ABC News Discovers Authoritarian Leaders Visit Each Other
ABC News reports on Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenka's 'goodwill visit' to military-run Myanmar, highlighting the mutual support between two internationally sanctioned regimes. The article frames this as peculiar, yet conveniently omits the US's long history of arming and supporting its own despots—from coups in Chile to funding Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen, (via congressional approvals like
HR 3767, the 'Saudi Arabia Accountability and Human Rights Act,' which somehow still provides military support). One might wonder why American media finds solidarity between foreign dictators so baffling, while 'friendly' dictators receive red carpet treatment and endless weapons. How is it that autocrats collaborating from Minsk to Naypyidaw is headline news, but Washington's decades of enabling
similar atrocities globally is simply 'foreign policy'? This selective outrage is a staple: condemn the distant regimes, ignore the strategic alliances. It's almost as if the 'free press' prefers not to examine the wood in its own eye. The US government, after all, has consistently provided military aid to regimes with documented human rights abuses, as seen in the 2023 Security Assistance Monitor
report. Perhaps the 'goodwill' exchange is less about Belarus and Myanmar, and more about the global hypocrisy of power.