Protests in Belarus: Raw Violence Versus Moral Power

Once Syria’s Assad regime folded, Travis Timmerman, an American who had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage, was freed from a prison after seven months there. A border guard had thrown him into prison. That Timmerman is Christian may have had something to do with it. Austin Tice, an American journalist who had been missing since his abduction in Syria 12 years earlier, was still unaccounted for days after the fall of the Assad regime. Incredibly, Timmerman said of his prison experience, “I was never beaten. The only really bad part was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to. I was only let out three times a day to go to the bathroom.”[1] Timmerman’s experience can be used to calibrate just how violently police handled Belarusians who protested the rigged election in 2020 in Belarus, and the quick, unexpected fall of Assad can remind us of the plight that could be in store for Lukashenko. For as soon as enough state “riot” police decide not to follow orders to beat, falsely imprison, and even torture non-violent protesters, what seems like a solid dictatorship could unravel surprisingly quickly. This is especially so because, like Assad, Lukashenko has used violence solely for the same of retaining power, rather than to further an ideology. This renders the violence committed on the orders of Assad and Lukashenko as even more shameless than Mao, Stalin, and even Hitler, all of whom sought to radically reshape society in the broad sense, including the economic and political systems, and thus could be countered ideologically as a wsy of stopping the repression and murders. The shameless, naked power-aggrandizing, non-ideological violence against non-violent individuals evinces power as an end in itself. It is especially ripe for a Gandhian approach of resistance wherein moral power is intentionally set against the raw power of violence.

Around the time of the 2020 election in Belarus, a woman accused of insulting Lukashenko was sentenced to 3 years at a penal colony, an entrepreneur was sentenced to 3.5 years for rioting (i.e., attending a peaceful political protest), an engineer who merely went to a polling station to view the results was detained and beaten by riot troopers, and a poet was detained for having walked his dog on the day before the 2020 election.

The entrepreneur later reflected on his experience by asking, “How can you imprison an entire nation?” The engineer remarked, “When people stop obeying [the president’s] orders, the system will collapse.” The poet pointed out that if no factory workers had shown up for work for three days following the election, the regime would have collapsed. The thread here is essentially about the collective action problem. An IT contractor who had been arrested subsequently pointed out that virtually none of the people who depend on the state for a job would risk being fired by joining in even peaceful protests on the rigged election. It could even be said that the problem of collective action inhibited the numbers that would be necessary for Gandhi’s kind of non-violent moral resistance to work. It seems that not even the use of social media like Facebook to notify residents of a mass protest can facilitate enough additional people to come out that the problem would be solved. Hence, violent dictators around the world could continue to count on the problem of collective action to keep the size of protests down to a manageable number of people who can be beaten and taken away to be imprisoned. After all, this cannot be done to an entire people.

The moral contrast between a Belarusian policeman saying to prisoners that he would burn them all alive if he got the order even though he was presumably not enraged by the non-ideological protestors and the prisoner who subsequently said that he would not bear a grudge or take revenge on that riot trooper is just the sort of contrast between good and evil that Gandhi’s non-violent passive resistance fits.  So too, the moral contrast between the young women handing out flowers to riot troopers in military vehicles while knowing that the police could get an order, which they would obey, to beat, detain, and even torture the non-violent women. Handing out the flowers is something Gandhi would certainly do, even while being beaten. Were the problem of collective action not such an obstacle, perhaps the sheer number of followers of Gandhi’s method of political resistance would be such that dictators could no longer take advantage of the problem by knocking off individual protestors with impunity. With sheer numbers, the moral shock of people around the world would not have to be relied on for pressure to build internationally against a given dictator. A whole people cannot be arrested; the system would come to a halt. Ultimately, courage would have spread while the problem of collective action is alleviated somehow. Until then, a world without brutal dictators will be possible, though not probable.

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1. Mohamad El Chamaa, Abbie Cheeseman, and John Hudson, “U.S. Citizen Found in Syria Says He Was Imprisoned for Months,” The Washington Post, December 12, 2024.

Democracy Waning in Former French Colonies in Africa

The subversion of democracy in former French colonies in Africa stymies the African Union from developing from a mere confederation, wherein all of the governmental sovereignty resides with the states, to modern federalism, whose chief characteristic is dual sovereignty. There is good reason for the requirement in the U.S. that the states be republics rather than dictatorships, for the latter would be more likely to ignore the federal jurisdiction within their respective states.

