On May 28, Foreign Policy published a biweekly column featuring Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig and New American Engagement Initiative senior fellow Emma Ashford discussing the latest news in international affairs.
In this column, they discussed how the West should respond to Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko’s arrest of dissident journalist Roman Protasevich, the U.S. role in the Israel-Palestinian cease-fire, and John Cena’s apology to China for calling Taiwan a country.
The bottom line is Western countries should absolutely seek to punish Lukashenko for this incident, but that doesn’t mean we should immediately buy in to the notion of pro-democracy regime change in Belarus.
I saw the video. It was embarrassing and another example of the above phenomena: autocracies (in this case, China) using their power to try to reach into democracies and undermine free speech and democratic norms. We need to persuade corporate America that kowtowing to a genocidal regime to make some cash is not a savvy business move.
