (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia), or not as effectively (Germany, Denmark, Sweden) and they're really isolated from everything apart from Russia.
Anyways, idle speculation, I'm definitely not an expert on this type of politics. I'm sure that in reality a move like this would have all sorts of consequences that I can't predict.
Did you say the same thing when US downed a diplomatic flight by Bolivian president in 2013? Honestly, did you say this is not allowed to stand? To down a presidents plane in Vienna just because US thought Snowden was on that flight? Answer truthfully.
I thought this should not stand yes. Not sure if I said so publicly at the time. I was less active on fora.
PS: I am a Snowden supporter though :) I think he did us a great service. I'm not American but he exposed the extent to which our details are shared with US intelligence agencies.
This is literally not a whatabout since we are discussing the same actions here, forcing an airplane down and breaking international laws, norms and traditions.
Let us try to decide if some of the posters here are hypocrites or not.
Whataboutism, also known as whataboutery, is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument.
Disproving an argument is not a prerequisite for exposing hypocrisy, these acts can be done separately. And if the other party doesn't address the accusation of hypocrisy there might not be a need for disproving the argument to them, as their position might be politically motivated and not aimed at resolving the issue in principle.
in this case, it is more akin to Charles Manson condemning Shoko Asahara for cult activity, and dismissing his "then why are you doing it?" as "whataboutism".
It is important to know whether the condemning party applies the same standards to their own activities, because there's no possibility of resolving the issue at hand without both parties applying the same principles and standards on everyone, including themselves. And dismissing the significance of this knowledge as "whataboutism" is short-sighted, because it's the tool of establishing standards of morality, and it gives a hint to third parties about the nature of their neighbours involved in the dispute.
That is what the term means in popular culture, but what are the implications?
In practice it means that the side who accuses first (currently mostly SJWs) gets to speak and attack others while using "whataboutism" as a shield to shut up their opponents.
Too much on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand to be definitive. He concludes that every example of a centrist democrat doing whataboutism is fine and every example of anyone else doing it as not fine. I'm sure that will convince lots of centrist democrats. The very idea of having a Donald-vs-Bill sexual-assault contest without even mentioning Tara Reade says all we need to know about this person's judgment. To be fair, the first sentence does that too.
Cool. Well you just wasted at least ten minutes of your life thinking about something that I posted disingenuously in order to demonstrate that whataboutism is about distraction rather than have me trying to stay on topic and directly address your points. In a meta way I suppose I did.
I skimmed it and disagreed with it. Generally, if you can't win an argument based on logic, and then emotional appeals, then you can fall back on jurisdiction. You can attack the other person's credibility (you have no jurisdiction), proclaim that no resolution is possible, the world is too complex (we don't have jurisdiction), or as I now realize whataboutism means this is the right jurisdiction, but nothing you said matters because we're arguing the wrong topic. So yeah, whataboutism is the argument of last resort. Ergo, the one used by people who don't have a good argument.
I certainly denounced it, but also keep in mind that the president's plane was not "downed" in nearly the same fashion. Nobody forced the plane to land in any particular spot, and (if you believe Morales) no one searched the plane.
So let's be clear. The US didn't "down" anyone -- the US does not have jurisdiction over any of the airspace in question:
> The day after his TV interview, Morales's Dassault Falcon 900, carrying him back to Bolivia from Russia, took off from Vnukovo Airport, but was rerouted to Austria when France, Spain, Portugal and Italy[2] reportedly denied access to their airspace, allegedly due to suspicions that Snowden was on board.
I'm sure the US applied diplomatic pressure, but those countries are all developed, rich economies who were perfectly capable of saying no and preserving their sovereignty. It was done with full consent of the countries in question.
Evo Morales' plane wasn't grounded by anybody; they chose to land, with a suspiciously convenient reason. Given Evo Morales whole anti-imperialist persona, and how he hyped his support for Snowden (appearing to consider offering Snowden asylum on a public TV interview just a day before, to hammer it home), and the fact that it's not even really clear which countries actually denied access to their airspace (the Bolivian account is disputed), and that nobody forced the plane to land or even requested it to, you kind of have to conclude that this was a political stunt by Evo Morales.
To put it this was: the US and it's allies were played for fools, highlighting their unreasonableness. But in no way shape or form is this similar to the current situations in anything but the most superficial sense.
That however, is not true; the air traffic control in Belarus directed them to land in Belarus; and scrambled fighter jets to intimidate them into compliance.
A kidnapping is not the same thing as denying entry; nor are the victims equally reasonable even if the crime were - a civilian plane vs. that of a diplomat that wanted to pick exactly this fight.
That was a direct order from the self proclaimed president. The plane was 10 min away from Vilnius airport but the fighter jet was closer. Do you understand the difference? And btw there is a high chance the journalist will be executed.
Forget politics, let's turn to normal people. Illicit actions of criminals justify the use of policing force on them in all countries of the world.
The actions are the same: coercion through force, basically. In one case they are wrong (criminal), in other case they are good and justified by wrong actions (policing).
First Freedom of the Air: the right or privilege, in respect of scheduled international air services, granted by one State to another State or States to fly across its territory without landing (also known as a First Freedom Right).
Accurate. Country of Origin is basis in this case which is Greece. Adequate response would be to indefinitely bar all Belarusian originating flights from traveling through any signatory's airspace.
However, this most likely only furthers the goals of the current Belarusian administration for the population there. Enforced strictly, to include diplomatic flights, it may cause measurable change.
Cannot be allowed to stand by whom? Everyone else is too busy silencing proper journalists, in what world are we where you actually think there is a country that stands for 'free speech'? Speech that's against the status quo gets silenced, just cus you buy everything the MSM sells doesn't mean the rest of the world has to. People need to travel(or explore different perspectives if possible) more or at least stop spreading ignorance.
It wasn't practical for MH17 to fly around the Donbass either but it would have prevented a terrible tragedy.
And there flights weren't even officially targeted. This flight was intercepted by an armed military jet. From there it can quickly escalate in the event of a misunderstanding.
For the sanction to really bite, would need to block not just air travel, but people. Otherwise diplomats from Belarus could just fly to e.g. Russia first, and from there to wherever they were going.
No, it's certainly not. If the bomb threat wasn't real (and I would definitely doubt that it was) that's a violation of the Convention on International Civil Aviation, Art. 5.
I assume a Ryanair flight would also have had a lot of citizens of NATO countries on-board. I wonder what would have happened if it were a US flagged carrier.
My point was that Ireland relies on being surrounded by NATO countries but doesn't contribute anything to the costs of protecting their own airspace. TBF, it is making noises about maybe getting some fast jets at some point.
What is a neutral country? The flight started from Greece (NATO country) was going to Lithuania (NATO country) and the plane is registered in Poland (NATO country).
I think the dictatorship killed him. The pilots just made an unfortunate decision that was understandable given the lack of information and fighter jet on their wing.
Not sure why there is so much talk about death penalty - according to other sources these is 3 to 5 years of prison at max.
That's of cause if the law doesn't change just for this guy in next few weeks.
> Belta, the state-owned news agency in Belarus, said Mr Lukashenko had personally given the order for the plane to land at Minsk following the bomb alert, and that a MiG-29 fighter jet had been despatched to accompany the Ryanair plane.
Lukashenko is showing he's willing to go to great lengths to silence opposition and free press completely in Belarus. Arresting opposition party leaders before elections for made-up accusations is par for the course in Belarus... but now he has been doing the same not only to his enemies, but to any newsagency that dares to as much as hint at criticizing his brutal regime, as he's just done with tut.by[1], the now former largest independent news portal in the country.
The EU has shown no determination to put a brake on Lukashenko's abuses and has been completely passive so far on the matter.
The USA, in my opinion, should show leadership and step in to make it clear that such affront against democracy on a neighbour of its closest allies will not be tolerated. Poland and Hungary (not to mention Turkey a bit further away) are already leaning dangerously close to the kinds of abuse of power only seen in dictatorships, and letting Belarus get away with this international provocation will just make it even more clear that the great powers don't care enough to defend democratic rights anywhere outside their own borders, and they are free to go ahead with their own crackdowns on freedom of expression and disregard of human rights.
I suspect the U.S. is already responsible for making this behaviour more common. Can certainly try to make up for it, but I think great damage has been done.
