If you listen carefully, you can hear the drums of revolution beating once more in Washington. The neoconservatives have found another regime that needs changing, another enemy of ‘freedom’, and they are setting about putting matters right in their usual way. This time the target is Belarus, a small country in between Poland, Ukraine and Russia with a population of 10 million. Since 1996 Belarus has been run as a communist dictatorship by President Aleksander Lukashenko.
All the usual precursors to a US-sponsored ‘revolution’ are in place: an influential Washington NGO — the US Committee on Nato — has said that fostering democracy in Belarus is an ‘essential, moral and strategic imperative for US foreign policy’. Its head, Bruce Jackson, has been holding meetings with ‘freedom fighters’ in Belarus to discuss ways of overcoming Lukashenko’s dictatorship.
President Bush himself has started the ball rolling. With considerable cheek for a man who this week went to Moscow and joined Putin in hailing Russia’s wartime achievement, he is busy doing his best to bring down the last remnants of the USSR in Belarus.
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