Lukashenko Puts International Aviation at Risk

The hijacking of a passenger plane by Belarus is a huge threat to international aviation, being as it is a hijacking perpetrated by the state itself. In doing this Belarus broke multiple International Civil Aviation Organisation Treaties guaranteeing the free passage and neutrality of airspace, possibly broke the European Convention on Human Rights (they never signed that treaty but the plane they hijacked was registered in Poland, and Poland did sign it) and can be sued under the International Court of Justice for threatening the global aviation system.

If Belarus is not hit back hard and fast the entire aviation industry could be at risk. Not hitting Belarus hard and fast will be understood by Belarus and other authoritarian regimes to mean that they can get away with this kind of thing easily, and dictators rarely show restraint. 

The big problem if Belarus does get away relatively unscathed is that there are so many dictatorships who would like to pursue their opponents, and they are in rather inconvenient positions. The Arabian peninsula, for example, doesn’t have a single democracy on it, and lies in the middle of many major flight routes. If the notoriously unscrupulous Arabian dictatorships started breaching international law like this, flying would either become very difficult and dangerous for dissidents, or it would see huge price hikes for everybody as airlines try to skirt around the peninsula. Flying could end up becoming a segregated Russian roulette and more expensive, or even more expensive with far more associated CO₂ emissions.

All of this can be avoided if Belarus is shown the consequences of its breach of international law through harsh retaliations; retaliations too big to risk just to kidnap a dissident.