You dont make up for being a brutal expansionist empire by being a "kinder gentler" expansionist empire. Until there is regime change in the US nothing it does will be good for anyone but its own ruling class.
The US only intervenes if a rich American has a profit motive that benefits them. Standing up for the Bosnians was the last rare instance where this wasn't the case. Selling bombs to both sides to maintain perpetual conflict is the usual favorite play.
The US intervenes in plenty of places where there is no profit motive outside of the standard military industrial complex. I think, for example, it's hard to argue that there was a profit motive in somalia, or bombing that pharmaceuticals factory in the sudan, going back further and getting out of africa, Grenada, e.g. Not that these interventions weren't stupid for other reasons.
The US is no stranger to strategic military intervention that costs lives and money and achieves nothing very substantial - from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan.
Speaking of which - what was the profit motive in Vietnam? There was definitely geopolitical motive, but I can't imagine there was a "rich American" person or corporation calling the shots for themselves in indochina
> The US intervenes in plenty of places where there is no profit motive outside of the standard military industrial complex.
It was the cold war. I'm pretty sure the MIC could have justified so much spending in other ways besides vietnam, but we are venturing into counterfactual territory.
Thats not what happened. There was no piracy problem. Then the US toppled the government. Then there was a piracy problem. The US didnt intervene to stop a problem that didnt exist. I was responding to the claim that destabilizing the Somali government in 1993 was profitable to wealth Americans because shipping lanes are near Somalia.
>After the collapse of the Somali government and the dispersal of the Somali Navy, ... groups, using small boats, would sometimes hold vessels and crew for ransom. This grew into a lucrative trade, with large ransom payments. The pirates then began hijacking commercial vessels
Thanks for the insight, I really wasn't aware of the extent of their actions.
The quote I posted is a bit cryptic by itself. What I meant by it was that perhaps the US had plans that would lead to greater benefits for them in the region, but these plans backfired by inadvertently creating the Somali piracy problem.
They did everything right with regards to whatever they were hoping to achieve, but they still failed and then pirates happened.
Right, US stood up for Bosnians for the goodness of their hearts, not to weaken Serbs, historically Russian allies, and to signal
Turkey and middle eastern oil holders "we support your foothold in Europe".
US bombs landed on Croatian Serbs on multiple occasions thus enabling ethnic cleansing. But no biggie, what's small ethnic cleansing between NATO friends?
Almost all. I can really think of two counterexamples, Japan and Korea (and it took a very long time ~30 years? for korea to figure itself out). Maybe Jugoslavia can be put into that bin too, though it's not clear if the US intervention hurt or helped.
Setting up the Weimar Republic after WW1 didn't go so well, then the aftermath of WW2 there were decades of east+west Germany. I don't see that as a positive example of a foreign power setting up a government.
The Weimar Republic wasn't set up by the Entente and not going to war with the Soviet Union to liberate East Germany was, to put it mildly, a reasonable decision.
I have to preface this with a very emphatic the ends absolutely do not justify the means, but, defying ill repute and near-unanimous pessimism, Iraq seems to have been able to slowly stitch its parliamentary system back together and respond to democratic pressures (protests, elections) without resorting to fraud and violence. It's too early to celebrate, but things look a lot better than they did ten years ago.
> The US is rarely interested in affronts against democracy
A Mig fighter jet was dispatched to shepherd the airliner. This represents a threat to anyone on a flight through or maybe even near Belarus's airspace.
Kuwait 1990
Haiti 1994
Bosnia and Herzegovina 1995
Kosovo 1999
Colombia 2000+
Afghanistan 2001
Libya 2011
Iraq 2014
There have been a lot of catastrophic $&@$ ups and terrible ideas, but it's selective history to claim there have been no positive outcomes for the people who live there.
Just because a previous intervention was ill advised does not mean a later one was; quite the opposite; you could even consider it taking responsibility for damage caused.
It's clearly not disingenuous to include the 2014 intervention in the list of the more reasonable ones.
I mean, if you present it as somehow excusing the earlier mistake; that'd be a different issue.
You've got this exactly backwards. The invasion of Iraq was a contingent factor in the rise of ISIL. In particular Bremer's decision to disband the Iraqi regular army was incredibly stupid. The bulk of the regular army, not the republican guard, acted more as a nation wide police force than a military proper. Disbanding them meant there were now 100,000's of thousands of young men with basic military training with no more income to provide to their family. That became the recruiting pool for both the insurgency and ISIL.
I see no reason to limit discussion of the consequence of what we did in Iraq to 2014, but even then, it's not nearly as positive as what you're claiming. Iraq post 2014 is now effectively a client state of Iran, something that makes life much more dangerous for broad swaths of ordinary Iraqi citizens, as well as the region in general.
I don't think it's reasonable to argue your intervention in my house fire was successful because you used your bulldozer to clean up the rubble, if you were the arsonist that set fire to it in the first place.
If you'd like a particularly poignant "fly on the wall" style look into how ordinary Iraqi people saw the invasion in 2003, and their predictions for the future, check out Iraq in Fragments. Many of their predictions have come true in the years since. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiu8cXhjpX4
So, what do you think the international community should have done in 2014? Or are you advocating for non-intervention in what was unfolding at that point?
Are there any cases when the USA has increased democracy in the world on a lasting basis? Even within the country we see the current Republicans trying to smother democracy by denying voting rights to citizens and inciting an insurrection.
The GOP just wants people to show ID when they vote. If it's so easy to get vaccinated that anyone can do it and we should expect people to show vaccine cards to travel or go about their regular lives, people like you need to stop acting like minorities aren't smart enough to figure out how to get an ID to provide in order to vote
The Democrats want illegals to count in the census to boost their own voting power in places like California. They count for representation but can't vote. Remind you of any past compromises? Democrats always liked getting to vote on behalf of disenfranchised minorities in their state.
You need to consume news from some organization that isn't a tabloid. These organizations are tabloids: MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice, Vox, Slate, The Huffington Post
The GOP wants to check IDs because their voters are more likely to have ID. That’s the only reason. It’s not some noble effort to protect the sanctity of our elections. Illegal immigrants don’t vote.
Japan at the national level is barely democratic, the LDP has won all but one time at the national level in 50+years, and the term in which they weren't power they installed party-loyal functionaries to almost ignore the democratically elected government. A few times they did have premiers from other parties for a brief amount of time, but they never completed a term because they went against the LDP.
In Japan, a party with over 10% of the vote is surveilled as a criminal organization and it's leadership is thus being targeted 24/7 and prosecuted for anything remotely possible such as putting flyers in mailboxes, in order to disrupt the political process.
If it's a democracy, it's one of the weakest ones.
Why LDP is still strong even though it sucks (but I don't say there are any other good party) is due to single-seat constituency system that aims two-party system learned from USA. Thanks USA!
The system is now proven completely failed, but who can change the law is who benefited from the law.
> In Japan, a party with over 10% of the vote is surveilled as a criminal organization
You may refer 調査対象団体 but I can't find the 10% criteria. JCP is the only national party listed on the list for historical reason. I never heard that JCP member had prosecuted by posting mails. Other organizations are really worth to be surveilled. I don't think this is why democracy in Japan is not good.
South Korea became democratic after a revolution against the US-installed government. But even then, it's an incredibly weak democracy - every single South Korean prime minister resigned in disgrace, without any exception, after some kind of illegal action or corruption (!!!).
This is clearly the wrong question to ask if you want to determine whether interventions were merited. You need to ask: is it likely the situation would have been worse... or better had whatever specific intervention not taken place, and you need to include positive and negative consequences to at the very least the wider region, if not the entire globe.
After all, you don't blame a nurse for all their dying patients if their specialty is palliative care; the counterfactual matters.
Putin's ambitions seem like a geopolitical risk. Maybe on both sides; it seems Autocrats right now like a good 'buffer' - e.g. North Korea. Plus a new forming 'axis' vs 'democracy' power struggle
Hard to argue with the second when looking at the past 2 decades, but looking broader in the past century I think there are many more arguments the other way. Most of Europe for one.
> The US is rarely interested in affronts against democracy unless there's a geopolitical advantage to be had by leveraging it.
Who are the countries who are willing to intercede militarily purely to liberate a country?
