This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Do you remember when in December 2023, Poland finally voted out the the far-right PiS party and moderate Europeans rejoiced to see Tusk become the prime minister?
Well, it seems that this joy might have been a bit premature. You see, Poland is currently being flooded by migrants from Belarus. Per the BBC:
Dozens a day might add up to ten or twenty thousand over a year. Of course, most of them don't want to stay in Poland in the first place:
The population of Poland is around 38M, and there a about 1M refugees from Ukraine in Poland without civilization ending, but the migrants via Belarus seem to tax the Polish state beyond the breaking limit.
Thus, the ultima ratio of a state fighting for its survival:
There are some things a government or legislature can suspend at will. If Tusk decides to suspend a civil servant or a subsidiary for farmers, that is his prerogative.
The right to asylum is not something you can suspend at will. I mean, if you are in the middle of a zombie virus apocalypse, a case might be made, but Poland is very much not on the brink of collapse.
Obviously, I am not suggesting that all the refugees entering via Belarus should get asylum. Likely, almost none of them qualify. But they should have a right to make their request and get a speedy rejection, followed by an appeal speedily denied by a judge and a plane ticket back to their country of origin.
Yes, this will mean that for every plane ticket that Belarus buys (or makes some migrant pay for), the EU will also need to pay for a plane ticket, but realistically that is the only way out of the situation. We do not want to compete with Belarus in "who is better at terrorizing delusional migrants", because that game can only be won by shooting more unarmed civilians than Belarus is willing to shoot.
This is feasible because the GDP of the EU is much higher than that of Russia (which also likes to spent its income on other stuff, such as killing Ukrainians). We can match them plane ticket for plane ticket. There are places where the number of migrants/refugees/asylum seekers reaches numbers where one might discuss how one can handle all the people. The border between Poland and Belarus is not such a place.
Barely a year ago Agnieszka Holland, in her movie, was chastizing Poles for their backward preference for a secure border. The elite camp currently in power enthusiastically nodded along, plebs chafed. Somehow I don't buy this change of tune.
In any case, it comes down to our inept attempts at destabilizing Belarus regime. Maybe we're getting enough results to justify the costs of this border issue, I doubt it, I think the window of opportunity is gone.
More options
Context Copy link
I thought that we are beyond this point already. At least since COVID, everybody knows that rights, including human rights can be suspended at will, sometimes based on unilateral decision of governing bodies for what constitutes a crisis. We now hype everything ranging from climate change through mental health or obesity or anything else as crisis, this is the feature and not a bug. It was actually one of my direct examples to many people during COVID - what prevents government to declare some arbitrary crisis and act with heavy hand?
Also this is nothing new, human rights were undermined constantly. Look at declaration of human rights and let's use Article 5
Waterboarding is widely deemed as torture and yet it was used by CIA in their War on Terror and to my knowledge nobody was punished for it.
Another one is of course article 12
This one is dead, governments routinely spy on peoples electronic correspondence and ignore their privacy. And it seems that nobody gives a shit.
Of course Article 14 is also very sketchy:
This is my favorite one when I am talking with progressives who are supposedly staunch defenders of human rights. It is interesting to watch how many people are then using legalese to weasel out of this one.
Asylum is part of Article 14:
Again, many people may bog this down into legal battles of who is asylum seeker, if Belarus is not safe country for many such people trying to cross Polish borders etc. Call me cynical, but I do not see how this should be some barrier nobody will cross.
More options
Context Copy link
For a moment I thought Poland was being flooded by Belarusian citizens fleeing Lukashenko's government and was wondering why they were complaining about what was clearly some divine plan to make Poland great again by heaping ruin on its neighbors one by one and rejuvenating the Polish population with millions of their Slavic brethren, but I see now that these are in fact the usual migrants.