As of 2024, the president of Senegal “tried to cancel an election. In Niger, a military coup d’état toppled an elected president, who eight months later [was] still imprisoned in the presidential palace. In Chad, the leading opposition politician was killed in a shootout with security forces. . . . In Tunisia, once the only democratic success story of the Arab Spring rebellions, the president [was] steering the state toward increasing autocracy.”[1] With such political upheaval going on at the state level, any discussions at the AU level on whether the states should delegate any governmental sovereignty would only be stymied and thus useless. This in turn kept the AU impotent in being able to act as a check against tyranny at the state level. This vicious cycle cannot, I contend, be totally blamed on the former colonial status and the ongoing interventions of France, though both have been playing a secondary role.

To the extent that French governmental pressure led the former colonies to mimic the French system of government wherein the office of president is strong, France is culpable in inhibiting democracy in Africa. “After they won independence from France in the 1960s, nascent states modeled their constitutions on France’s, concentrating power in presidents’ hands.”[2] This statement implies that the former colonies wanted a system of government with a strong unitary leader. That the indigenous political culture in Africa emphasized the tribal chief figure likely figured prominently in the decisions to emulate the French system, rather than it being imposed from France.

To be sure, “France maintained a web of business and political ties with its former colonies” that has involved “propping up corrupt governments”—including autocratic ones.[3] The salience of news reports from Africa on France24 and TV5Monde alone attest to France’s continuing interest in Africa. France could arguably make a difference in reducing political instability and enhancing democracy in the former colonies were autocratic rulers and coups discouraged rather than encouraged. Perhaps French government officials fear, and thus seek to prevent, the potential rival power of the AU that could manifest were political stability improved at the state level. Such a narrow perspective would differ significantly from the American position that a stronger union in Europe is in America’s interest, especially considering the cost to America in having fought two World Wars in part in Europe.

Even if France has been propping up cozy autocratic rule in the former colonies, the disillusionment with democracy has been stronger in the former French colonies than in other African states, according to Boniface Dulani, a director at Afrobarometer.[4] “While a majority of Africans polled [in 2024] still say they prefer democracy to other forms of government, support for it is declining in Africa, where approval of military rule is on the rise—it has doubled since 2000. That shift is happening much faster in former French colonies than in former British ones.”[5] Such sentiment may be a preferment for political stability precisely because of the extent of political instability in the former French colonies. In an indigenous soil of tribal chieftains, the allure of a “strong man” to restore and maintain political stability could easily thrive even though it would come at the cost of political freedom. Perhaps in the former British colonies, with the notable exception of Sudan, there is less reason to bear the cost of foregone political freedom. “Eight of the nine successful coups in Africa [between 2000 and 2024] have been in former French colonies.”[6] The coups themselves reinforce the allure of autocratic rule as providing for political stability, even though such stability can only be until the ground shifts again enough for the next coup. This cycle too is difficult to break. In the meantime, the AU has been stuck as a mere confederation, powerless to provide a breakthrough. 

It is not for nothing that the founders of both the U.S. and E.U. emphasized that the states be democratic republics. This lesson finds harder ground where the historical culture is not in line with democracy. So perhaps the quest for the AU might be how to go from being a confederation to embrace modern, dual-sovereignty, federalism by making it in the interest of state-level dictators even though a system of modern federalism would include viable constraints of the power of the states. Delaying the constraints so the current dictators would not face federal strictures would be key, as well as the inevitable political deal-making that is basic to any political animal.

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1. Ruth Maclean, “Democracy Teetering in African Countries Once Ruled by France,” The New York Times, March 23, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

Putin's Fear: Autocratic War Triggering a Russian Revolution

Having watched Oliver Stone's lengthy interviews of Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, which had been taped several years before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I noticed something very different about the autocrat's demeanor in a video made after a year of the war: his shifty eyes.[1] It was not difficult to infer that the former KGB spy's trained suspiciousness of people had intensified. At the very least, the man looked pensive or nervous. A few weeks earlier, an anti-Putin Russian group may have been responsible for flying a drone over the Kremlin to blow up the dome, and even more recently such a group may have attacked militarily on Russian soil elsewhere. Putin may have been afraid of being assassinated. It is even possible that he had realized that a full-blown revolution could happen. 

Days after an anxious Putin had sat down with the head of Russia's constitutional court, the head of the mercenary military Wagner group, which fights for Russia, warned that if Russia continued to suffer more casualties, "all these divisions can end in what is a revolution, just like in 1917."[2] It is highly improbable that Vladimir Putin would release power as easily as the weak Russian emperor Peter III did after just six months of his reign when Russian troops loyal to Catherine enacted a coup even though she was German and the Russians had been fighting a war against Fredrick's Prussia. 