> From a practical standpoint, US interventions almost always make things worse for the people who live there, and in a lot of cases less democratic.
I think this is a fair criticism—intercession is hard—but the question isn’t whether things are better or worse than they were, but rather whether they were better or worse than they would have been under Soviet influence. And you can analyze this as “whether or not a specific country is better or worse” as well as “whether or not the world is better or worse for the diminished soviet influence that would have been afforded by that country falling under Soviet influence”.
Soviet influence it is. Lukasenko was a party boss in USSR
Putin was KGB mafia boy.
Kravcuk, and Kucma were party bosses of state enterprises.
Aliyevs were KGB men
Shevardnaze was USSR's foreign minister
The whole of Central Asia is basically ruled by exactly the same Moscow's satraps since late eighties, with exception of wild tempered Kyrgyzstan.
Mongolia, "the 16th republic," also had communist comeback, only ended by an extreme, Norko style economic collapse.
The only country of ex-USSR where CPSU did not recapture the power outside of Baltics was Armenia, but only thanks to power going to their nazis. A medicine worse than the poison.
Which ended in 2003. I'd argue that CPSU, since 1991, has had much less internal influence in Georgia than Armenia, which is still heavily Russian-aligned. Georgia is trying to join NATO...
in Afghanistan for how long? now Taliban control more territory then they did before US came in...
Libya? way way worse, i mean its a place you can buy slaves in open markets now after US intervention...
list is huge, some places they would take out democracy to put in puppet dictatorships all in the interest of the US, they will work with Saudi Arabia and in last 5 years starve 80,000 kids to death in Yemen under 5 years.
i can only list a few countries that US intervention ended actually helping both the US and the country.
so yes USA will claim to come in to give "democracy" or what ever humanitarian excuse but its never for those reasons, its always for the interest of US and US corporations, i mean didn't the US take a country just because corporations wanted it for growing Bananas? and still to this day they are messing with them ?
I don't know how you got any of that from my comment. I'm quite explicitly not arguing in favor of interventionism, nor am I arguing that Soviets were evil. I'm making a metaargument that criticisms of US interventionism must compare US interventionism with Soviet interventionism; it's insufficient to say that US interventionism is worse than no interventionism because the latter wasn't a plausible option. So yeah, it's a shitty argument for interventionism because it's not an argument for interventionism. ;)
The US is not the world police.
Maybe should start with their ally Saudi Arabia first to dispel any doubts, it was not about democracy. Raif Badawi is still imprisoned.
>The US and Saudis both have a very large gun to each other's heads
Thats just not true. Saudi family rule over Arabia is predicated on US support. If all SA oil production stopped it would not topple the US government. If the US decided to back a political opposition like it did in Syria the Saudi regime would implode in days.
Saud family have a lot in the bank, so they could hire someone else if USA politics got rid of their lobbyists who control much of Congress. Are they so weak that they would simply collapse without USA support? I would think they could just hire e.g. some ex-Pakistani military to keep the populace cowed.
Or do you mean to say that USA could easily replace the regime with a different, more-favored one? How did that work in Syria? We're withdrawing from Afghanistan now, and at this time Taliban control more territory than they held in 2001. USA military is a bit of a paper tiger, when it comes to achieving results via military action.
It's sad that USA has been seen as the international beacon for freedom and the defender of democracy for so many international struggles but USA has abdicated this role after it was abused by greed and the CIA so many times. Now isolationist voices have gained power domestically. We could have been the super heroes for freedom and democracy that the world needed. Being viewed that way was a big part of our super power's soft power and our loss of it is a big win for China and Russia.
Soft power and American exceptionalism; like apple pie with ice cream, always somehow greater than the sum of the parts. The reality is that our soft power is moderated (mediated?) by the narratives exported by the couple of big media companies that dominate our airwaves (and thoughts.) These narratives have intentionally not, worked to undermine American soft power while promoting the soft power of international organizations like the WHO. Any discussion of soft power that omits the media is hopelessly incomplete. The soft power is being reallocated by our elites, because it was their power to begin with.
We created the WHO and the UN out of an idealism and optimism that derived from an honest belief after WWII that we were the good guys that were going to use our power to spread freedom and democracy. That idealism is what gave us the power. That's why so many popular struggles around the world have used the statue of liberty as a symbol for the society they want to create.
Can you imagine the pressure he is under, knowing full well that Russia stands ready to take the entire country if the possibility of a Pro Europe/Pro Western Party was elected. You don't have to look back too far to see what lies on the horizon, Ukraine was a perfect example of that. Unfortunately Europe (France and Germany mainly)/West (USA) has shown that they are more interested in maintaining a business relationship with Russia than defended against their aggression. They won't even support none aggression treaties they were all a party to.
Is Lukashenko a dictator, for sure, but he is in an impossible situation. The Russians are making sure of that and as long as Western Governments show an indifference to the sovereignty of countries like Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, etc there is no way forward.
He is in impossible situation not because of Russia, but because of corrupt and violent regime he created. Majority of population in Belarus is pro-Russian, so the alliance between countries would persist after the transition of power (see Armenia, Kyrgyzstan for recent examples of how this works). His personal risks are loss of all assets and the fact that the new government will likely demand his extradition from Russia for criminal investigation. Probably the only reason why Lukashenko is still there is that Russia will not revoke its support until there are signs that opposition wins.
> Poland and Hungary (not to mention Turkey a bit further away) are already leaning dangerously close to the kinds of abuse of power only seen in dictatorships
Please show me examples in Poland or Hungary of opposition voices being silenced or arrested.
The worst that has happened is withdrawing government financing or grants to entities that aren’t pro government. That’s not exactly a dictatorship.
In Hungary almost all the online press is anti government. No one gets arrested. Their are 5 opposition parties now uniting against government, no one is silenced.
Yes the state TV is pro government. But this is not unique to Poland or Hungary. In fact I’d argue the pinnacle of state TV, the BBC is very much leaning to one side of the political isle right now too.
> The USA, in my opinion, should show leadership and step in to make it clear that such affront against democracy on a neighbour of its closest allies
The USA showed leadership when it contrived a situation where the president of Bolivia's plane was made to land in Austria, to search for someone who leaked to journalists that the US government was monitoring virtually all domestic phone calls, texts, Internet connections etc.
Leadership in an affront against democracy, as you put it.
It is not normal to interfere in the affairs of other sovereign nations unless one of the affected nations requests help. And even then the other nations have a lot of additional considerations beyond doing anything but making a sternly worded speech. Most of the time when the USA inserts itself into other affairs people complain about the USA being a bully and sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong. The EU needs to craft a strong response to this by itself or lose a lot of credibility on the world stage.
Edit: just to clarify, some of the USA’s other considerations would be the risk of getting called out for being a hypocrite- it has done a few shady extraditions in the past.
So true. Both Greece and Lithuania are EU members. Part of the EU mission is to provide freedom & security for the members. So here we are, do something.
The USA did exactly this themselves. they forced landed Bolivia's presidential airplane in Austria thinking Snowden is on board. Also, the USA is hunting down the likes of Snowden and Assange. So Belarus is following the lead
Thing is the BBC article seems to depend largely on an article from a Belarus newspaper, which I doubt has undergone some mangling in translation. Can anyone knowing Russian post an accurate summary of it:
One of the last countries with existing government. Good job! The "journalist" was supporting west baked revolution to ruin and bring down this country to the level of other post soviet countries - which took this path before.
I’m wondering, what kept them from outright shooting the plane down instead of lying about a bomb on board?How would the public have found out about what happened?
NATO has very heavy radar and ELINT coverage over that area, due to proximity to Kaliningrad. An intercept and shoot down would have been observed. Since the aircraft is Polish registered, and flying from Greece to Lithuania, it would be viewed as a direct attack on NATO.
This more mild strategy worked perfectly: Lukashenko gets to execute a political threat on trumped up charges, and there's essentially zero risk of a reprisal other than further sanctions, which were going to happen anyhow.
This is one of the reasons why I wish US/NATO had taken a stronger stand vs Russia's hybrid warfare tactics.
These are interesting and good points. They also will probably torture the arrested journalist and try to get information out of him. Can’t speak if dead.
