42 Europe The EconomistSeptember 5th 2020
2 private-sector firms as well as on public
planning. The uncertainties of the post-co-
vid-19 world, argue the new Plan’s defend-
ers, require new thinking. “Planning hasn’t
become part of the new orthodoxy,” says Mr
Pisani-Ferry; “but it’s no longer taboo.” Mr
Bayrou’s role will be one of reflection rath-
er than execution. Bruno Le Maire, the fi-
nance minister, remains firmly in charge
of public spending.
Which is why it was no coincidence that
Jean Castex, the new prime minister, was
due to launch the Plan on the same day that
he unveiled his €100bn ($119bn) stimulus
package. This will be spent over two years,
with two-fifths of the sum coming from the
new European Union recovery fund. Part of
the idea is short-term: to keep businesses
afloat and people in jobs during a deep re-
cession. The French economy shrank by a
massive 13.8% in the second quarter—less
than in Spain but more than in Germany—
and is forecast to contract by 11% during- The government has already said, for
example, that it will extend for two years its
generous furlough schemes, which have
covered up to 12m people, albeit with a de-
creased state contribution. It has promised
tax cuts for business. And Mr Castex has
made an “absolute commitment” not to
raise any taxes.
Yet the idea is also to turn the crisis into
an opportunity to increase and redirect
public investment. On the one hand, there
will be plenty of green measures (insula-
tion of buildings, investment in hydrogen
and research), as well as the expansion of
high-speed broadband and local infra-
structure. On the other, there will be a
boost for skills, apprenticeships and train-
ing, particularly for the young. Unlike Ger-
many, France will focus less on demand-
led stimulus than on supporting business-
es and investment. Thanks in part to
government help, French consumers built
up savings during lockdown and incomes
were broadly preserved. The hope is that, if
confidence returns, they will now start to
spend them.
Does all this add up to a u-turn for Mr
Macron, a liberal centrist elected on a pro-
mise to disrupt France? The word planning
was unuttered during his election cam-
paign. Now, he has put reforms to benefits
and pensions on hold and a bureaucrat, Mr
Castex, in charge of the government. Mr
Macron says he is using the moment to “ac-
celerate” his transformation of France, not
abandon it. The reforms, he insists, will
eventually resume. It may be that the old-
fashioned feel of the Plan is deliberate: not
because it heralds a return to five-year
plans, but because it aims to tell the French
that, despite the pandemic, the govern-
ment is still in control. “My philosophy,”
says Mr Macron, with a nod to Monnet, is
“the transformation, the modernisation of
the country; it cannot stop.” 7
I
t was thecables that gave them away. As
foreign and local journalists in Belarus
scrambled to report on the latest crack-
down on peaceful protesters, one film crew
was always in prime position. Its members
were untouched whenever police hounded
other journalists, stripping them of their
accreditation and deporting them. The
camera cables that stretched past several
unmarked police minibuses led to the
source of their protection: a white and
green van belonging to Russia Today.
Russia’s “green men”, unbadged sol-
diers sent to Ukraine after its revolution in
2014, are yet to make an appearance in Bela-
rus. But the Kremlin’s propaganda warriors
have already occupied its airwaves. Their
invasion was solicited by Alexander Lu-
kashenko, Belarus’s embattled dictator,
who has lost any claims to legitimacy first
by rigging the recent presidential election,
then by unleashing terror against the large
numbers of his people who protested.
Shocked by the violence of the security
services, workers in state-owned factories,
who were once Mr Lukashenko’s most solid
backers, went on strike. Journalists for
state television, normally obedient ser-
vants of the regime, walked out of their stu-
dios in protest. Desperate to look more in
control, Mr Lukashenko appealed to Rus-
sia’s president, Vladimir Putin, for help.
Mr Putin cannot afford to let Mr Lukash-enko be overthrown by popular protests.
He does not want to set a dangerous prece-
dent. The attempt to kill Russia’s main op-
position leader, Alexei Navalny, shows just
how nervous the Kremlin is feeling. But Mr
Putin has little desire to incur new Western
sanctions by sending soldiers to save Mr
Lukashenko. (Sanctions may be forthcom-
ing anyway, following Germany’s confir-
mation on September 2nd that Mr Navalny
was poisoned with a nerve agent similar to
ones used in other Russian-sponsored as-
sassinations, to which only state opera-
tives could have access.) Helping Belarus
improve its propaganda is more deniable
and less provocative than sending troops.
The change in programming wrought
by Russia is glaring. Before the information
takeover, Belarusian state tv offered a
largely ineffective diet of Soviet and second
world war mythology—more Belarus Yes-
terday than Russia Today. The newly ar-
rived propagandists from Moscow have
wheeled out an arsenal of aggression and
divisiveness. Breathless news reports have
started to warn of the havoc caused by prot-
ests in France and Syria. Coverage also
seeks to discredit and sneer at the local
protests as creations of the West. Selective
editing depicts them as feebly supported
yet violent—and doomed to failure. A new
legion of experts warns of the dangers of a
split in Belarusian society.
Mr Lukashenko, who has spent the past
two years rallying Belarusians around the
flag and feeding his army and security ser-
vices a yarn about Russia’s threat to the
country’s sovereignty, has abruptly
changed his tune. He talks these days about
one fatherland stretching from Brest, a city
in Belarus’s west, to Vladivostok in Russia’s
far east. “We now have no other choice but
to fasten our boat to the eastern shore,” one
senior and somewhat disoriented govern-
ment official says, landlocked Belarus be-
ing conspicuously lacking in shores.
But sprucing up state television’s news
reports in this way may not have the in-
tended effect. The change is so sudden and
so obvious that it risks further alienating
citizens who have experienced a national
awakening in the past few weeks. The rush
of Russian-made propaganda might per-
suade some wavering Belarusians against
taking to the streets, but it seems unlikely
to change the minds of the hundreds of
thousands who are already there.
The Belarusians who brave police vio-
lence do not watch state television, but rely
instead on social media and messenger
groups, such as Nekhta (Someone), a Tele-
gram channel run by young Belarusians
from neighbouring Poland. It has quickly
clocked up over a billion page views. Being
told by Russia that they are mere extras in a
Western plot will make the protesters all
the more determined to prove themselves
leading actors in an historic drama. 7MINSK
The information war hots upBelarus and RussiaA distorted picture
The truth is out there