Whereas the Russian revolution in 1917 was in line with Russia's autocratic-state historical culture, a revolution against Putin could be in democratic direction because Putin had squandered the opening for democracy in the 1990's by incrementally tightening his reigns until it could be said that he had become a dictator. Russians were being locked up during the war just or calling the conflict a war; protests against the war were firmly put down by police wielding clubs. Police initiating violence against non-violent people, as if they were disobedient dogs, naturally triggers the impulse for democratic accountability rather than for tightened autocracy. While this impulse was up against a formidable cultural headwind when absolute monarchy was the norm in the world, the world in 2023 provided the prospective Russian revolutionaries with enough functioning democratic republics abroad for there to be a tailwind in moving in a democratic direction. 

Of course, I am biased in that I was born and raised in a democratic system in which the ideology was instilled in me even when I was a child. Even so, I have not read of a country in which its dictatorship has been held accountable from within the system of government. Furthermore, Rousseau had a good argument against dictatorships in claiming that we are born free but live our lives in chains. The liberty is innate whereas the chains are artificial, hence, I submit, a natural right can be derived. 

1. "Putin's Latest Move Includes a Map of the 17th Century," CNN, May 23, 2023 (accessed May 24, 2023)

2. Rob Picheta and Mariya Knight, "Wagner Chief Warns Russians Could Revolt If Invasion Continues," May 24, 2023. (accessed same day)

Reforming Chinese Courts: A Fool’s Errand?

With Chinese courts revising more than 1,300 criminal decisions in 2014, the chief justice of the Supreme People’s Court, Zhou Qiang, told the national legislature in March 2015, “With regard to wrongful convictions, we feel a deep sense of self-blame and demand that courts at all levels draw a profound lesson.”[1] Six months earlier, President Xi Jinping had initiated legal reforms on the premise that the Communist Party needed a “better-functioning” legal system in order to be able to govern.[2] The question is whether this push will come to anything substantial.

According to The Wall Street Journal, political considerations are one reason why the courts have had so many wrongful convictions, including in capital crimes. “The police, prosecutors and the courts are often coordinated by the party based on interests other than determining the truth,” Joshua Rosenzweig, a human-rights researcher, explains.[3] This collusion is vulnerable to the human presumption of infallibility. The police or government officials presume that “they have their man,” and the prosecutors and even judges act as reinforcers (or enforcers). As a result, the defense attorneys can only put up defenses they know will not make any difference to the outcome of the cases.

In Western jurisprudence, the conventional wisdom is that only a judiciary independent from the government and police can resist “political considerations” and intimidation. Even when formally separate, a judiciary can still be subject to pressure, however. Chinese firewalls can fail when a power-gradient is sufficiently steep. A judge facing re-election, for example, may not want to “rock the boat” with “the powers that be” years before the election, lest other candidates be used to take the judge out.

Unfortunately for the Chinese people, President Xi continued the requirement that the legal system serve the interests of the Communist Party.[4] So for all the atoning for miscarriages of justice, the government’s efforts to reform the legal system in order to instill public confidence in it and thus in the party as well, the collusion—and thus the wrongful convictions—would likely continue. Put another way, without fundamentally altering the design of the system that includes the government, the Communist Party, the police, lawyers, and the courts, urging judges to be more careful can only be a fool’s errand.

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[1] Josh Chin, “Top Judge Apologizes for Wrongful Convictions,” The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

Syria: Democracy vs. An International Norm

Democracy is hardly simple, given that the momentary will of the people can be distinguished in at least some cases from what is in the people’s own best interest. Part of the job of an elected representative is discerning or judging under which of the two a given vote should be based. Adding to the complexity are the additional judgments concerning how much weight to give campaign contributors and lobbyists who have a vested interest in the vote. All this certainly applied to the decision on whether the U.S. should use limited missile strikes against the Syrian government as a means of enforcing the international norm and treaty banning chemical weapons. Such decisions should neither be made to satisfy the immediate passions of the people nor on the behest of defense contractors. That is to say, neither mob-rule nor the military-industrial complex should eclipse the best interest of the people.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said in a radio interview in late August, 2013, "I did notice, for what it's worth, that the manufacturer of the missiles that would be used has had an incredible run in their stock value in the last 60 days. Raytheon stock is up 20 percent in the past 60 days as the likelihood of the use of their missiles against Syria becomes more likely. So I understand that there is a certain element of our society that does benefit from this, but they're not the people who vote for me, or by the way the people who contribute to my campaign," he said. "Nobody wants this except the military-industrial complex."[1]

Raytheon stock had in fact surged over the preceding two months, though it's been slightly shy of 20 percent.