So I guess the Belarus government would try to claim whatever agreement caused this part:
>1.2.1 Pilots-in-command of civil aircraft should be aware that interception may take place in the event that military,customs or police authorities of a State:
>...
>d) suspect that an aircraft is engaged in illegal flight and/or transportation of illicit goods or persons, inconsistent withthe aims of the Chicago Convention and contrary to the laws of said State.
>...
I note there there is nothing in there about a bomb threat. So the bomb threat was likely a separate gambit that didn't work.
This seems to be quite insane either way. If an interception goes bad the result could be the destruction of the civil aircraft. Not worth the potential risk, no matter who might be on the flight.
It's probably a calculated gambit, they bet the pilot would budge and follow the fighter.
If the pilot didn't I doubt they'd actually shoot the plane down, but that's a bet that they took and won. The pilot obviously chose the safer option for himself and almost everyone onboard.
>Ms Tikhanovskaya said Mr Protasevich, 26, had left Belarus in 2019 and covered the events of the 2020 presidential election with Nexta, after which criminal charges were filed against him in Belarus.
>She said he faced the death penalty in Belarus as he has been categorised as a terrorist.
So the charges were pre-concocted. They didn't have to make any up at the last moment.
This is an incredible assault on EU right. A flight leaving EU soil, arriving to EU soil was diverted and forced to land on a country essentially ruled by a strongman, in order to arrest an opposition journalist.
Of course Lukashenko has the backing of Putin, so it is a slippery slope. I wonder how the EU will react. This is a major transgression.
> This is an incredible assault on EU right. A flight leaving EU soil, arriving to EU soil was diverted and forced to land on a country essentially ruled by a strongman, in order to arrest an opposition journalist.
Note that the EU did something similar: The forced Evo Morales to land in Vienna (on a flight from Moskow to Bolivia) because they suspected Snowden on the flight.
Not EU, but some of the EU member countries (France, Spain, Portugal and Italy). They denied flyover permission to that aircraft, causing it to divert.
Since it was heading for Bolivia it obviously had enough fuel to go back to Moscow, if needed - for instance if Snowden had actually been onboard.
The thing that happened today (faked bomb alert and landing order accompanied with a fighter jet escort) is not on the same level.
Is a window with different dressing not the same window? Does the window matter or the dressing? Belarus is clumsier than the US but the game is the same.
A threat of violence is a very large difference, I would not call that just window dressing.
Also lying (fake bomb threat) is a big difference.
It's like the difference between someone stealing your wallet, vs. letting you play some kind of street game where you don't actually have a chance of winning.
The method employed matters, it's not just about the final result.
Today's hijacking: the result was that the journalist was arrested and now may be facing the death penalty.
The denial of flyover rights to Morales' jet: there was no risk of capture to Snowden - worst case, he'd just have to back to Moscow. If he had been on the flight.
Again, if Snowden had been on the flight, they could have returned to Moscow.
Yes, there was obvious BS from Morales' pilots about uncertain fuel readings - if that had been true the actions of those EU countries saved the life of Morales and others onboard.
In addition, it was a scheduled passenger flight between two capitals of EU/NATO countries, not some private flight with special clearances. Completely unrelated civilians returning from a holiday inside the EU were taken hostage.
> A threat of violence is a very large difference, I would not call that just window dressing.
They forced the plane to land by locking all airspace around it. And yes, they would also have started fighter jets if the plane would enter the forbidden airspace.
There is a lot they could do but the question is what they are willing to do. Right now they only appear willing to "object loudly" which they know will accomplish nothing.
If they really want to get this guy released and set a deterring precedent they would start playing hardball, which could include things like:
* Deny Belarus aircraft the right transit anywhere in the EU.
* Do so while some Belarus aircraft are on the ground in the EU and don't allow them to leave. This effectively holds those planes hostage as a bargaining chip, though it's really leverage on the Belarus airlines (and the planes themselves are probably leased). But it still creates problems for the regime.
* Refuse to allow the transit of any Belarus top officials anywhere in the EU. Start expanding this list daily to include more people and their direct families and make the directive permanent until the guy is released. Once you get the spouses of a couple dozen of the top people in the regime contemplating spending the rest of their lives without Italian vacations or Parisian shopping - much less just being able to go anywhere other than Russia - you're starting to cause some hard conversations about how much making an example of this guy is really worth.
Sadly, I doubt the EU will do any of this type of stuff but barring that, there's really no incremental cost to Belarus, nothing will happen and this guy is screwed.
>Sadly, I doubt the EU will do any of this type of stuff but barring that
Yes, nothing happened after another rigged elections, Apparently around 30000 people are still detained since August, since brutally stopped protests. Nothing will happen again, but Belarus should be declared as space not safe for air transit.
I mean, Russian-employed militants in eastern Ukraine downed a civilian airliner and Russia suffered no serious consequences. Russia just denied and obfuscated.
They've poisoned people with radioactive substances on NATO soil, without serious consequences. Just denials issued.
Putin keeps calling the west's bluff. Having a nuclear arsenal seems to let you do that.
Restrictive measures include a travel ban and an asset freeze. The travel ban impedes those listed from entering or transiting through EU territories, while the asset freeze is used against the funds or economic resources of the listed persons. In addition, EU citizens and companies are forbidden from making funds available to the listed individuals and entities... Today's decision follows up on the agreement reached by the EU foreign affairs ministers at their video conference meeting on 19 November 2020. The sanctions will now apply with immediate effect... A second set of sanctions targeting Alexandr Lukashenko and 14 other officials was imposed on 6 November 2020.
I mean we can quibble about what constitutes "top officials" and the expansion is not daily - but it does exist and it is expanding.
The largest trade partners for Belarus are: Russia, Ukraine, Britain, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, China (imports), Lithuania, and Italy (imports).
The EU can severely damage the economy of Belarus by cutting off all trade and financial ties. And then work with the US to essentially destroy the country economically by cutting it off to nearly all global trade and financing. The only thing left to prop it up would be Russia and some Chinese imports; it would make Belarus a hermit state economically.
All the US has to do is say: we'll sanction any bank, corporation or person that does business with Belarus. Most will instantly capitulate, just as they did with Iran.
If the US asks Britain, Poland and Ukraine to suspend all trade ties to Belarus, they'll do it. Combine that with the EU members, and Belarus no longer functions in terms of having access to the global economy.
The downside to smashing Belarus in such a way, which would be very easy to do, is that it'll just throw Belarus into the hands of Russia entirely. Lukashenko knows that context with the West and has been playing the angles for a long time accordingly.
Start investigating about Russian high-state officials. Plenty of them have EU or US citizenship. Sometimes their relatives, but it's all from stolen money. Arrest their goods, put their money on hold, until they present proofs of their money being earned by a lawful means (those proofs will be fake, because their money are from bribes, extortions, thefts).
I'm sure that Belarus is in the same boat.
Sherlock Holmes's house in London is owned by Nazarbayev's daughter. It's so ironic.
> EU right. A flight leaving EU soil, arriving to EU soil
It's a great trick the NATO/EU expansionists have - expand NATO and the EU eastward (even though Gorbachev was promised NATO would not expand eastward). Then start harping on about EU rights in jingoistic militarism against countries in the east.
This is why the Croatian left was so unhappy about EU accession. Also contributed partly to why every region in England outside the London metro voted for Brexit.
"The Americans promised that Nato wouldn't move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War but now half of central and eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted."
People never quotes Gorbachev conclusion in that article, since he denies your denial:
"The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990. With regards to Germany, they were legally enshrined and are being observed."
https://rg.ru/2014/10/15/gorbachev.html
> Mikhail Gorbachev: The issue of "NATO expansion" was not discussed at all and did not arise in those years. I say this with all responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised it, including after the termination of the Warsaw Pact in 1991. Western leaders did not raise it either.
> Another question was discussed, which we raised: that after the unification of Germany there would be no advancement of NATO military structures and the deployment of additional armed forces of the alliance on the territory of the then GDR. In this context, Baker's statement mentioned in your question was made. Kohl and Genscher spoke about the same.
In summary: no discussion, no promises, no agreement.
You misinterpret "violation of the spirit". He hoped for better future than currently is, a future of peace and cooperation that would not need Eastern Europe clinging to NATO for security from Russia and its puppets. Ideally, NATO would've become obsolete and Russians would be enjoying the same quality of life as Germans are. The reality is much bleaker and that 1990 spirit is dead. That's what he meant.
