Following the assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, a group of representatives of American political non-governmental organizations (NGOs) visited Belarus. The American analysts who came to Minsk are specialists in “regime change” and “democratic revolutions” associated with the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon. These people master Belarus in their professional activities. Their immediate tactical task is to deprive the Belarusian state of immunity, developed over the past 20 years, to the attempts of the West to destroy its social and political system.
A briefing “Belarusian-American relations in a regional context” was held in Minsk last week. The event was organized by the American Jamestown Foundation, the German Adenauer Foundation and the Belarusian expert initiative “Minsk Dialogue”.
At the briefing on the Belarusian-American relations, major representatives of the US expert community came, having weight not only among military and political analysts, but also in the political and administrative circles of Washington.
Ben Hodges is an expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), and in the recent past, the Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed Forces in Europe (EUCOM). Michael Carpenter is Senior Director of the Joe Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Affairs, and formerly Foreign Policy Advisor to the United States Vice President Joe Biden and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia. Glen Howard is president of the Jamestown Foundation, founded by the CIA to work with Soviet defectors. Bruce McLintok is an expert at the Rand Corporation’s Washington think tank.
These people in the American political language are called “hawks”.
Their mission is the expansion of American hegemony and the establishment of pro-American regimes in Eurasia, both through “democratic bombardment” and “color revolutions”.
So, Ben Hodges as commander-in-chief of the US contingent in Europe was engaged in the deployment of NATO infrastructure in countries bordering Belarus. The activities of EUCOM in deploying NATO international battalions in Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, bringing American military equipment to the Baltic States, Poland and Ukraine was explained solely by the “Russian threat”, but by the way got to Belarus.
The US military was directly involved in the information attack on Belarus during the West-2017 Russian-Belarusian exercise. They coordinated the attacks on the Belarusian authorities for giving the Russian army territory for training. From it, the Russians (together with the Belarusians, of course) allegedly intended to attack their neighbors.
The participation in the campaign of misinformation against the “West-2017” was noted personally by Ben Hodges. “There are concerns that this is a Trojan horse. In Russia they say that these are just exercises, and then all the forces will be transferred in a different direction, ”said the commander-in-chief of EUCOM.
The participation of the Rand Corporation, represented in Minsk, by the participation in the inflated militaristic hysterics was also noted by the RuBaltic.Ru, an American non-profit organization. In 2016, this structure presented a war game on how many hours Russia will need to occupy the Baltic countries. The developers’ calculations became one of the rationales for increasing the NATO contingent in the countries bordering Belarus.
Of even greater interest among the American troops who landed in Minsk are specialists, whose narrow profile is the destabilization of the post-Soviet states.
Michael Carpenter was one of the curators of the Kiev Maidan, and after the coup d’état, he helped his chief, US Vice President Biden, exercise external control of Ukraine (everyone remembers the famous scene in which Joe Biden sits in the chair of the President of Ukraine and listens to the reports of the Verkhovna Rada).
The Jamestown Foundation is known to Russian security experts, primarily for its support of Chechen militants in the 1990s. The Russian Foreign Ministry at one time handed over to the American ambassador notes of protest in connection with the activities of the foundation to substantiate the secession of the North Caucasus republics from Russia and support the projects of people accused of terrorism in Russia.
Finally, the Center for European Policy Analysis, now headed by Ben Hodges, several years ago proposed to the American leadership a scenario of a “color revolution” in Minsk.
In 2011, CEPA jointly with Freedom House published a report on “Belarus after Lukashenko” in Washington. The authors of the report insisted that Belarusians should be “helped” with the departure of the legitimate president. In particular, the following scenario was proposed: a tent camp is growing up in Independence Square in the center of Minsk, Alexander Lukashenko flees to Abkhazia, on Belarusian television from Canada comes the chairman of the BPR Rada in exile Ivonka Survilla, who proclaims the current Belarusian state as illegitimate and announces the succession of Belarus with the Belarusian People’s Republic (BPR).
Representatives of such, to put it mildly, toxic organizations gathered in Minsk last week and met with President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei. The US Embassy emphasizes that the analysts who have arrived represent only themselves and do not express the position of the American government.
However, the visit of Hodges, Carpenter and others took place immediately after the visit of US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Wess Mitchell, during which, among other things, an agreement was reached on US-Belarusian cooperation at the expert level. So, a delegation of representatives of political NGOs arrived in Belarus within the framework of this agreement, and the composition of this delegation was most certainly coordinated in Washington with the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA.
Judging by who sent the Americans to Belarus, the goals of Washington remain unchanged – separating Belarus from Russia, getting another satellite in Eastern Europe by overthrowing the Lukashenko government and bringing their own henchmen to power.
Responsible for the Belarusian direction of the organization, now flown to Minsk, have been doing this for almost a quarter of a century. They tried almost all methods of “regime change” available in the American arsenal. Only one means of influence used by the United States to the most stubborn one: “democratic bombardment” remained unused.
If Belarus would be failed to “democratize” according to the Ukrainian scenario, then the last option remains – Yugoslav one. However, it also seems impossible while Belarus is in military alliance with a nuclear superpower Russia.
Therefore, the main step towards depriving Belarus developed over 20 years of immunity to the attempts of the West to destroy its socio-political system is to convince the Belarusian leadership to abandon its alliance with Russia.
Practical suggestions to the Belarusian side from the American expert community boil down to this.
During his first visit to Minsk in 2015, director of the Jamestown Foundation Glen Howard said that “President Lukashenko could well become the new [Yugoslav President Josip Broz] Tito to develop close and mutually beneficial relations with the West while preserving and strengthening the sovereignty of his country.”
A year later, in the course of his next visit to Belarus, Howard said that in the West they see her as “Slavic Switzerland”: a neutral country that grows rich due to the fact that Russia and the West use it as a platform for negotiations with each other.
During the current visit to Belarus, the Director of the Jamestown Foundation quite transparently hinted what was preventing the “blue-eyed” from becoming “Slavic Switzerland.” Membership of Minsk in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) does not allow it to be de facto neutral, Howard complained.
Given this dynamic, it is easy to figure out what the American analysts will say during the next visit to Minsk. Want to be Slavic Switzerland? You will, we will help you with this. Just give up the union with Russia – leave the Union State, the EAEU and the CSTO.
After this happens, it will be possible to consider that the deed is done: Belarus will be defenseless in the face of “democratization”.
Everything else is a matter of technology. There will be a tent city on Independence Square, and street activists who are raised on grants from the Open Society Foundation. And if the legitimate authorities try to disperse the “peaceful protest,” then you will have both the NATO contingent in the Baltic States and the American military base, which will be built in Poland by then.
The week will not pass after the appeal of the “democratic forces of Belarus” to the “civilized world”, as the American marines will already be in Minsk. Alexander Lukashenko instead of the “Belarusian Tito” will become the “Belarusian Milosevic”, and Belarus will fully repeat the fate of Yugoslavia. This is what the envoys of Washington are talking about about “Slavic Switzerland.”