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Comment by ivan_gammel | Hacker News Reader

There’s no reason for civil war in Belarus. The country is too tired of the ex-president and the only reason he’s still in power is a clique of generals of security services, who will be held accountable for their crimes if opposition wins. You not knowing that apparently do not care much too.

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He will eventually die, like Brezhnev. Accountable for their crimes? Hardly. What is more likely is Russia installing a vassal head of state or even organising a referendum a'la Crimea after Belarus is occupied by little green men w/o insignia. This has been in their playbook since 1946.

If you think there will not be a violent reaction to a coup in Belarus you are very wrong. People outside Ukraine thought that the Ukrainian coup would represent a peaceful transition once completed, due to the unpopularity of Yanukovych. It resulted in a bloody civil war and the rise of ultra-nationalism, because coups represent much more than a transition of the presidency, they represent a fundamental shift in governmental power and the interests it serves.

It is really very difficult to have a rational discussion about world affairs without pointing out the hypocrisy of the West - but you have definitely struck a chord here.

People forget that sanctions are, literally, an act of war. The haste by which sanctions are called for, by the pseudo-intellectually decadent - wealthy, privileged, distant - is truly something to behold.

It has long been thought that, when World War 3 finally comes to the West (which it started in 2003), it will be through civil unrest over what we have done to the world. We can't hide our burning piles of rubble for much longer.

But do you think Belarussians have what it takes to defend their country from external influence, such as was the case with Ukraine? Belarussia seems to have a very weak media structure... isn't this kind of necessary, to prevent external actors having undue, often times very violent, influence over society?

Domestic forces have always proven to be much more of a threat than foreign ones. The end result will entirely depend on will of the Belarusian people, and whether or not foreign backers holds off for another day given the Belarusian response to these protests. In the case of a dramatic escalation of the situation, there will likely be foreign military support (for both sides), but no kind of foreign invasion. So how this turns out, if there will be a separation of the country like in Ukraine or not, is quite impossible to say right now, at least in my eyes.

Ukrain had rather strong linguistic division into two camps, even before it became an open conflict. There is no similar deep sectarian division within Belarus.

It's not a civil war, it's Russian intervention.

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