You idea about a misinterpretation of Gorbachev's words "violation of the spirit" is contradicted by the rest of that sentence, binding the spirit to the words of the Treaty of 1990.
The very promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward is, as he says, legally enshrined in that treaty: "Foreign armed forces and nuclear weapons or their carriers will not be stationed", though only for the east "part of Germany". At that time it would have been unthinkable to discuss any further expansion of NATO.
To blatantly deny this fact is "modern-day NATO propaganda". But you are welcome to claim, that "no discussion, no promises, no agreement" about this was ever written in treaties - if you every time remember to add "except for the part about eastern Germany, where that promise is very well documented".
> At that time it would have been unthinkable to discuss any further expansion of NATO.
Exactly. It wasn't discussed, nothing was agreed upon or promised to anyone.
Most Eastern European countries that later applied for NATO to secure themselves from increasingly hostile Russia didn't even exist as countries at the time, nor did Russian Federation. It was a totally different time and suggestions of promises about NATO membership availability to Eastern Europe are an anachronism.
And there certainly no need for a "flag Western NATO troll". After all, only russians can be bad, militaristic, zealous and their patriotism must be punished by death, no less.
I would think launching fighter jets to force the landing of a passenger plane is considered an act of aggression. How will that play out with NATO, of which the origin/destination countries are a part of?
In emergency situations it is totally normal to send fighter jets, less so as killing machines, more as agile planes with pilots skilled at close-quarter flying. The fighter pilots can assess the situation, guide the pilot (perhaps with a broken radio or other trouble?) down to safety. Or if it is hijacked and aimed at a nuclear plant, probably then shoot it down. This happens everywhere.
Of course this is a very convenient coincidence here that a random emergency happens with a wanted man in board...
Not really a NATO issue, if you willingly enter another country, even it's airspace, you're agreeing to abide by their laws. Or, this this case, lack of laws. There's lots of things wrong with this, but NATO rules aren't in play.
Considering that most if not all Europe to Asia flights go over Russia, it will be awfully long escorts and Russia will 10x cost too. Besides that Russia has nothing to do with current incident.
Of course they do, Belarus is in their pocket and they have to pay accordingly. NATO cannot display weakness again and again. If Russia increases the fee then we take away their planes (via maintenance) which pretty much bans them from travelling around the globe.
It would be expensive to divert for Japan and Korea, not so much SE Asia. I can't see Russia fucking with China though.
Flights already do a big detour around Ukraine because of their conflict with Russia. In fact, middle eastern hubs would love Belarus airspace to be restricted, it makes their routes much more competitive. Flights to SE Asia often fly further south, over the caucuses, Afg/Iran to SNG, or Iraq/Iran to Qatar since the GCC blockade. (Iran charges considerable fees for this btw, a good source of hard currency.)
I'm afraid Russia has everything to do with this incident. There is no way they would do this without Putin's okay. That he is willing to risk Russian airspace rights shows how desperately worried he is about popular uprisings.
The ops.group newsletter [0] is a great resource for understanding flight restrictions.
big outrage from europe. makes sense. but were they also outraged when US diverted Bolivia’s presidential plane thinking Snowden was on board? can’t blame Belarus for thinking this is the norm
The best reaction from the West would be to release another persecuted journalist, Julian Assange, from his unlawful and unjust imprisonment. Then we could all condemn Belarus in good conscience.
I don’t travel much anymore, but when I did I definitely made a point to select routes that avoided flying over basketcase countries. With the number of planes that have been shot down over war zones, or things like this, it’s often feasible.
As medical cannabis patient, I certainly avoid any routes that could potentially land (e.g. because of technical issue) in a country that is anti-disabled people.
edit: why is this being downvoted? Certain countries have harsh drug laws and couldn't care less whether the use is legitimate or not. Even if you don't have any medication on you, but you have metabolites you can get yourself in prison. This should be called out, but it seems like people have succumbed to prohibitionist propaganda.
I don't know why you were downvoted, but your argument is disingenuous: the anti-drug laws are not anti-disabled people, this is probably a borderline case that was not considered in the legislation. Fake self-victimization may be why you were downvoted?
I am disabled and can't live without this medication as otherwise it makes pain unbearable. Some states don't recognise medical use and can imprison people who have metabolites in the system and are legitimate medical users.
Just because the catchment area of such law is slightly broader than targeting just the disabled, it does not mean these states are not anti-disabled if they prevent disabled people from use of medication.
I find your comment absolutely insensitive and disgusting. Please educate yourself.
I find your attitude as entitled and dishonest; that law did not target disabled people, so you cannot say it is anti-disabled people, it is just a side-effect. It's that simple.
It depends on the country or region. What are the chances to have a family member and a work colleague dead in the only 2 plane crashes in the past 30 years in my country? Well, call it a coincidence, but for me it's a reality. If you fly only in Western Europe or USA, it is paranoid, if you get over Ukraine, Belarus or Afghanistan, it's precaution.
It was the company’s money and when I explained why I was choosing those flights (being careful to pick the cheapest option that met my criteria) they were fine with it.
Would be interesting to hear the communication between Minsk and the airplane here. For example did the captain make the decision to land solely based on the (false) bomb threat, or was there something more going on. Like were they informed that fighter(s) were dispatched?
I mean it is obviously very bad to make false bomb threats, but its still very different than forcing by threatening to shoot the plane down.
It might be. But political actors are good at leaving plausible deniability regarding their true motives: "We've dispatched a fighter jet to help you find your way to the landing strip."
I imagine the comms would have been something like this:
Minsk Control: FR4978 please divert immediately to Minsk due to potential bomb threat.
FR4978: Minsk Control, by our readings we are closer to our destination Vilnius than to Minsk. By the way, can you explain why a Belarusian fighter jet is flying alongside us?
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 472 ms ] threadWas the plane over Belarus, though?
Yes: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/fr4978#27cce9a2
To be precise that’s if you’re rejected for a visa - just to transit you don’t need one so it’s best not to apply.
I had a formative experience regarding the game of chicken years ago. It might look very much off topic at first sight, but please read on and decide for yourself.
When I was in secondary school, bored teenagers repeatedly threatened local school bombings, causing the repeated evacuation of several schools. Never the one I went to school at. I later learned why from my father, a teacher at the school. The school did receive bomb threats just like the others. The school head did warn the police. After a short discussion with them, he firmly and politely informed them that our school would not be evacuated, and that was that. He was - and is, at 87- a quiet and soft spoken man, a well respected member of society, but definitely not afraid of a game of chicken.
My guess would be that the gentleman running the school in your example was widely respected and had a solid relationship with his appointing authority (school board, upstream executive, etc) -- they had his back.
Does Ryanair offer that type of confidence to pilots as commanders of their aircraft?
(They kept the name KGB in Belarus.)
This one involved KGB agents who coerced the flight to divert by claiming there was a bomb
On this topic, this happened with a flight from a US's air base in Afghanistan, rerouted to Iran because of a "bureaucratic issue":
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-iran-aircraft/u-s-says-p...
Quite contrary, I'm asking for the basis and the motive of denying one specific flight with one specific individual on board a routine procedure of air travel, something that was allowed to hundreds of other flights on that same day. "landing" vs "airspace" is a non-essential detail here, and depending on the context of a situation, either could be denied to achieve the desired goal. I'm asking about the motives of the goal.
no doubt, when force is the standard a murderer wins over a pickpocket. And then it escalates.
What do you think would happen if Ryanair's pilot refuse to cooperate with Belarus's request?
In both cases it was to detain somebody doing an act of public service on behalf of their country - an act treated as criminal. This is the important part.
Passengers on the Bolivia's flight were at no point in danger. They could have picked another country, Russia or Russia-friendly one to land. Can you say the same with Ryannair's ones? Did they have the choice?
It's not, your kettle is also black.
Total export sanctions to the west? They sell some fuel etc. and EU is a large trading partner.
This sort of coexistence has been attempted and patently failed.
It's their population, not ours. An important distinction.
We (rest of the world, but particularly Europe) need to get stricter.
Honestly, I wish the next step would be for NATO to step in and restore the country to a legitimate government. Between this, Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine, China, Israel, the world has been way too conivent with the destruction of democracy.
