Against Belarus, sanctions won't work; they never do

Deploying military force against another country’s aircraft is certainly a warlike act, and arguably, in the strict legal sense, an act of war. Aleksander Lukashenko, who has kept Belarus in a Soviet time-warp for three decades, has rejected, in the most spectacular way, all notions of territorial jurisdiction, international law, and, indeed, common decency.

Free passage for neutral vessels is one of the oldest precepts in diplomacy. We call violations of that precept “piracy” and treat them as military assaults. The first proper foreign war launched by the young American republic was declared by President Thomas Jefferson against the corsairs of the Barbary Coast in 1801.