"I take the title of representative seriously,” Grayson continued. “I listen to people, I hear what they have to say. At a time when we are cutting veterans benefits, cutting education, student loans, cutting school budgets, contemplating cutting Social Security and Medicare, I don't see how we can justify spending billions of dollars on an attack like this." It is difficult indeed to put the intangible long-term benefits of enforcing international norms over flesh and blood human beings having to choose between food and paying the rent. This is perhaps the strongest argument for an international coalition wherein the costs of militarily enforcing a global security norm are spread out rather than incurred by "the world's police," which, by the way, has not charged the world for its services.

As the popular press headlined the debate in the U.S. on whether to engage militarily, opinion polls back up Grayson's assessment of people's attitude toward Syria. The Ipsos-Reuters poll, for example, had found “a 60 percent to 9 percent majority of Americans saying that the U.S. should not intervene in the conflict, although that poll did not test support for specific ways of intervening. In that poll, a 46 percent to 25 percent plurality of respondents said that the U.S. shouldn't intervene, even if the Syrian government has used chemical weapons.”[2] On September 1, 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that evidence of sarin gas had finally be established. Although the Syrian government could not be linked to the use, it is significant, Kerry, argued, that the missiles in all of the chemical attacks had all come from government-controlled areas and landed in rebel strongholds. Essentially, the argument is that Assad had been engaging in “collective justice” wherein an entire group are punished for the unjust deeds of a few.

With proof that chemical weapons known to be stockpiled by the Syrian government had been used, we can say that at the time, 25% rather than only 9% of Americans approved of U.S. military action to punish the Syrian government for having breached the international norm (and treaty) that had been in force since the end of World War I. Even so, a quarter of the people cannot be taken as the will of the people. Not that U.S. foreign and military policy should necessarily reflect that which the people would prefer.

For one thing, the public was not privy to the classified reports being given to the U.S. President, and on to members of Congress and their staffs. Secondly, enforcing an international norm, whether alone or in a coalition, may not be of immediate benefit to Americans so the momentary will of the people may not be what is in the people’s own best interest. This rationale is represented institutionally in the six-year term of U.S. senators, as well as by the theoretical role of the Electoral College (i.e., a state’s electors is a small group that does not have to vote in line with the majority of the vote for president in the state).

Therefore, even though it is fitting and proper in terms of representative democracy that President Obama asked for Congressional consent for limited airstrikes thwarting and punishing the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people (a sufficient number of the representatives having been privy to the classified intel), it does not follow that the representatives in turn should pass their decision on to their constituents (who will not have been privy to the intel). Furthermore, the president effectively kicked the legs out from under democracy by reserving his prerogative to act militarily in spite of the rejection by Congress of his "use of force" proposal. Either the power to declare war lies with Congress or it doesn't. Given the inherent conflict of interest in the commander in chief declaring war, the power should not be in the hands of the president.

Absent a pressing need to act militarily immediately on national security grounds, however, Congressional involvement could effectively remove the commander-in-chief's element of surprise over the adversary, hence compromising the strategic objective approved even by the U.S. House and Senate. Therefore, a proposal for your consideration:

"Whereas U.S. senators are elected by the people of the respective States (i.e., no longer by the legislatures) and have terms of six rather than two years, and

Whereas it can be rather hasty to declare war on the basis of the fuming passions of the moment, and

Whereas the U.S. House of Representatives was designed with a two-year term of office precisely to give voice to said passions,

The U.S. Senate shall, in consultation with the President (preferably in person, then absent for the vote), meet in closed session to ratify or amend the president's proposal, with appropriate instructions and immediate effect." 

Absent such an amendment being adopted, the requirement of Congressional approval from both the U.S. House and the Senate does not necessarily make it easy for members of Congress. Especially regarding matters of national security and contributing to the long-term viability of globally protective international agreements and norms, representative democracy is a tricky business.

For one thing, the institutional protections for representatives willing to vote against the popular, perhaps even momentary passions of constituents (and contributors) in order to act in the people's best interest can also enable representative, including the president, to act on the behest of American oil companies or defense contractors, for instance. Such slippage built into the political system's design is precisely why Rep. Grayson stressed that he was not acting in the financial interest of any defense contractor that stood to gain from American missile strikes. However, he opened himself up to “going with the flow” rather than leading his constituents by convincing them that it is in their long-term best interest that international norms against weapons of mass destruction are enforced.

