Rogue States

In the summer of 2020, Belarus experienced a wave of protests against its president, Alexander Lukashenko, who had perpetuated himself in power through rigged elections. Belarus was a Stalinist fossil and Lukashenko was a man with little reason who walked around with a rifle in his hand. Everything indicated that he would end up like the Romanian Nicolae Ceausescu, summarily executed in 1989.

But Russia supported him, despite the discomfort it caused Putin. Belarusians grew tired of protesting and emigrated. The writer Svetlana Alexievich also left, saying “one day I will return.” She has not yet been able to do so. During 2021, Lukashenko put pressure on the states that hosted the opposition by recruiting desperate Iraqis and Afghans at airports in the Middle East and abandoning them on the borders of Poland and Lithuania. Finally, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and that made Lukashenko a necessary accomplice. He was useful again.

The US has become a rogue state, like Belarus, North Korea or Russia

On February 12, Christopher W. Smith, an American diplomat, traveled to Minsk to meet with the dictator and the head of the Belarusian KGB. It was the first meeting between the two countries in five years. It took place 24 hours after Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone. As a sign of goodwill, Belarus allowed three opposition figures to travel. And the United States agreed to review sanctions to allow potash (the country's main export, essential for making fertilizers) to return to the market.

In a few days, the Trump administration has reversed the script that has governed international relations for eighty years. In that script, characters like Lukashenko were supposed to be swept off the stage. Sometimes in a bad way. That has now changed. This week, the United States voted alongside Russia, North Korea and Belarus at the United Nations Security Council meeting condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China abstained. The United States and its new friends voted against. They are all what is known as a rogue state.

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The world's leading power has, in fact, behaved like a rogue state towards Ukraine. It has excluded it from negotiations to end the war and has pressured it to convert the 130 billion dollars in aid into a much larger debt , to be collected in the form of profits from the exploitation of the country's mineral and energy resources. In the end, Ukraine has agreed. In exchange for what? A reduction in the level of extortion and blackmail. In a world of rogue states, weak countries have a very bleak future.