The way I see it, we can group people who want to move to a new country into three main categories: highly-skilled individuals that basically everyone agrees should be let in, people fleeing active warzones that a majority (albeit a smaller one) agrees should be let in for humanitarian reasons, and then economic migrants who are neither highly-skilled nor in imminent danger but just happen to live in poor places and would rather move someplace better (you probably want a few of these people around to do certain low-skill jobs). The latter group is by far the largest and is what causes the most problems, since if allowed to move freely with open borders they will demographically swamp your population in a way the first two groups will not.
Since any reasonable immigration policy would be able to distinguish between "real" and "fake" refugees, I support maintaining a list of "ongoing conflicts from which people fleeing may claim asylum" (most likely at the national level, allowing for variation depending on financial ability and local tolerances) and deporting anyone who can't prove they are from one of those places, ideally in an interview with some other former refugee from that area hired to screen them and who would be justifiably mad at e.g. some Nigerian trying to pass themselves off as a Syrian. Perhaps some version of this has been tried locally in the past, but clearly not at a scale commensurate with the challenges we face nowadays.
It looks like this is actually a fourth category: people Belarus has lured into making the attempt?? I’m left with a lot of questions.
I’m not sure they fit the usual categories. Maybe 2 if they really are persecuted Kurds. Maybe 3 otherwise. But I have to wonder how many would be there if Belarus wasn’t subsidizing them.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm modestly surprised I haven't seen the trolls of 4chan and similar try to sell this as "Zionism". It seems like it'd be effective because the term is very negatively regarded in (far-)left circles, but also kinda applies if you squint just a little bit: these are outsiders with no recent history coming unrequested to this "Promised Land" -- the American (immigration) Dream has a pretty heavy religious component between "City on a Hill" and "Streets of Gold" -- without regard to how this impacts the current residents or their long-term self-determination.
I'm not really that far right or fond of trolling, but it seems in-line with It's-Okay-to-be-White-posters.
That…doesn’t make any sense. “Zion” has a specific meaning: it’s a hill where David built the original kingdom of Israel. What’s the equivalent to an economic migrant?
The idea of a mythic "promised land" is broader than a specific hill in Israel. Lots of (early) American narrative references biblical history around the concept, from the place names ("Bethlehem, Pennsylvania", and even more obvious in heavily-Mormon Utah, which features Zion National Park and a Jordan River) to the idea of fleeing persecution to practice religion safely. And it's not just White Americans -- even MLK referenced the (more or less abstract idea) in one of his most famous speeches:
I don't think it's hard to see parallels with the American immigrant narrative -- consider "The New Colossus" inscription on the Statue of Liberty, although perhaps the Jewish tradition of interpreting the history and text there varies substantially.
Okay, but for a random Muslim sneaking from Belarus to Poland to Germany, or a random Nicaraguan looking for a job in SoCal, there’s nothing religious about it. Is there?
Not strictly, I suppose. Although the acceptance of "life will be better if I can move myself over there" without necessary direct evidence strikes me as at least a bit of a cargo cult mentality, it's probably not religion per se.
What makes you think there isn't direct evidence?
It'd be one thing if we were talking about middle class Indians piling into an inordinately expensive and crowded Toronto apartment and a shitty mall degree. But I think most asylum seekers to Europe are probably right that it's a better deal.
More options
Context Copy link
Mmhmm.
Looking a little further…it might actually be mostly Iraqi Kurds? That’s not a terrible fit, and I can see the irony,
But I suppose drawing attention to the fact that Belarus is apparently encouraging the problem wouldn’t be as funny to channers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What if they are from two different sides of the civil war? What if one of the sides fractures into opposing factions? You would have to implement a tracking system to ensure your willing helpers are not lying to you.
Setting up a protocol to verify which language an asylum seeker can understand does not seem so difficult. Tape recorders should be a sufficient tech level for that.
More options
Context Copy link
“Glory to Arstotzka.”
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The right to asylum has already been suspended in the EU, the catch is that it is suspended in favor of the refugees. They get all the protections of the asylum laws, they follow none of the obligations.
The laws say "you must apply in the first safe country" - doesn't happen.
