The autocrats and dictators have taken our measure and concluded we’re vulnerable.
Here are some things that happened over the Labour Day weekend while Canadians were enjoying the last long weekend of the departing summer, hanging out at cottages and obsessing about sending kids back to school after six months of enduring them full time at home.
Most of it’s bad news. If you pay attention to events in Belarus, you will know that weeks of street demonstrations have not moved the country measurably closer to ousting President Alexander Lukashenko. If anything, the prospects of the country being co-opted as yet another satellite state of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expanding empire looks increasingly likely.
Putin, who previously seized Crimea and fuelled turmoil in Ukraine and Syria, has offered Lukashenko military aid “if the situation gets out of control.” That point evidently hasn’t been reached yet in Moscow’s opinion, given that Lukashenko still feels secure enough to have opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova snatched off the street and bundled into a van by masked security agents. Kolesnikova was the last of three women heading the protests, the other two having previously fled in fear following threats from the administration.
Putin dealt with the situation in Belarus while also shrugging off accusations that Moscow was behind the poisoning of its own opposition figure, Alexei Navalny. The anti- corruption crusader recently awoke from a medically induced coma in a German hospital after being flown out of Russia for treatment. German chemical weapons experts say he was poisoned with a Soviet- era nerve agent that was slipped into his tea. Moscow says hogwash and refuses to put any more effort into investigating the case than it already has, which is next to none.
The murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi reached an end, sort of, as sentences were delivered on eight accused, none of them being Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, the man assumed to be responsible for the murder. And China continued its determination to squeeze the life out of Hong Kong’s sense of freedom. A widely shared video showed police tackling a 12- year- old girl — who reportedly had gone out to buy art supplies — for running in a “suspicious manner.”
The notable thing about all these instances of repression is that no one made any effort to disguise them. With the exception of some display of embarrassment in Riyadh, the world’s autocrats apparently feel no need to hide their brutal tactics, their disregard for international opinion — or those of their own populations — and are unrepentant about enforcing their will via whatever brutal means come to hand.
Lukashenko has taken to strutting around with a rifle across his chest as his forces tear gas demonstrators. Hong Kong’s police wasted no time switching from protecting the population to bludgeoning them. Neither Putin nor Chinese President Xi Jinping pretend their goal is anything less than maximum damage to democratic rights, both at home and across the globe.
And they are noticeably gaining ground against an unsettled and leaderless Western world. The most effective tool Europe has in seeking answers for Navalny’s poisoning is to cancel a multi- billion-dollar project to ship Russian gas to Germany. The pipeline is almost completed and is critical to Moscow, not just for the badly needed revenue it would bring but because it would increase its ability to squeeze Ukraine.
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the closest Europe has to a strong figure, has been supportive of the project and is reluctant to act. It would be expensive and upset financial interests. Fear of the economic impact of such decisions has been the greatest tool anti- democratic forces have enjoyed in their war against democracy. They take for granted, with plenty of supportive evidence, that Western leaders will always cave in the face of a threat to their finances.
Britain’s Financial Times newspaper noted this in a detailed look at the outlook for Hong Kong in the wake of China’s assault on local freedoms and rights. While Western business figures felt gloomy about the sudden change, the FT found plenty of Chinese experts — analysts, financiers, fund officials, investors — who were prepared to suggest that profit potential will win in the end.
Journalists, activists and snarky academics may have to skip town ( a boatload heading for Taiwan were nabbed in August), but bankers and investors might not mind as long as the arrests stop with political troublemakers. When Beijing sent its forces to arrest outspoken business mogul Jimmy Lai, they marched right into a newsroom full of cameras and then paraded him in handcuffs for everyone to see. It was a clear message of the Chinese government’s disregard for any opinion but its own, and its determination to keep it up.
It can happen because the West is in retreat. Europe is too busy trying to keep its unwieldy union from falling apart to take on the expanding flames of intolerance and repression beyond its borders. The United States appears exhausted by its own internal chaos, with a president who is actively attempting to undermine the credibility of the next election, preferring to triumph in a weakened democracy than risk rejection by a strong one. Whether the country can ever regain its strength or stature is an open question.
Canada lacks the strength to have much impact on its own, and in any case has a government that shows little interest in outside affairs, beyond expressing “concern” each time some new cataclysm erupts. If there’s an election in the future it seems likely to centre on whether an increase in debt- financed social spending is a good idea, even if it risks a crisis like the one that erupted the last time Ottawa let the joy of spending get out of control. The autocrats and dictators have taken our measure and concluded we’re vulnerable. It would be a good time to get our eyes off our navels and maybe put up some resistance.
autocrats apparently feel no need
to hide their brutal
tactics.