Posted on 03/23/2014 11:43:14 AM PDT by annalex
Yes. To remedy that:
Of course I do. Anyone with the sense of justice should.
The vast majority of the residents of Crimea do not wish to remain as part of Ukraine
I am tiring of repeating this to you. (1) We don't know what the majority wants because the referendum was a farce no campaigning by the pro-Ukrainian side, not even an option to remain in Ukraine on the ballot, foreign occupation and one week to decide that without international observers present. (2) Even if that majority indeed exists after a legally held referendum exposes that fact, Crimea must negotiate it trilaterally and not get war criminals to occupy its territory.
The Soviet Union fell because its political system was steady but not stable, and when the props that supported that steadiness were removed, the system collapsed
Right. It was Reagan's embargo on technological products and the Star War program that caused the "props" for fall. We can do it again.
Says you. Thank God you weren’t a British subject in 1775. You’d have been a Tory.
“Snatching a country away by dishonesty will reap a nemesis, no matter who does it. “
We did it. Britain didn’t allow us to leave as a nation on our own. We killed them for it.
Britain didn’t get killed; it backed off.
And anyhow this was a matter of “horrible king.” That isn’t Crimea’s situation.
Again, you are equating a secession from a distant colonial power, on enumerated grounds, following acts of mutual violence, to which the king could have given a peaceful response but instead responded with military force, -- to a hastily put together farcical referendum under occupation by the very power whose legacy Ukraine is desperately trying to shake off.
The anti-Communist revolution in Ukraine indeed can be likened to the anti-colonial American Revolution. The secession of Crimea under the present circumstances can only be compared to, hypothetically, if one state of the Union, having been a part of the USA for 40 years and without being provoked by the US, would decide to go back to be a British colony and invite British forces on its territory.
Note that I am resorting to any personal characterization. Them's the historical facts.
I guess we'll see if the majority of the residents of Crimea want to be part of Russia. Lets suppose there are scattered and repeated acts of terrorism; lets suppose there is a mass exodus of people voting with their feet to leave the peninsula; or lets suppose there are mass demonstrations protesting Russian control of Crimea - then I'd be willing to concede the point. But until then, the only result we have is the referendum. You've reduced yourself to arguing the issues surrounding the referendum than the results themselves.
War criminals - come on, lets get away from rhetoric.
Stars wars may have played a part but a small one. Regimes generally fall due to three causes: defeat in war, economic paralysis, and political disintegration. All three came together at the fall of the USSR.
It is not a "result" of any kind. It is an exercise of power by the invasion force.
In fact, there was at least once a credible poll there, when Ukraine legitimized the break off of Ukraine, and the Crimeans voted to break off the RF. Not by such a larger margin as the rest of the country, but they did not want to go with Russia then. So the farce that we have to day is not even the "only" anything.
That story is straight from the pigs mouths and, as such, is not subject to being “demolished(TM)”...
Glad to see you agree that a Russian puppet is a pig. His boss, Vladimir Putin is also a pig. The claims have been proven to be nothing more than more Russian lies.
I said nothing about polls. What I did say was that last time the opinion of Crimeans was gauged in a referendum was 1991 and the result then was that they were 54% for independence from Russia (then represented by the Russian Sovier Federative Socialist Republic, RSFSR). 42% were against independence. The turnout was also the lowest in Crimea at 60%. That was the closest, but still a clear win for those favoring independence. Similarly, ethnic Russians favored independence at 55%. Ukrainian independence referendum, 1991.
if Ukraine fixates on Crimea, it will lose everything
What the Ukrainians do and on what they fixate is up to the Ukrainians. It is rather evident that the energy to fight for Crimea is not there; however it doesn't make the annexation right. The likely scenario is that Crimea will become like these other acquisitions of the Russian Federation: Abkhazia and Osetia, with an indeterminate status and underdeveloped economy. RF will lose all the prestige it struggled to accumulate for the past 20 years. The best for RF would be to leave Crimea voluntarily and set up another Crimea referendum with observers and with cooperation from Ukraine. That is likely to result in a legal annexation; and at the same time that will allow Ukraine to safeguard true sovereignty, including whichever alliances military or economic it wishes to join. But RF is not likely to have the wisdom to do that.
NATO membership for Ukraine is largely up to NATO. All Russia's neighbors have learned the lesson by now that if they want sovereignty they need to join NATO ass soon as possible.
Do not discard the possibility that RF will invade in the East, either after fomenting a civil war in Ukraine or not. The latest developments show that The Ukrainian Revolution has entered an uncertain phase. So Crimea may very well be a moot point for the coming couple of years.
This should have been agreed on in 1994...They should have know that Russia would never give up their claims on Crimea.
I think Ukraine has let it go. They want to build a nation state and don’t need an enclave that does not harmonize with them. The troubling part in all this is not that Russia got Crimea but that the Russian Federation did it in the worst possible way for itself, its citizens and its standing in the world.
Countries hold onto all sorts of illusions.
After 1871, France devoted its foreign and military policy to securing the return of Alsace-Lorraine; getting what Hitler said was “a worthless sandy strip of soil,” cost the French untold wealth and hundreds of thousands of lives.
Argentina has insisted on the return of the Falkland Islands, despite defeat in war and the repeatedly expressed desire of the residents to remain British.
Even today, we read of rumblings in Mexico contemplating the return of land lost to the US in 1848.
The only two countries I can think of that accepted the loss of territory with a degree of good sense have been Turkey and Germany. But such actions are rare.
Annexation of Crimea was inevitable.
The big question is Putin. Is he willing to stop now and allow his successors to continue the task of reassembling the Russian empire, which would be the wisest course of action?
Or will Putin - as did Hitler - push until he arrays all the nations of the world against him?
That is, does Putin know how to stop? Stopping is very difficult for leaders; only the really great ones such as Bismark know how to do it.
Its true that the RF has taken a hit, but hits such as Crimea are soft. The RF can recover from it. If Putin stops, within a year no one will remember the Crimea. Annexation will be seen as inevitable, though lamentable.
If Putin stops.
“Reassembling the Russian Empire” today would mean subjugating a lot of sovereign nations, including, for example, Poland, the Balt republics and Finland. What was possible, and even desirable in some cases for the Tsar and the healthy Russian nation of before 1917 would not be possible for a KGB apparatchik leading, with mixed success, a weak and diminishing remnant of the Russian people. You are describing the absolute nightmare scenario.
Would he stop at Crimea? It primarily depends on the deterrence that NATO would be willing to provide. At this point he is poised to invade the eastern parts of Ukraine. Hopefully, that would go badly enough for him to lose appetite for more.
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