What a country wants is not in general what those in power want.
Also I think that the more sanctions are put from West to Belarus, the closer it gets to become another Russia state. I'm not sure if that's the outcome West wants to see.
This is plain and simple hijacking of an international flight and not “within bounds” at all. Laws are to be followed in principle, not just technical merit, these are not computer games.
About half of Belarus's trade is with Russia. All this would accomplish is making it 90%+ and deepen ties with Russia. Might as well suggest having Russia annex Belarus as a response to the situation.
The population voted for the opposition candidate, took to the streets when the results were rigged, but had no leaders willing to escalate the confrontation when the state had its pants down. The dictator has buckled his pants and has gradually reduced the opposition to posting memes in Telegram chats. And even this activity is no longer safe.
Are we talking about military leaders who support the current dictator? What could the leaders of the opposition have done to escalate the confrontation further?
Such a move would affect them the most.
Will it work? Very iffy - often the only thing worse than an autocratic regime is whatever fills the power vacuum its fall creates. Disorderly transfers of power are bad business.
I could swear I saw recent research indicating that the fraction of protest movements that lead to regime change has fallen over time, but I can't find it now.
[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/03/10/politica...
But when they're up against armed militia and police, they can't do much (this is why so many Americans are adamant about the 1st Amendment).
Targeted sanctions are the only ethical option at this point. Don't make the population suffer like we did for Iraq.
- Recognize Tsikhanouskaya government as interim government in exile. Insist that this government is the official venue for any engagement (exports, imports, sport event participation).
- Ban all regime officials in all branches from entry.
The focus shifts to cyber warfare where you take out infrastructure.
Active non-recognition can be a good option here: since there is no recognized government, in all applicable cases (events, elections in international organizations etc) it shall be decided that Belarus abstained from vote or was absent. Membership and contractual payments from Belarus can be rejected and considered not happening, resulting in suspensions, sanctions and cancellations and so on and so on.
It is a matter of political will, which is the only thing that is practically lacking.
It is hard to see requiring an alternative candidate (whose persecution blew up the country) register a victory in increasingly totalitarian place as anything but deflection. Bailing out on technicality.
Poland is apparently really mad about this, and given that Ukraine is currently at war with Russia you can probably get them on board. Just those two are a pretty good "wall". Maybe add in a few states blocking northern routes (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia), or not as effectively (Germany, Denmark, Sweden) and they're really isolated from everything apart from Russia.
Anyways, idle speculation, I'm definitely not an expert on this type of politics. I'm sure that in reality a move like this would have all sorts of consequences that I can't predict.
/s
PS: I am a Snowden supporter though :) I think he did us a great service. I'm not American but he exposed the extent to which our details are shared with US intelligence agencies.
Let us try to decide if some of the posters here are hypocrites or not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
It is important to know whether the condemning party applies the same standards to their own activities, because there's no possibility of resolving the issue at hand without both parties applying the same principles and standards on everyone, including themselves. And dismissing the significance of this knowledge as "whataboutism" is short-sighted, because it's the tool of establishing standards of morality, and it gives a hint to third parties about the nature of their neighbours involved in the dispute.
In practice it means that the side who accuses first (currently mostly SJWs) gets to speak and attack others while using "whataboutism" as a shield to shut up their opponents.
Edit: and with zero evidence that they might even be a hypocrite in the first place...
https://theoutline.com/post/8610/united-states-russia-whatab...
This also seems definitive: https://cjlockett.com/2021/01/10/the-rhetorical-laziness-of-...
> The day after his TV interview, Morales's Dassault Falcon 900, carrying him back to Bolivia from Russia, took off from Vnukovo Airport, but was rerouted to Austria when France, Spain, Portugal and Italy[2] reportedly denied access to their airspace, allegedly due to suspicions that Snowden was on board.
I'm sure the US applied diplomatic pressure, but those countries are all developed, rich economies who were perfectly capable of saying no and preserving their sovereignty. It was done with full consent of the countries in question.
To put it this was: the US and it's allies were played for fools, highlighting their unreasonableness. But in no way shape or form is this similar to the current situations in anything but the most superficial sense.
A kidnapping is not the same thing as denying entry; nor are the victims equally reasonable even if the crime were - a civilian plane vs. that of a diplomat that wanted to pick exactly this fight.
Forget politics, let's turn to normal people. Illicit actions of criminals justify the use of policing force on them in all countries of the world.
The actions are the same: coercion through force, basically. In one case they are wrong (criminal), in other case they are good and justified by wrong actions (policing).
* https://www.icao.int/pages/freedomsair.aspx
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air
Note that Belarus is not a signatory to the International Air Services Transit Agreement (IASTA):
* https://www.icao.int/secretariat/legal/list%20of%20parties/t...
Neither is Lithuania, but Greece is.
However, this most likely only furthers the goals of the current Belarusian administration for the population there. Enforced strictly, to include diplomatic flights, it may cause measurable change.
Qatar was doing massive detours a couple of years ago to keep flying (of course money wasn't an issue for them)
But detouring Bielorussia might be even cheaper than forced landings, who knows.
Unless Ryanair's reputation takes a big hit, I'm guessing the answer is all of them.
And there flights weren't even officially targeted. This flight was intercepted by an armed military jet. From there it can quickly escalate in the event of a misunderstanding.
Detain every single passenger for rest of the year.
Their territory, their rules.
I wonder what would have happened if they just delayed until they were in lithuanian airspace.
EDIT: just realized there were fighter jets involved...
The aircraft's registration is SP-RSM, which is Polish:
* https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/fr4978#27cce9a2
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_registration_...
Poland is a member of NATO. Also, Lithuania and Greece, the source and destination of the flight, are also both in NATO.
Ireland is not involved in this conversation. All elements are related to NATO countries.
Even the airline, Buzz (aka Ryanair Sun), which is the legal owner of the aircraft, is headquartered in Poland:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_(Ryanair)
* https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/boeing-737-800-sp-rsm...
There seems to be some sort of an orchestrated action behind spreading this distorted version of events - I see it on Twitter as well.
Might be a good way to start a war.
Interesting framing
The EU has shown no determination to put a brake on Lukashenko's abuses and has been completely passive so far on the matter.
The USA, in my opinion, should show leadership and step in to make it clear that such affront against democracy on a neighbour of its closest allies will not be tolerated. Poland and Hungary (not to mention Turkey a bit further away) are already leaning dangerously close to the kinds of abuse of power only seen in dictatorships, and letting Belarus get away with this international provocation will just make it even more clear that the great powers don't care enough to defend democratic rights anywhere outside their own borders, and they are free to go ahead with their own crackdowns on freedom of expression and disregard of human rights.
[1] https://emerging-europe.com/news/belarus-shuts-down-largest-...
The US is rarely interested in affronts against democracy unless there's a geopolitical advantage to be had by leveraging it.
From a practical standpoint, US interventions almost always make things worse for the people who live there, and in a lot of cases less democratic.
The US is no stranger to strategic military intervention that costs lives and money and achieves nothing very substantial - from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan.
It was the cold war. I'm pretty sure the MIC could have justified so much spending in other ways besides vietnam, but we are venturing into counterfactual territory.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_off_the_coast_of_Soma...
>After the collapse of the Somali government and the dispersal of the Somali Navy, ... groups, using small boats, would sometimes hold vessels and crew for ransom. This grew into a lucrative trade, with large ransom payments. The pirates then began hijacking commercial vessels
The quote I posted is a bit cryptic by itself. What I meant by it was that perhaps the US had plans that would lead to greater benefits for them in the region, but these plans backfired by inadvertently creating the Somali piracy problem.
They did everything right with regards to whatever they were hoping to achieve, but they still failed and then pirates happened.
And it was also clear nobody in Europe cared or was going to do anything, even if it was also in their craven interest.
Probably didn't align with their August vacation schedule plans or something.
& they did.
The US was more concerned with there being instability in Europe than any overriding moral concerns.
Almost all. I can really think of two counterexamples, Japan and Korea (and it took a very long time ~30 years? for korea to figure itself out). Maybe Jugoslavia can be put into that bin too, though it's not clear if the US intervention hurt or helped.