In fact, it could even be argued that the U.S., or any country party to the treaty banning chemical weapons, has a duty to enforce said treaty even if taking action is not in the country’s national interest. I suspect that any daylight between the trajectories of a people's best interest and that of the international system of norms constraining governmental violence even on a government's own people  disappears at a sufficient distance in time. Therefore, it is reasonable to have faith that acting in the best interests of global security is really in a national interest, even if it seems otherwise at the moment.

As human organization gets ever larger and increasingly complex, as evinced by Russia (and the U.S.S.R. before it), China, the U.S. and E.U., power has occasion to become more and more centralized or consolidated. With such power comes greater responsibility, as well as discretion that can be used ethically or corruptly. In other words, the stakes rose through the twentieth century both in terms of the power that a president can unleash and the harm that could come to mankind from rogue states with chemical or nuclear weapons.

It is perfectly justifiable and entirely fitting that journalists investigate whether the people's elected representatives are too reliant on the defense contractors in what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. In his farewell address, he warned of peril should the U.S. military and its contractors come to eclipse the will of the people. In decisions such as whether to enforce the international norm and treaty banning chemical weapons, the people do not have sufficient information to be justifiably the decisive factor in their representatives' decision-making. So we can tweak Eisenhower's sage advice into the following maxim: The coalescing interests of the military and its private contractors should not be allowed to dominate or even rival the people's best interest. Otherwise, the republic is lost to plutocracy and its agent, the rule that "Might makes Right."

In conclusion, there is a reason why so much time and energy goes into elections; they matter not just in terms of political ideology, but also (and perhaps more) in those decisions in which the electorate is simply not in a position to render a judgment. Accountability comes at as the prospect of being re-elected approaches. I suspect that the people, reduced to expecting the representatives to mimic the people's flavor of the month, have virtually no comprehension that the intervening time was designed on purpose to protect the representatives in office who act in the people’s best interests rather than impulsively asking, "How high should I jump?"   

Recommended Video: "Syria: From Protests to War"

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1. Ryan Grim, "Alan Grayson on Syria Strike: 'Nobody Wants This Except the Military-Industrial Complex," The Huffington Post, August 29, 2013.

2. Emily Swanson, "Syria Poll Finds Little American Support for Air Strikes," The Huffington Post, August 28, 2013.

The Internet Escapes China's Grasp

The “surprising escape” of Chen Guangcheng, a blind legal activist, from house arrest to the presumed custody of U.S. diplomats was “buoying China's embattled dissident community” even as the government lashed out, “detaining those who helped him and squelching mention of his name on the Internet.”[1] Two points bear further scrutiny.

Chen Guangcheng, after his escape, with Hu Jia.   

First, that Chinese security officials “reacted angrily” strikes me as strange. It is as if institutional interests naturally prompt strong human emotions as though an insult were taken personally. In other words, unless the dissident had insulted or otherwise directly harmed the particular officials, it does not make sense that they would angrily inflict pain on the dissident’s supporters who were taken into custody after the escape. An institutional loss is not a personal affront. To treat the former as if it were the latter is essentially to anthropomorphize a given organization.

Second, the “squelching mention” of Chen Guangcheng’s name on the internet must have been a mission of futility in 2012. “Anything vaguely related to Chen [was] blocked on Chinese social media sites, such as posts including or key word searches for Chen, Guangcheng, GC, or even the words ‘blind person’.”[2] The inclusion of the latter term is almost funny in its overkill; it certainly points to the futility of tracing millions of blog posts and emails on the incident. After savvy internet users used “Shawshank Redemption” to refer indirectly to Chen, that movie title became a banned search term. The Chinese government was definitely playing defensive ball at that point. My point is that the game of snuffing out communication on the internet had already been lost—assuming the Chinese government does not prohibit the internet itself in China.

The government officials’ antiquated responses—both in terms of emotion and technology—suggest that the Chinese regime was still holding onto the ways of another century. This could be an indication that that regime will not survive the twenty-first. As technology continues to widen and deepen, antiquated means of control will become less and less efficacious through the century. Given the habit of officials reacting in “anger,” we can expect the increased difficulty with control to lead to more pain being inflicted on citizens. This in turn should lead to more popular resentment. In other words, the antiquated responses of government officials could be the seed of the regime’s destruction.

1. Alexa Olesen, “Chen Guangcheng Escape: China Activists Inspired by Blind Dissident Lawyer,” The Huffington Post, April 29, 2012. 
2. Ibid.