В августе 2020 г. Народ Беларуси начал осознавать сущность режима Александра Лукашенко. Хотя этот процесс не завершён, сдвиг в сторону осознания того, где оказались народ и страна после пребывания в течение четверти столетия под игом персоналистской диктатуры, имеет огромное значение. Люди поняли, что с самого начала режим строился на обмане, махинациях и насилии. Для того, чтобы захватить и сконцентрировать в своих руках всю власть, Лукашенко уничтожил и продолжает уничтожать политических оппонентов.
К 2020 г. изменились беларуское общество, его структура, взгляды и ценности. Произошли значительные изменения в экономической модели беларуского общества. Эти глубокие изменения породили политический кризис, в который с августа 2020 г. оказалось вовлечённым большинство граждан Беларуси. Острый политический кризис проявился в противостоянии народа режиму во всех сферах жизни: экономической, информационной, религиозной, политической и общественной.
После августа 2020 г. режим окончательно отбросил всякую видимость законности. По существу, прекратилось исполнение таких базовых функций государства, как обеспечение безопасности граждан, законное судопроизводство, разрешение конфликтов, арбитраж. Лукашенко и его режим сами стали основным источником опасности для граждан Беларуси.
Вопрос: Какими могут быть действия диктатуры в Республике Беларусь (РБ), с одной стороны, и оппозиции/сопротивления, с другой стороны, при объявлении чрезвычайного положения (ЧП)? На какой срок может быть введён режим ЧП и какими могут быть его последствия для противоборствующих сторон в плане активности?
Ответ: По белорусскому законодательству чрезвычайное положение (ЧП) и военное положение (ВП) – это особые временные правовые режимы деятельности госорганов, должностных лиц, вводимые на всей территории страны или в отдельных местностях и допускающие ограничения прав и свобод граждан и организаций, а также возложение на них дополнительных обязанностей.
Одно из отличий состоит в том, что режим ЧП на всей территории Беларуси не может превышать 30 суток. Если ЧП вводят в отдельных областях или местностях, там он может действовать 60 суток. Причины для введения ЧП и предусмотренные им меры подробно рассмотрены в Законе о Чрезвычайном Положении (Закон, 2009). Поэтому нет смысла их здесь пересказывать.
Автором были проанализированы базы данных GWF, Института глобальных изменений Тони Блэра и Archigos, а также ряд открытых публикаций в западных, беларуских и российских научных изданиях. Формат брифинга не позволяет даже кратко сказать об использованных теориях и методах. Можно лишь кратко суммировать результаты анализа, которые и представлены ниже в виде 7-ми пунктов, а также выводов.
1) В Республике Беларусь (РБ) узурпатор Александр Лукашенко является de facto единственным субъектом политики. Ввиду этого обстоятельства, оппозиции вести переговоры с его «вертикалью», отдельными функционерами или их группами не представляется логичным. Такие тираны вступают в переговоры только тогда, когда они проиграли борьбу за удержание власти.
В качестве примера можно привести следующую гипотетическую ситуацию: президентский дворец окружён восставшим народом, охрана сложила оружие, и все пути для бегства узурпатора отрезаны. В такой ситуации переговоры дают возможность уменьшить насилие (число убитых) на 15-25%.
2) Но даже в этом случае, ввиду особенностей психики Лукашенко и особенностей его восприятия других партнёров, весьма сомнительно ожидать, что тиран сможет договориться. Об этом неоднократно говорил и писал психиатр Дмитрий Щигельский.
Based on Hieronymus Bosch. Death and the Miser [Fragment], c. 1490
By Alexander Perepechko
Published on January 24, 2021
In parts 1 and 2 of this paper, we explored a few important features of Russian revisionism in Eastern Europe-2 (Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine).
Irredentism and other manifestations of the Russian world are, above all, a façade of the personal interests of Vladimir Putin and his group. Since the legal infrastructure of private property rights and security of a person do not have sufficient basis in Russia, this cabal managed to restore Russia’s historical patrimonialist system and adjust it to the era of globalization. Globalization allows Russia’s elites to maximize their gains by keeping domestic markets open for their predation while minimizing their own personal risk by depositing profits in secure offshore accounts.
