Posted on 08/10/2008 1:27:04 PM PDT by kronos77
WARSAW -- Polish analysts and a part of the political scene are linking the South Ossetia crisis to that in Kosovo, Beta says.
The current armed conflict in the breakaway Georgian region is seen as the Russian answer to the western recognition of Kosovo Albanians' unilateral declaration of independence, the Polish media are saying.
"This is the Russian answer to the recognition of Kosovo. That recognition was in fact a gift to Russia," Polish People's Party European MP Janusz Wojciechowski told TVN24.
Wojciechowski, whose party is a partner in Donald Tusk's cabinet, warned that the case of Kosovo, where a part of the international community accepted the declaration of secession, "shows that it cannot be counted on double standards to pass".
"Russia is using it now", he concluded.
Warnings that the recognition of Kosovo will serve to the detriment of Georgia were heard in Poland as early as February this year.
Bearing in mind the risks for Poland's allies in the Caucasus, Georgia above all, Warsaw's recognition of the Kosovo Albanians' secession was described as an irresponsible move by the legendary anti-communist leader and former Polish president, Lech Walesa.
"Recognizing Kosovo will bring nothing but trouble. No one can be denied the right to self-determination, but only within the bounds of common sense," he was quoted as saying at the time.
Walesa stressed in his statements to the Polish media that Kosovo was "with its irresponsible behavior, causing new divisions in Europe and globally and undermining international relations".
Ping!
Kosovo was bad policy for America and Condi Rice should have seen this coming.
Now the precedent will be applied to Chechnya, Tatarstan, the Bashkorts, etc. Russia will be smashed into a thousand pieces! God wills it!
Exactly. And the people here on FR who are screaming that we need to "do something about those damn Russians" need to pull their heads out of their fifth point of contact and realize that we cannot inject ourselves into every single conflict in the world and not expect hostile responses.
Thanks to Kosovo; all those people need to do is start declaring for Russia and there is yet another pretext for Russia to invade another country.
Bush's unwillingness to overturn Clinton's policy on Kosovo and the State Department's recognition of Kosovo will continue to haunt us for quite some time.
Belarus might as well rejoin at this point as well. God only knows what Putin has planned for Kaliningrad.
bttt
Clinton got us into a can of worms in the Balkans. The first mistake was recognizing Bosnia as a separate country from Serbia. Then the Kosovo war was a major tragedy and will haunt us for generations.
Now to be consistent we have to accept the right of the majorities in Abkhazia and South Ossetia to be part of Russia. Most of their citizens carry Russian passports after all.
We should have disbanded NATO in 1990. We are economically busted and pitifully overextended.
There are similarities and big differences between the two.
It may be an attempt of “wag the dog” for Putin, with oil prices dropping and Russian stocks dropping precipitously.
Kosovo was wrong, but South Ossetia situation is much worse for Russia. While not sanctioned by UN, and executed by NATO (which had nothing at all to do with Kosovo, except the vague and flimsy pretense of potential for “spreading violence to neighboring NATO countries” and “WWI started in Balkans”) the separation and breakup of Yugoslavia and Serbia into as many little pieces as possible was essentially approved and urged by so-called “international opinion”.
Russia, on the other hand, has practically no friends in this adventure, even among their “friends” (or more properly stated, dependents). And, while South Ossetia has claimed “autonomy”, no country or organization in the world recognized or supported its “separation”. It’s not helping Russia, in the short or long term. To quote Carnegie, it’s not the way “to Win Friends, Influence People, and Succeed in a Changing World.”
See more details on this in my post here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2059511/posts?page=7#7
Really? I look at that map and see that they have a lot to gain. Look at Eastern Ukraine. The other large group, Tartars, don't want to break with Russia. Tatarstan is already practically it's own country already considering their level of autonomy and self governance. They welcomed Putin appointing the governor as their current "President of Tatarstan" was corrupt as hell. How do I know? My wife is from Kazan and is Russian-Tatar.
Kazahkstan has already broken away and they have way too much on their plate as they are still rebuilding after the Soviets.
If Putin gets his way without any significant pushback, he will go for Eastern Ukraine next.
That is what you get when you open the Pandora`s box in the absence of common sense...similarity with Kosovo`s inDependancy is in form and not in essence, but regardless of that it can be "used" in next conflicts...nobody denies georgian territorial integrity (not even Russia did it, well, not formaly anyway), but Saakashvili acted stupid, he endangered the lives not just of Ossetians, but of his own people and heated the resurected cold war and small countries definitively do not nead that...
"Kazahkstan has already broken away and they have way too much on their plate as they are still rebuilding after the Soviets."Rebuilding to what? Until the 3-rd decade of the last century they were primarily a bunch of nomadic people. All their existing infrastructure was built by the Russians/Soviets.
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Russians ever done for them?
Environmental damage and developing their oil fields. At least that's what some of my friends who've worked there said.
I guess they would have done better on their own. After they became independent they happily lapsed into 3rd world Asiatic hell-hole mode.
Yeah, this is true, dang it.
“Kosovo was bad policy for America and Condi Rice should have seen this coming.”
Exactly. And the people here on FR who are screaming that we need to “do something about those damn Russians” need to pull their heads out of their fifth point of contact and realize that we cannot inject ourselves into every single conflict in the world and not expect hostile responses.
Reply:
Now this is an example of what some would call “Chickens Coming Home...To Roost”
I said in a post at the time that giving Kosovo to the Muslims was a mistake.
Condi threw the Muslims an appeasement bone by going along with giving Kosovo to those who hate America.
For what did we gain, the radical Muslims still want us dead and gone.
We, like Neville Chamberlain who tried to appease the Nazi's by signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding part of Czechoslovakia to German dictator Adolf Hitler poked a large finger in the eye of the Russians who said very often and loudly they did not want to see a separate Kosovo.
Now we know the very high price we continue to pay for Bill Clintons and Condi's misguided actions in the Balkans.
Actually I would welcome the Russians in Kosovo at least that would wipe out another Muslim state recognized by our new world order.
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