WASHINGTON, DC – As pro-democracy protests sweep the Arab world, Belarus, Europe’s grim quasi-Soviet redoubt, has taken a turn for the worse since President Aleksander Lukashenko violently suppressed post-election demonstrations in December and imprisoned seven of the nine candidates who stood against him. But, as Western governments – and European Union government, in particular – respond, they should view Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown as a major turning point: the moment when the regime could no longer claim popular support and was forced to confront the failure of its antediluvian socioeconomic model.