A Mig fighter jet was dispatched to shepherd the airliner. This represents a threat to anyone on a flight through or maybe even near Belarus's airspace.
There have been a lot of catastrophic $&@$ ups and terrible ideas, but it's selective history to claim there have been no positive outcomes for the people who live there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Iraq_(2013%E2%80%9320...
IMHO, it seems like most Iraqis are better off living under a government than IS, but your opinion may differ.
It's clearly not disingenuous to include the 2014 intervention in the list of the more reasonable ones.
I mean, if you present it as somehow excusing the earlier mistake; that'd be a different issue.
I don't think it's reasonable to argue your intervention in my house fire was successful because you used your bulldozer to clean up the rubble, if you were the arsonist that set fire to it in the first place.
If you'd like a particularly poignant "fly on the wall" style look into how ordinary Iraqi people saw the invasion in 2003, and their predictions for the future, check out Iraq in Fragments. Many of their predictions have come true in the years since. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiu8cXhjpX4
The Democrats want illegals to count in the census to boost their own voting power in places like California. They count for representation but can't vote. Remind you of any past compromises? Democrats always liked getting to vote on behalf of disenfranchised minorities in their state.
You need to consume news from some organization that isn't a tabloid. These organizations are tabloids: MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice, Vox, Slate, The Huffington Post
In Japan, a party with over 10% of the vote is surveilled as a criminal organization and it's leadership is thus being targeted 24/7 and prosecuted for anything remotely possible such as putting flyers in mailboxes, in order to disrupt the political process.
If it's a democracy, it's one of the weakest ones.
The system is now proven completely failed, but who can change the law is who benefited from the law.
> In Japan, a party with over 10% of the vote is surveilled as a criminal organization
You may refer 調査対象団体 but I can't find the 10% criteria. JCP is the only national party listed on the list for historical reason. I never heard that JCP member had prosecuted by posting mails. Other organizations are really worth to be surveilled. I don't think this is why democracy in Japan is not good.
After all, you don't blame a nurse for all their dying patients if their specialty is palliative care; the counterfactual matters.
Hard to argue with the second when looking at the past 2 decades, but looking broader in the past century I think there are many more arguments the other way. Most of Europe for one.
Who are the countries who are willing to intercede militarily purely to liberate a country?
> From a practical standpoint, US interventions almost always make things worse for the people who live there, and in a lot of cases less democratic.
I think this is a fair criticism—intercession is hard—but the question isn’t whether things are better or worse than they were, but rather whether they were better or worse than they would have been under Soviet influence. And you can analyze this as “whether or not a specific country is better or worse” as well as “whether or not the world is better or worse for the diminished soviet influence that would have been afforded by that country falling under Soviet influence”.
Putin was KGB mafia boy.
Kravcuk, and Kucma were party bosses of state enterprises.
Aliyevs were KGB men
Shevardnaze was USSR's foreign minister
The whole of Central Asia is basically ruled by exactly the same Moscow's satraps since late eighties, with exception of wild tempered Kyrgyzstan.
Mongolia, "the 16th republic," also had communist comeback, only ended by an extreme, Norko style economic collapse.
The only country of ex-USSR where CPSU did not recapture the power outside of Baltics was Armenia, but only thanks to power going to their nazis. A medicine worse than the poison.
And Georgia
Libya? way way worse, i mean its a place you can buy slaves in open markets now after US intervention...
list is huge, some places they would take out democracy to put in puppet dictatorships all in the interest of the US, they will work with Saudi Arabia and in last 5 years starve 80,000 kids to death in Yemen under 5 years.
i can only list a few countries that US intervention ended actually helping both the US and the country.
so yes USA will claim to come in to give "democracy" or what ever humanitarian excuse but its never for those reasons, its always for the interest of US and US corporations, i mean didn't the US take a country just because corporations wanted it for growing Bananas? and still to this day they are messing with them ?
I'm not sure I got it either. As an argument for interventionism it was poor.
The US and Saudis both have a very large gun to each other's heads... so that's a pretty constrained situation.
It will be curious to see what happens in the next 10+ years as oil-as-energy demand begins to wane.
Thats just not true. Saudi family rule over Arabia is predicated on US support. If all SA oil production stopped it would not topple the US government. If the US decided to back a political opposition like it did in Syria the Saudi regime would implode in days.
Or do you mean to say that USA could easily replace the regime with a different, more-favored one? How did that work in Syria? We're withdrawing from Afghanistan now, and at this time Taliban control more territory than they held in 2001. USA military is a bit of a paper tiger, when it comes to achieving results via military action.
Could they not draw the same conclusion from our very pro trade friendly policies toward for example China?
Is Lukashenko a dictator, for sure, but he is in an impossible situation. The Russians are making sure of that and as long as Western Governments show an indifference to the sovereignty of countries like Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, etc there is no way forward.
Please show me examples in Poland or Hungary of opposition voices being silenced or arrested.
The worst that has happened is withdrawing government financing or grants to entities that aren’t pro government. That’s not exactly a dictatorship.
In Hungary almost all the online press is anti government. No one gets arrested. Their are 5 opposition parties now uniting against government, no one is silenced.
Yes the state TV is pro government. But this is not unique to Poland or Hungary. In fact I’d argue the pinnacle of state TV, the BBC is very much leaning to one side of the political isle right now too.
Some examples for Poland that I'm aware of:
- August 2020 mass arrest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2020_LGBT_protests_in_P...
- Poland’s constitutional court not a “tribunal established by law”, rules ECHR: https://notesfrompoland.com/2021/05/07/polands-constitutiona...
Sure, the situation seems not as bad as in Belarus, but still it looks bad.
Népszabadság, the biggest printed newspaper was bought and closed by government/its allies.
origo.hu and index.hu, the biggest Hungarian online portals was also bought, and converted to progovernment outlets.
The USA showed leadership when it contrived a situation where the president of Bolivia's plane was made to land in Austria, to search for someone who leaked to journalists that the US government was monitoring virtually all domestic phone calls, texts, Internet connections etc.
Leadership in an affront against democracy, as you put it.
Edit: just to clarify, some of the USA’s other considerations would be the risk of getting called out for being a hypocrite- it has done a few shady extraditions in the past.
https://www.belta.by/president/view/komandu-prinjat-v-minske...
And there is no free speech here and other media.
This more mild strategy worked perfectly: Lukashenko gets to execute a political threat on trumped up charges, and there's essentially zero risk of a reprisal other than further sanctions, which were going to happen anyhow.
This is one of the reasons why I wish US/NATO had taken a stronger stand vs Russia's hybrid warfare tactics.
This was an attack on Lithuania, Greece and Ireland.
How many more times will western governments bend over as Putin and other tin pot soviet dicktators shoot down or hijack flights?
- Flight EU to EU
- fake bomb threat
- possibly forced to divert to minsk airport by a fighter jet (wasn't the nearest airport)
- potential death penalty for targeted journalist
* https://www.wing.com.ua/images/stories/library/ovd/9433.pdf
So I guess the Belarus government would try to claim whatever agreement caused this part:
>1.2.1 Pilots-in-command of civil aircraft should be aware that interception may take place in the event that military,customs or police authorities of a State:
>...
>d) suspect that an aircraft is engaged in illegal flight and/or transportation of illicit goods or persons, inconsistent withthe aims of the Chicago Convention and contrary to the laws of said State.
>...
I note there there is nothing in there about a bomb threat. So the bomb threat was likely a separate gambit that didn't work.
This seems to be quite insane either way. If an interception goes bad the result could be the destruction of the civil aircraft. Not worth the potential risk, no matter who might be on the flight.
If the pilot didn't I doubt they'd actually shoot the plane down, but that's a bet that they took and won. The pilot obviously chose the safer option for himself and almost everyone onboard.
>Ms Tikhanovskaya said Mr Protasevich, 26, had left Belarus in 2019 and covered the events of the 2020 presidential election with Nexta, after which criminal charges were filed against him in Belarus.
>She said he faced the death penalty in Belarus as he has been categorised as a terrorist.
So the charges were pre-concocted. They didn't have to make any up at the last moment.
Of course Lukashenko has the backing of Putin, so it is a slippery slope. I wonder how the EU will react. This is a major transgression.
Note that the EU did something similar: The forced Evo Morales to land in Vienna (on a flight from Moskow to Bolivia) because they suspected Snowden on the flight.