The laws say the asylum seeker must be fleeing persecution or serious harm in their country of origin - almost none of them are.
The laws say that asylum seekers must be returned to the first safe EU country they arrived in for said country to decide asylum - this never happens.
The laws say asylum seekers must return when their case is denied - almost none of them do.
If others can selectively apply the asylum laws why can't Poland? What justification does the EU have for enforcing this law when the EU itself doesn't follow it?
This is a false dichotomy between "give migrants more money" and "shoot migrants". Might I humbly suggest a third option, which is to simply not offer rights and money to outsiders in the first place?
Governments are vastly more powerful than most humans. This is why we limit what governments can do to people, even in contexts where the individuals often don't play by the rules. For example, even if most criminal defendants are guilty, we still want trials to follow due process.
Of course a lot of people claiming asylum in European countries are in fact economic migrants. And of course many of them will not be swiftly deported. But none of that affects the rights of people with a legitimate claim to asylum.
As an analogy, taxes are a legal way for a government to get funds from its citizens. Suppose that one European country refuses to collect taxes from someone. Should this give another EU country the licence to just confiscate property of some other party at gunpoint, because 'taxes are already suspended in the EU'? Clearly not.
I was not saying 'give money to migrants'. I was saying 'spend money on migrants', which is different. At the end of the day, the migrants in Belarus were shipped there with the explicit goal of annoying the EU. Given the general regard for human rights in Belarus, it seems safe to assume that these migrants can be put under enough pressure that they believe that their lives will depend on reaching the EU, and risk their lives in the process. Under such circumstances, push-backs are ugly affairs.
I think a better analogy would be if the EU agreed to set a minimum tax rate for the EU budget and all signed a treaty that said as much. What happens when, say, Germany decides to not enforce the minimum tax? What gave Germany license to suspend their treaty obligations to pay tax? Why should Poland listen to the EU when the EU tries to selectively enforce the tax treaty? Ok now what gives Germany the right to not ensure fair asylum claims (a fair asylum claim means actually getting them kicked out when they do not qualify)? What gives the EU the right to selectively enforce a migration treaty on Poland?
I will also point out that the EU, and every country, already has a license to just confiscate property at gunpoint. It is called taxes. What happens to those who do not pay taxes? Men with guns come to confiscate their property. Yes the payee generally gets a good deal (civilization) out of this. But force or threat of force is the driver behind the transfer. Confiscating property at gunpoint is what taxes are, EU countries already have this license.
The migrants all made a conscious and free choice to go to Belarus, and then to either sneak in or lie to the EU about what danger they are in back in their origin country. If any danger to the migrants exists in Belarus it is because they choose to put themselves in danger. The migrants put themselves in this situation, if the EU wants to tell itself it has a legal obligation to fly them back then fine. But I think how it is now is a bad system because those that stand to benefit from abuse of the system (illegal migrants) do not currently pay the full costs for that abuse (getting back home), so they should change the law. It would seem ideal to me (and Poland) by scrapping the right of asylum entirely.
More options
Context Copy link
I figure that a lot of people on the anti-refugee side do not actually recognise any "rights of people with a legitimate claim to asylum", and think of asylum as a privilege rather than a right. An acceptance regime that produces false negatives is therefore not perceived as anything like robbing people of their rights.
I may be one of those people, but I do consider all rights as privileges. Right means entitlement absent of any duty, which means somebody else has duty providing you with said right. Even original US set of rights in American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man gives government duties through law to to enforce these
rightsprivileges.In this case right for asylum means nothing else other than duty of you fellow citizens to accommodate foreigners. If society as a whole refuses these duties, then said "right" is dead. Duties related to rights are not enforced by god who strikes you with lightning and they are not enshrined in trajectories of planets in Solar system. They are social conventions and they are direct results of what duties citizens are willing and capable to undertake - we have all seen what happened to human rights during COVID for example.
