Headline: Belarus kidnapping sets a dangerous global precedent

Sub-headline: Europe and the US must arrest the slide into international lawlessness

Where was Mr. Rachman when America invaded Afghanistan, decaled ‘War’: Blitzkrieg on Iraq: the demonstrably incompetent Paul Bremer disbanded the vital political infrastructures of the Iraqi military and Baath Party. Abu Ghraib, ‘CIA Black Sites’, ‘Guantanamo’, the bribery program of ‘The Surge’ etc., etc.?  Mr. Rachman lampoons, in his maladroit way, the cliché “rules-based international order” the ‘ready made’ that excuses/ frames The American Empire’s bloody, unapologetic Imperialism.

The villians in this political melodrama are predictable, a troika of bad actors in The New Cold War, identified as the patient reader, makes her way through this essay ,for want of a better term, ‘Bill of attainder’ , in sum Mr. Rachman’s acting as a one man legislator!

Nobody reasonable should accept the Belarusian (or Chinese or Russian) equation of peaceful dissent with terrorism. But America has encouraged the idea that powerful countries can reach out beyond their borders and grab people.

That this is succeed by this call to action? should not surprise!

The action taken by Belarus represents a flagrant escalation of this trend. But this dangerous moment also represents an opportunity to arrest the slide into international lawlessness.    

Almost Marx

https://www.ft.com/content/02c0004a-7dfa-46b9-80ef-a88e4ef35d9a