Since it was heading for Bolivia it obviously had enough fuel to go back to Moscow, if needed - for instance if Snowden had actually been onboard.
The thing that happened today (faked bomb alert and landing order accompanied with a fighter jet escort) is not on the same level.
Also lying (fake bomb threat) is a big difference.
It's like the difference between someone stealing your wallet, vs. letting you play some kind of street game where you don't actually have a chance of winning.
The method employed matters, it's not just about the final result.
Today's hijacking: the result was that the journalist was arrested and now may be facing the death penalty.
The denial of flyover rights to Morales' jet: there was no risk of capture to Snowden - worst case, he'd just have to back to Moscow. If he had been on the flight.
Yes, there was obvious BS from Morales' pilots about uncertain fuel readings - if that had been true the actions of those EU countries saved the life of Morales and others onboard.
Both situations are crap.
I see it like: egomaniacs running those 2 governments, bad.
They forced the plane to land by locking all airspace around it. And yes, they would also have started fighter jets if the plane would enter the forbidden airspace.
If they really want to get this guy released and set a deterring precedent they would start playing hardball, which could include things like:
* Deny Belarus aircraft the right transit anywhere in the EU.
* Do so while some Belarus aircraft are on the ground in the EU and don't allow them to leave. This effectively holds those planes hostage as a bargaining chip, though it's really leverage on the Belarus airlines (and the planes themselves are probably leased). But it still creates problems for the regime.
* Refuse to allow the transit of any Belarus top officials anywhere in the EU. Start expanding this list daily to include more people and their direct families and make the directive permanent until the guy is released. Once you get the spouses of a couple dozen of the top people in the regime contemplating spending the rest of their lives without Italian vacations or Parisian shopping - much less just being able to go anywhere other than Russia - you're starting to cause some hard conversations about how much making an example of this guy is really worth.
Sadly, I doubt the EU will do any of this type of stuff but barring that, there's really no incremental cost to Belarus, nothing will happen and this guy is screwed.
Yes, nothing happened after another rigged elections, Apparently around 30000 people are still detained since August, since brutally stopped protests. Nothing will happen again, but Belarus should be declared as space not safe for air transit.
They've poisoned people with radioactive substances on NATO soil, without serious consequences. Just denials issued.
Putin keeps calling the west's bluff. Having a nuclear arsenal seems to let you do that.
Are the good guys allowed to do anything? Are we going to take a terrorist's family hostage to use them as as bargaining chip against the terrorist?
Hasn't this already been the case since November?
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2020...
Restrictive measures include a travel ban and an asset freeze. The travel ban impedes those listed from entering or transiting through EU territories, while the asset freeze is used against the funds or economic resources of the listed persons. In addition, EU citizens and companies are forbidden from making funds available to the listed individuals and entities... Today's decision follows up on the agreement reached by the EU foreign affairs ministers at their video conference meeting on 19 November 2020. The sanctions will now apply with immediate effect... A second set of sanctions targeting Alexandr Lukashenko and 14 other officials was imposed on 6 November 2020.
I mean we can quibble about what constitutes "top officials" and the expansion is not daily - but it does exist and it is expanding.
The EU can severely damage the economy of Belarus by cutting off all trade and financial ties. And then work with the US to essentially destroy the country economically by cutting it off to nearly all global trade and financing. The only thing left to prop it up would be Russia and some Chinese imports; it would make Belarus a hermit state economically.
All the US has to do is say: we'll sanction any bank, corporation or person that does business with Belarus. Most will instantly capitulate, just as they did with Iran.
If the US asks Britain, Poland and Ukraine to suspend all trade ties to Belarus, they'll do it. Combine that with the EU members, and Belarus no longer functions in terms of having access to the global economy.
The downside to smashing Belarus in such a way, which would be very easy to do, is that it'll just throw Belarus into the hands of Russia entirely. Lukashenko knows that context with the West and has been playing the angles for a long time accordingly.
I'm sure that Belarus is in the same boat.
Sherlock Holmes's house in London is owned by Nazarbayev's daughter. It's so ironic.
It's a great trick the NATO/EU expansionists have - expand NATO and the EU eastward (even though Gorbachev was promised NATO would not expand eastward). Then start harping on about EU rights in jingoistic militarism against countries in the east.
This is why the Croatian left was so unhappy about EU accession. Also contributed partly to why every region in England outside the London metro voted for Brexit.
This is modern-day Russian propaganda that sprung up in 2007. Gorbachev denies that it ever happened.
Here he confirms it: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/193...
"The Americans promised that Nato wouldn't move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War but now half of central and eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted."
"The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990. With regards to Germany, they were legally enshrined and are being observed." https://rg.ru/2014/10/15/gorbachev.html
> Mikhail Gorbachev: The issue of "NATO expansion" was not discussed at all and did not arise in those years. I say this with all responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised it, including after the termination of the Warsaw Pact in 1991. Western leaders did not raise it either.
> Another question was discussed, which we raised: that after the unification of Germany there would be no advancement of NATO military structures and the deployment of additional armed forces of the alliance on the territory of the then GDR. In this context, Baker's statement mentioned in your question was made. Kohl and Genscher spoke about the same.
In summary: no discussion, no promises, no agreement.
You misinterpret "violation of the spirit". He hoped for better future than currently is, a future of peace and cooperation that would not need Eastern Europe clinging to NATO for security from Russia and its puppets. Ideally, NATO would've become obsolete and Russians would be enjoying the same quality of life as Germans are. The reality is much bleaker and that 1990 spirit is dead. That's what he meant.
The very promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward is, as he says, legally enshrined in that treaty: "Foreign armed forces and nuclear weapons or their carriers will not be stationed", though only for the east "part of Germany". At that time it would have been unthinkable to discuss any further expansion of NATO.
To blatantly deny this fact is "modern-day NATO propaganda". But you are welcome to claim, that "no discussion, no promises, no agreement" about this was ever written in treaties - if you every time remember to add "except for the part about eastern Germany, where that promise is very well documented".
Exactly. It wasn't discussed, nothing was agreed upon or promised to anyone.
Most Eastern European countries that later applied for NATO to secure themselves from increasingly hostile Russia didn't even exist as countries at the time, nor did Russian Federation. It was a totally different time and suggestions of promises about NATO membership availability to Eastern Europe are an anachronism.
I haven't gone through every single line with a magnifying glass but even an ex Director Of The CIA claims the West promised to not expand NATO.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...
A similar situation from a few weeks ago.
they will send a strongly worded letter, no doubt about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak
Of course this is a very convenient coincidence here that a random emergency happens with a wanted man in board...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
Not that the US was wrong to be on high alert:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Stark_incident
Flights already do a big detour around Ukraine because of their conflict with Russia. In fact, middle eastern hubs would love Belarus airspace to be restricted, it makes their routes much more competitive. Flights to SE Asia often fly further south, over the caucuses, Afg/Iran to SNG, or Iraq/Iran to Qatar since the GCC blockade. (Iran charges considerable fees for this btw, a good source of hard currency.)
I'm afraid Russia has everything to do with this incident. There is no way they would do this without Putin's okay. That he is willing to risk Russian airspace rights shows how desperately worried he is about popular uprisings.
The ops.group newsletter [0] is a great resource for understanding flight restrictions.
[0] https://ops.group/blog/assessing-the-risk-operations-over-co...
edit: why is this being downvoted? Certain countries have harsh drug laws and couldn't care less whether the use is legitimate or not. Even if you don't have any medication on you, but you have metabolites you can get yourself in prison. This should be called out, but it seems like people have succumbed to prohibitionist propaganda.
Europe to SE-Asia almost always involves flying over quite a few 'problematic' areas.
I mean it is obviously very bad to make false bomb threats, but its still very different than forcing by threatening to shoot the plane down.
Minsk Control: FR4978 please divert immediately to Minsk due to potential bomb threat.
FR4978: Minsk Control, by our readings we are closer to our destination Vilnius than to Minsk. By the way, can you explain why a Belarusian fighter jet is flying alongside us?
(silence)
FR4978: Minsk Control, do you copy?
(silence)
Minsk Control: We said PLEASE.
(silence)
FR4978: Ohhh-kay then. Minsk it is!