More options
Context Copy link
To be clear - I do recognize "rights of people with a legitimate claim to asylum". I just think that right is legitimate when applied to Olga and her kids from Ukraine, and illegitimate when applied to Mohamad and his cousin/wife from Pakistan.
More options
Context Copy link
That's not the issue. I recognize that some claims to asylum are legit, but I don't think these claims should enable mass population transfers. I also think such a mass-transfer is a greater violation of rights than a denial of a valid asylum claim.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Where? Governments assert broad rights to deploy mass surveillance, control speech, terrorize people with the police for political disagreement, even arrest people on completely arbitrary grounds if they're deemed to be enough trouble.
There's nothing in the constitutions and refugee conventions you keep citing, that would prevent a European government from refusing entry to African "refugees", while following due process.
All taxes are "confiscating property at gunpoint", and countries clearly can decide their tax policy.
This complaint seems a bit incoherent. I'm constantly being told that immigration is a benefit to the host country, how can that be annoying?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Slightly oddly, the Refugee Convention doesn't say anything about applying for asylum at all - it assumes that everyone already knows who the refugees are and that they are already in their destination countries. This makes sense given the historical context, which is that the Refugee Convention was written to cover the specific situation of post-WW2 refugees who couldn't be repatriated for various reasons. The Refugee Convention was never fit for purpose as the a forward-looking instrument and the body of refugee law that has built up around it is incoherent as a result. I have an effortpost planned on this point once my sons stop bringing viruses into the house.
The idea that refugees have to apply for asylum in the first safe country comes from a misreading of Article 31 of the Refugee Convention, which says that refugees can't be penalised for illegally entering a country if they are crossing from a dangerous country to the first safe country. But a refugee doesn't cease to be a refugee just because they illegally cross from one safe country to another - the second safe country can prosecute them for illegal immigration but this doesn't solve the problem that you can't (without violating the Refugee Convention) get rid of them without finding another safe country willing to take them.
My understanding is from the below link, which states (emphasis mine):
https://www.udi.no/en/word-definitions/cooperation-under-the-dublin-regulation/#:~:text=The%20Dublin%20Regulation%20is%20an,the%20collaboration%20as%20Dublin%20countries.
Maybe I am misreading, so I encourage you to post on it.
Exactly - the Dublin regulation says that if an asylum seeker illegally moves from one EU country to another, then they can be returned and, critically, the EU country with primary responsibility is obliged to take them back. If a genuine refugee, they don't cease to be a refugee (the country with primary responsibility considers their application for asylum in the same way as if they hadn't crossed the second border), and they can't be sent back to a dangerous country. There is a similar arrangement between the US and Canada. There could probably be a similar arrangement between the US and Mexico if the US offered the Mexicans a large enough bribe - probably in the form of a large number of visas for Mexican citizens.
The reason why the US can't just deport every Salvadorean asylum seeker who entered through Mexico back to Mexico is that Mexico is a sovereign state and doesn't have to accept them. A huge part of the problem with modern-day refugee law is that every country with a lot of refugees inside its borders is by default trying to get them to illegally enter another country so they aren't their problem any more. (The reason why the US can't just deport them back to El Salvador is a matter of American laws implementing the Refugee Convention).
Involuntary relocations of refugees from one safe country to another (negotiated between the two countries) were a common part of immediately-post-WW2 practice, and are explicitly contemplated by the Refugee Convention in certain situations.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
So it was written for the world wars specifically, by countries which were only beginning to establish a “rules based international order,” when the technological gulf between the first and third worlds was at its peak. And then expanded to everyone by the 1967 amendment. That explains a lot.
More options
Context Copy link
Looking forward to the post, and best of luck with building up that immune system!
More options
Context Copy link
So declaring these people to by blanket not be real refugees is totally possible?
Of course it is. We can declare anyone to be anything. We could declare them to be attack helicopters and ship them off to the front lines in Ukraine. But we would be lying if we did that.