Under the Putin regime a new breed of globally minded criminal businessmen and politicians emerged and took center stage in the Russian Federation. This regime is about the kleptocracy where thieves rule. It is also about the adhocracy because in reality the elite in this regime is defined by its service to the needs of the Kremlin rather than by any specific institutional or social identity.
Relations between strategy, policy, and the personal interests of Putin’s siloviki – politicians from the security and military services who came into power – look unusual for a westerner. Putin and his strongmen see their personal interests as state interests and routinely resort to the aid of the state apparatus to defend these interests. We have the unfortunate case in which 1) military strategy is intended to defend the personal interests of Putin and his circle as state interests and 2) politics, including the politics of the Russian world, is subordinated to this strategy. In other words, policy is subordinated to strategy and strategy serves the personal interests of Putin and his group.
Also, some special circumstances have led to the regrettable situation when organized crime has been weaponized and access to information has been monetized in Russia.
Putin’s career path greatly aggravates this situation. It seems as though Lieutenant Colonel Putin is a protégé of the powerful “caste” of the Colonel Generals and a creature of the world of criminal businessmen and politicians. One cannot exclude that this caste looks at him as a “custodian” of their offshore banking accounts, real estate, and businesses in the West and elsewhere.
Putin and almost all members of his inner circle have records of service in the KGB and its successors. It is not surprising thatactive measures (also called subversion, “hybrid warfare,” hostile measures, or sharp power) are used by Russia as a policy instrument to influence and now and then control foreign states using non-kinetic and sometimes kinetic methods.
Do Putin’s active measures have historical antecedents? The late Soviet period gives us some clues.
By Alexander Perepechko, Dmitry Shchigelsky, Ihar Tyshkevich, Youras Ziankovich
SEATTLE – NEW YORK – KYIV – HUSTON
Published on December 26, 2020
INTRODUCTION
The political confrontation in Belarus has reached a stalemate. Neither of the two opposing sides can win in the short-term or long-term. Neither of these side is willing to calmly discuss key issues which the country will face after the confrontation ends.
This situation pushed us to create a virtual platform where participants can discuss the events, processes, and logic of the Belarusian crisis. Based on these discussions, forecasts of future developments in this country will possibly be made. For a start, we offer here an analytical summary of our first discussion.
The goal of this publication is to start outlining the area for future debates.
We hope to include new participants, topics, and questions. We also intend to publish summaries of future discussions. With any luck, political actors would use them as inputs for decision-making…
In part
1 of this research essay we discussed how geography, irredentism, and patrimonialism
may elucidate Russia’s aggressive behavior in Eastern Europe-2 (Belarus,
Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine).
The political asymmetry in the Black Sea, where the maritime
NATO has been present while continental Russia is almost absent, has been the
important geostrategic rationale behind Russia’s military power projection in
Transnistria (Moldova), Abkhazia and South Ossetia (Georgia), and Crimea and
eastern Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (Ukraine).
Similar political asymmetry takes place in the Baltic Sea.
To break this asymmetry, Russia keeps and expands its military presence in the
Kaliningrad exclave and in landlocked Belarus. And here is what might happen in
the future. Following a missile barrage, Russian troops from Kaliningrad advance
towards Belarus through the Suwalki Gap and cut the Baltic States off from the
rest of the NATO countries. As a result, the landward hegemon Russia receives land
access to its Baltic Sea exclave and the Baltic States turn into NATO’s
exclave!
In a series of papers (parts 1, part 2 and part 3) in Russian for the leading Belarusian newspaper Naviny, I analyzed in detail the current geostrategic situation in the Eastern Europe-2 (Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine), a large macro-region located between the NATO and Russian Federation (RF). I was delighted that these publications were followed by a discussion, often heated, in which a variety of opinions – including my own – were expressed. I assumed at that time that my modest contribution to the geostrategic analysis of the Eastern Europe-2 was over.
While keeping an eye on that part of the world, I started a project on health care, a top issue for American voters in the 2018 intermediate elections. The comparative analysis of American and other developed countries health care systems appeared at www.geostrategy.info.
The geography of risks. The votes for Donald Trump
Risks, identified, measured, and analyzed in parts 1 and 2 of this research, can be associated with a few maps from the 2016 presidential election.
