There is a huge difference between diverting an international flight and terrorising one’s own citizens. The latter is a humanitarian crisis. The former is a threat to me and my family. That’s a material difference.
At the very least, Belarusian air space and air access rights should be curtailed. It would also be reasonable to scramble NATO assets to protect those airways.
Nobody proposed NATO air dominance over Belarus. What I proposed is restricting international flights through Belarusian ATZ, denying Belarusian flights international overfly, escorting international flights that get close to Belarus with armed NATO platforms and denying neighbouring airspace to Belarusian armed platforms.
Would they actually do anything more than that?
That also makes me worried, because they're a nuclear nation and when someone is cornered or has nothing left to lose they can become seriously dangerous.
So what? Do you remember what had happened to MH17? So what?
You're not going to get a lot of people on your side suggesting we do to Belarus what we did to Japan.
Look at Putin - doesn't matter what he does, his retinue does what they want. They are enjoying super-yachts, parking them without any issues in European ports, their kids are still “almost gods” and do whatever they want.
The western world gratefully takes the money from dictatorship regimes, and they don't give a shit where money comes from.
While it happens, dictators will not stop. As soon as dictators lose their establishment support, they’ll be overthrown.
All of the “sanctions” are so ridiculous, that it looks like these sanctions were made to calm down the own citizens, not to stop this devastating money flow.
It is very straightforward. Very straightforward.
Just like in Cambodia, or Rwanda, or North Korea, or many, many other examples - as a rule, the world does not intervene with violent regime change just because a regime is abusing their people. Like, nobody in power batted an eye when Saddam gassed Kurds in his territory, intervention happened only when he invaded Kuwait. I'm not even sure if I have seen a single exception in 20th-21st century history; it feels like humanitarian aspects have been only used as a pretext or justification if there were other politic/economic reasons that mattered more than that.
Libya 2011 was a civil war/revolution, the "boots on the ground" were locals, western nations weren't willing to risk their own soldiers in an actual intervention and it's highly debatable whether the civilian abuse was ever a reason for the western support (aerial and otherwise), IMHO it was essentially about oil.
Syria is again a good counterexample - Assad's totalitarian suppression of human rights and torture of opposition was notorious and one of the triggers for the uprising in 2011, but noone considered an intervention before 2011 or at that time for these reasons - Assad's regime is a clear demonstration that no, the world is not going to intervene just because your police is e.g. literally pulling fingernails off highschoolers who have been reported as criticizing the regime. The west was ready to intervene only a few years later in 2014, when the civil war had already raged for years and again it seems to have been done for entirely different reasons e.g. Islamic State, geopolitical tug-of-war with Russia and, again, oil - those things matter for likelihood of intervention, unlike just abusing your civilians.
Afghanistan and Vietnam are obviously irrelevant, IMHO noone is seriously asserting that preventing regime atrocities against their own people was the main driver for these wars, other reasons were clearly dominant there.
So in my view all those are just examples that the world is not going to do anything serious just because a dictator is murdering or torturing internal opposition. They may invade for various other reasons, and they may opportunistically support one side or the other once some conflict or revolt is already happening (war doesn't seem as horrible if it's all done by someone else's people fighting and suffering), but as long as the totalitarian state is in control, nobody is going to come and bust the oppressed out of their prisons just to help them.
I don't think the evidence is there to support that Libya was "essentially about oil." There is evidence for that possibly being a major motivation for France, but that was only one of multiple large players in the intervention. Libya was invaded with UN security council authorization pretty explicitly focused on humanitarian concerns.
Your timeline on Syria is wrong. Sure, much more extensive intervention began against ISIL in 2014, but there was support for early rebel forces in Syria starting in 2012.
I am not claiming that such things should be left with no response. In fact, I suspect this might hasten Lukashenko's downfall (quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi), but he is just taking a page from the "western civilization" playbook. My 2c.
I seem to remember there’s a term for what you’re doing in your post…