Under both the ordinary English and the technical legal meaning of "refugee", a refugee does not cease to be a refugee if they illegally cross a border from one safe country to another - they just become a refugee who has committed the crime of illegal immigration. The countries that ratified the Refugee Convention said that we were taking "deportation to a dangerous country" off the list of possible punishments for refugees who commit ordinary crimes. (The Refugee Convention includes an exception for refugees guilty of a "particularly serious crime", although judicial interpretations of ECHR Article 3 and, as far as I am aware, the US Constitution don't).
You can declare that you are not going to grant any kind of legal long-term residence to refugees who illegally enter your country from another safe country (and the UK tried to do this) but it won't be effective unless you can find another safe country to deport them to (as the UK tried and failed to do with Rwanda), or violate the Refugee Convention by deporting them to an unsafe country.
I mean, refugee doesn’t have an actual definition, declaring Kurds crossing the border from Belarus to not be real refugees isn’t a lie.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As much as I don't like it at a very visceral level, a state unwilling to enforce it's rules by force has, in practice, no rules at all. In modern times we seem to have acquired a very Banksian view on enforcing laws in ways that I don't think we have the material wealth to back up, or even that such a level of wealth is necessarily possible. We like fining people who can't (and won't) pay anyway and feeling good that we've phased out "cruel" punishments that might dissuade anyone not at least middle class.
Interestingly, even Banks doesn't see mass migration as a feature of the Culture.
It's always fun to see just what a person given free reign to create their personal utopia leaves out or insists on. Banks stacks the deck with basically infinite material wealth but then goes back and insists that certain cultural traits (also including sex-swapping and universal promiscuity) are apparently necessary
A Few Notes on the Culture
YMMV on whether Banks is letting himself off the hook with "it's colonialism". And why.
Well, that’s the tension, isn’t it? The Culture wants to spread its memes, but one of those memes says they shouldn’t. All their material excuses are gone. Contact is their way to either resolve or dodge the contradiction, depending on how cynical Banks was feeling about America that year.
So “it’s too much like colonialism” is precisely in character. Any intervention has to be laundered through appeals to principles, plausible deniability, and maybe a historical study.
The justification for allowing immigration for humanitarian reasons is arguably stronger than the justification for the Culture's rampant interference in everyone's business (to often disastrous ends). It certainly fits an individualist ethos better; the individual is choosing to accept the Culture instead of unaccountable Minds enforcing their will on their entire society through often covert means.
It's "in character" in the sense that it's how I expect a utopian leftist who wants to preserve a certain,um, culture to frame things to escape their discomfort with being able to solve everyone's problems but not being willing to sacrifice the specific character of his own society (you see this today with claims of "brain drain").
I'm just uncertain how seriously to take it as a purely principled position.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If you are referring to the Culture series by Ian Banks I have not read it, so the reference goes over my head.
If you are unsatisfied with his view on laws, might I suggest Heinlein? I find it more realistic.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
aren't the pushbacks justified, as they're not trying to enter legally via the border crossing, but run through the woods to cross illegally, without getting involved in the asylum process? they don't want to make any requests, they want to pass over to germany or wherever. why should any country let them in? I agree with ppl emphasizing, that securing the borders is one of the basic reasons for the state to even exist. migrants are used as a weapon by belarus and exploited by smugglers. by accepting them we just encourage more to come.
Ideally, people could just apply for asylum in EU embassies worldwide, and would be sheltered in there until their claim is processed, with a plane ticket to EU for anyone whose application has been granted. In that case, entering illegally would be frowned upon.
Realistically, we don't do that because it would make it too easy to apply for asylum. Most asylum seekers can not simply board a plane to EU and make their request at the passport control, because we explicitly penalize airlines who transport such passengers. I am quite sure that if the migrants under discussion were walking to a border station on the Polish/Belarusian border and made their request for asylum there, they would not be let on EU soil.
If we close all legal pathways to the EU, and also say that people who have entered the EU illegally do not have a right to claim asylum, then we have de facto abolished asylum in the EU.
