Advertisement
Opinion | Protest-riven Belarus needs heroic diplomacy. Can Asia supply it?
- As the impasse between government and demonstrators consolidates, Minsk needs an external party to navigate the problem of succession
- Asian capitals from Seoul to Singapore, seen as neutral, have the chance to prove themselves capable of international-level choreography and complexity
Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
Belarus needs an out. And Asia – of all the continents – is best placed to engineer and negotiate that out. But can it? Does it know how? Does it have the strategic vision, diplomatic confidence and sense of tactical opportunity to play at this level?
Advertisement
Three scenarios present themselves over the coming few weeks, as the impasse in Minsk between the government and protesters consolidates. This is, as I have stressed before, an impasse not over a single election but rather over the very post-Soviet problem of succession.
In the first scenario, President Alexander Lukashenko resigns under the pressure of protests combined with heat and suggestion from one or more of Moscow, Brussels, Paris and Berlin.
In the second scenario – in my judgment, more probable – the authorities in Minsk are able to crush or, more accurately, exhaust the protests. Lukashenko governs for another year or two, but with diminished confidence and legitimacy. A new round of protests resumes before long.
Each of these scenarios portends a significant degree of chaos and general ungovernability in little Belarus for any foreseeable future. This chaos threatens to destabilise not only neighbouring Ukraine, Russia and the entire European Union, but also connected geopolitical theatres in the Middle East as well as East and South Asia.
Advertisement
Advertisement