A. The social risks defined by “group grievance” and “refugees and IDPs” are – at least to some degree – real in the United States. These risks are perceived as acute ontological insecurity by the majority of whites: most whites, even the majority of college graduated whites (49%), voted for Donald Trump (Figure 34). During his emotional – postmodernist! – campaign, the charismatic Trump raised the fear level, played up humiliation, and articulated a need for the great leader. Trump’s nativist (some incorrectly use the term “nationalist”) (see Leahy, 2015) perspective and rhetoric awakened dormant features of universal human nature in Middle America. Machiavellian intelligence (in a time of resource scarcity or crisis a “lion” can terrify the “wolves”) became a powerful factor in the electoral behavior of these voters. Continue reading The enigma of Donald Trump (part 3)→
In the part 1 of this paper we discussed the Machiavellian intelligence approach in elitology. According to this theory, when we must act under uncertainty (a state of mind) with incomplete information about risks (the world is almost out of control) our “non-logical” conduct follows from a particular belief about the world in conjunction with a particular sentiment, desire or psychic state. This conduct is guided by two permanent sets of assumptions associated with two particular ways of life shaped by evolution. The two specific cultural and personological patterns, developed over time to help us withstand different risks during upswings and downswings of socio-economic and political development, influence our experiences of uncertainty into one of two fixed ways. In a competitive individualist environment a “fox” can discover snares. In a time of resource scarcity or crisis a “lion” can terrify the wolves.
We already learned (see figure 32) that a new Pareto long elite cycle started in 2008. It seemed as though the upswing of this new elite cycle could have become more and more synchronized with the new psychosocial health economic cycle (and with the fading IT long economic cycle) in the American economy. Unfortunately, during Obama’s presidency the governing elite was overrun by individuals with the skills and inclination to utilize legal and financial means and ideological persuasion. In Pareto’s language, these skills and proclivities are a deceitful and cunning craft. Overrun by these “foxes,” the governing elite lost its political domination in the 2016 presidential election: the upswing of the new elite cycle, which began in 2008, took a downturn in 2016. The new psychosocial health economic cycle(and the fading IT long economic cycle)and the downswing of thePareto long elite cycleare asynchronous again…
As we know, downswings are related to an increase in in-group altruism as well as prejudice and suspicion toward out-groups (“others”). During periods of resource scarcity or crisis, risks to social solidarity dominate. This is a good time for Pareto’s “lion,” which can describe the conservative authoritarian personality. We pointed at increasing risks in socio-economic development, at the imbalance in elite circulation, and at political Balkanization as important threats which played to the hands of Donald Trump. We also emphasized that Trump skillfully used uncertainty, pertaining to postmodernist media, social networks, and expert knowledge. He succeeded in presenting himself as an intense realist preoccupied with objective reality and able to restore foundational principles and to develop a strategy for the United States. Continue reading The enigma of Donald Trump (part 2)→
After the 1948 presidential election in the United States, the Chicago Daily Tribune ran with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Actually, Harry Truman beat the Republican Thomas Dewey. A copy fell into Truman’s hands and he simply smiled at the mistake because the Republican-supporting Chicago Daily Tribune had once referred to him as a nincompoop (Greenslade, 2016). Since that time electoral forecasts have improved dramatically: social scientists and political technologists can now forecast election results with more than 95% certainty. But in 2016 history repeats itself. Mass media, social networks, academics, experts, and analysts in the United States and abroad almost unanimously forecasted the victory of Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. The Democratic presidential nominee signed her autograph on the Newsweek “Madam President” commemorative magazine backstage after a campaign rally on November 7, 2016 in Pittsburgh. 125,000 copies of this magazine are for sale on eBay, Amazon, and similar commercial websites and can be purchased – if you are lucky – for 80-100 American dollars.
The vast majority of predictions failed miserably. American voters and the Electoral College worked against the liberal establishment candidate Hillary Clinton. She was sponsored by Wall Street, part of the IT sector, and some special interests and globalist institutions. Today these same organizations and individuals predict major trouble in the United States because Donald Trump won the election.
Indeed, a few polls and analysts anticipated the victory of Donald Trump, and the independent American filmmaker and writer Michael Moore was one of them. After the election, Moore (2016) acknowledged: “Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn’t let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must “heal the divide” and “come together.” They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.” In fact, only two polls consistently showed Trump in the lead—the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times and the IBD/TIPP tracking polls. Continue reading The enigma of Donald Trump (part 1)→
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