@MadMonzer referred to article 31 of the 1951 refugee convention:
Granted, making the case that your life was in danger due to your protected status in Belarus will be a hard case to make, but it is not impossible.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Then your state is not sovereign. Most people want to, and believe that, they live in a sovereign state, and the cynical abuse of asylum is one thing that will force the issue. Either they can, and will, suspend asylum because Poland is in fact sovereign over its territory and borders, or they simply cannot, in which case they are ruled from Brussels. Poles, naturally, don't want that.
The sooner the system of asylum breaks somewhere, the sooner it breaks everywhere, and I hope to see it this year or next, not this decade or next.
Your view of a sovereign state is antiquated, it seems to stem from the days of Lois XIV.
Modern states are very much limited in what they can do. Internally by these pesky little things called constitutions (some of which give rights even to non-citizens!), and externally by international laws and treaties.
If Poland wants to exit the EU and renounce the 1951 refugee convention along with all other international laws, there is a process for that.
The reason modern states are so limited is that they aren't sovereign, they are clients of an empire.
There is no such thing as international law, because law can only exist with a monopoly on force that grants the monopolist sovereignty. Sovereign states are in anarchy, and if they have normalized processes of interacting with each other there is an ultimate authority in those matters who actually is sovereign over them and itself lives in anarchy.
In practice, the British Empire (who invented the concept of "international law") routinely broke its own norms when convenient, and so does its successor in the United States. This should tell you that they aren't confederal norms formed by spontaneous consensus, but imperial commandments that aren't opposable.
The process doesn't matter, sovereign is he who can decide the exception to that process. Just because Western propagandists have decided to rebrand the concept of sovereignty with something that isn't it doesn't make the concept spontaneously vanish.
I honestly don't even see how it's in America's interest to enforce this current status quo on Europe. Would America have blinked if Merkel never changed her mind on Syrian refugees? My impression is that most Americans don't really care and even the atlanticists have other concerns.
It doesn't seem that different from the same tangle of laws and ideology that makes solving the homeless problem in the US so intractable, which certainly can't be blamed on America's hegemon.
Imo it's more correct to say that we have an empire with an international elite that has already mostly supplanted the US, but which still has the strongest overlap with the american elite. For this elite, any and all immigration restrictions are a hassle - they want the freedom to both travel and live anywhere, at the drop of the hat - and they have minimal personal contact with any of the negative repercussions of open borders, either. Due to this, they think that most negative stories are at the very least greatly exaggerated, if not outright fabricated. And they have a whole moral system build up that makes it easier for them to believe this! As well as the money to actively insulate themselves if need be.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There is, of course, a third solution- deport them to some third country which is such a shithole that it can’t stop it, and publicize this fact widely. South Sudan is a much much worse place to live than Iraq which is a worse place to live than Belarus which is a worse place to live than the EU. Even if the south Sudanese government has to be bought off, they’re so poor it’s cheap.
Australia does this with Nauru and Papua New Guinea. There's a policy where no asylum seeker who arrives by boat will be resettled in Australia. Europe however is short on unpleasant pseudo-colonies these days, there's no politically reliable, nearby, unpleasant place they could be sent. Maybe France could set up a facility in French Guyana?
There's a lot of poor, cheap to buy off countries in sub saharan Africa, and Europe can afford a lot more plane tickets than Belarus.
Just look at the Rwanda solution, Britain's laughable attempt to emulate Australian policies. Subsaharan African countries are quite proficient at exploiting European aid providers and the British ran the project in a clownish and unserious way, the whole thing collapsed in a heap of scandal and delays.
This isn't a matter of cash, it's a political issue. The reason Belarus is using these tactics is because they have structural political advantages and know it. Belarusian human rights lawyers either operate outside the country or sleep with both eyes open.
In Europe, human rights lawyers and NGOs run wild. The EU coats everything in a suffocating layer of law. It is possible to break through like Denmark has. But the question is fundamentally about willpower and organization, about the internal conflicts within the Union and within individual countries. Belarus isn't outspending Europe, they're inducing division.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link