Danivon:

Ray Jay

It seems like Czechoslovakia (or Austria-Hungary for those of you whose geography is based on the Diplomacy board).

Czechoslovakia is roughly Bohemia & Galicia from the Diplomacy map (although 'Galicia' is largely in the Ukraine today).

You can be unintentionally annoying sometimes. I know my geography. I'm just giving 2 distinct examples of countries that have been split up.

Danivon:

Ray Jay

I think you would maximize the population happiness by splitting the country in 2. However, western Ukraine has no desire to give up the Crimea, and these split ups always create new headaches for the minorities within the minority regions.

Which does challenge your assumption that it would be like Czechoslovakia splitting. It could be more like India/Pakistan splitting, or Yugoslavia.

I think that's a good point. It seems like Ukraine is somewhere in between these examples. There are about 250,000 Tartars living in the Crimea. There are some Ukrainians living in the eastern provinces, and some Russians living in the western province. There's no good solution here and I'm just exploring the best of bad outcomes. I think if we rescue West Ukraine from Russian occupation and enable East Ukraine to be the Russians that they are, we may be able to come up with some sort of solution. It beats a real war, and it beats Russian occupation of the whole thing.

Dr. Fate:

I think the G8 conference should be scrapped. I think we should look at booting Russia from it. It does not hold the values of the other powers.

Excellent idea! It's a shame that we haven't done so already considering that Russia supports another government that has killed 140,000 of its citizens and created 2 million refugees, 1 million of them who are children. Let's boot the thugs from the table.

rickyp wrote:

The Crimea is already an autonomous oblast within The Ukraine.

False. It was an Oblast until 1991, and then became an Autonomous Republic. There was a move to independence in the early 90s, which was rescinded, and Crimea ended up still being an Autonomous Republic. The rest of Ukraine is divided up into oblasts

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The word "oblast" is a loanword in English,[1] but it is nevertheless often translated as "area", "zone", "province", or "region"

And as the history lesson shows was arbitrarily put into the Ukraine by Stalin..

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False. Stalin died in 1953. Crimea was transferred from the Russian Federation to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954

Okay. And that is a significant difference how?

The people of The Ukraine outside of the Crimea won't particularly mind when the Crimea leaves to become part of Russia.

False. There are demonstrators in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities insisting that "Crimea = Ukraine"

So what? Minor vocalizations by small groups isn't strong evidence . There was no particular opposition to the creation of the Crimea as an autonomous republic... Its obvious that this significant recognition of the distinct character of the Crimea .
Rick

The question is whether or not Putin will stop there. If the annexation of South Ossetia provides a road map, he probably will. The similarities of the two situations are numerous. Including the nonsense about the West intervening effectively.

False. You clearly 'forgot' that Russia also annexed Abkhazia, strengthening it's independence, and subsequently has a military presence in both places, including on the borders with the rest of Georgia.

No I didn't. There's no difference between Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They were both ethnically distinct from Georgia and had expressed a desire to rejoin Russia.

rickyp

The other similarity yet to unfold is that years after South Ossetia was forcibly reunited with North Ossetia, there have been no repercussions. Georgia gets along fine without the formerly semi-autonomous region. And the Ossetians are a reunited ethnic group. I doubt that Putin will move on Ukraine proper.

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danivon..

False. North Ossetia and South Ossetia are not unified. Georgians who lived in South Ossetia still cannot return. Georgia still refers to South Ossetia as occupied territory. The people on the ground are fairly friendly with each other, but the government of Georgia does not get along with South Ossetia - they just have no choice but to accept the facts on the ground due to continued Russian military presence

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Really? There is no longer an international border between south and north Ossetia. And the local government of South Ossetia never got on with the Federal Georgian government when they being kept forcibly within Georgia.
Russian military presence on land that Russia claims as its own isn't surprising is it?

Rickyp

But not because of anything the West would do. Simply because he doesn't see the Ukraine proper as Russia. And he doesn't have a popular base of support asking for reunification with Russia as he had overwhelmingly in Ossetia and has at least a majority in the Crimea. (If one can count on the results of previous elections as predictive of how a referendum might go. And I think because it can we should expect a referendum in a few months.)

dan

False. In the east of Ukraine there are other regions which are majority Russian, and it's not at all inconceivable (especially if internal problems escalate) that areas like Donetsk and Luhansk (each over 67% Russian) would also request secession from Ukraine

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Yes. this is true. And really the only thing that is significant in all your nits...
But, if the regions are 2/3 Russian , and if the vast majority of the citizens want to join Russia, is this the same as the situation in the Crimea..
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fate

In other words, when is it okay to rebel?

When you win.

rickyp wrote:rickyp wrote:

The Crimea is already an autonomous oblast within The Ukraine.

False. It was an Oblast until 1991, and then became an Autonomous Republic. There was a move to independence in the early 90s, which was rescinded, and Crimea ended up still being an Autonomous Republic. The rest of Ukraine is divided up into oblasts

.
The word "oblast" is a loanword in English,[1] but it is nevertheless often translated as "area", "zone", "province", or "region"

yes, but Ukraine is divided into many oblasts as defined areas. Crimea is an Autonomous Republic, which is different.

And as the history lesson shows was arbitrarily put into the Ukraine by Stalin..

.False. Stalin died in 1953. Crimea was transferred from the Russian Federation to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954

Okay. And that is a significant difference how?

Because Stalin can't have done something when he's dead. The sheer number of facts you got wrong in this post is the point - how can we trust any other 'facts' you present on the subject?

The people of The Ukraine outside of the Crimea won't particularly mind when the Crimea leaves to become part of Russia.

False. There are demonstrators in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities insisting that "Crimea = Ukraine"

So what? Minor vocalizations by small groups isn't strong evidence . There was no particular opposition to the creation of the Crimea as an autonomous republic... Its obvious that this significant recognition of the distinct character of the Crimea .

It was a major issue between Ukraine, Crimea and Russian in 1991-1995. Ukraine was fine to let Crimea retain its autonomous republic status, but completely objected to the various attempts at independence and greater autonomy.

The question is whether or not Putin will stop there. If the annexation of South Ossetia provides a road map, he probably will. The similarities of the two situations are numerous. Including the nonsense about the West intervening effectively.

False. You clearly 'forgot' that Russia also annexed Abkhazia, strengthening it's independence, and subsequently has a military presence in both places, including on the borders with the rest of Georgia.

No I didn't. There's no difference between Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They were both ethnically distinct from Georgia and had expressed a desire to rejoin Russia.

there are two differences. 1 - Abkhazia had already won a war for de facto independence, S Ossetia had not. 2 - 2 Abkhazia wants total independence, not to join Russia, while S Ossetia may want to unite with N Ossetia, within or without Russia.

The other similarity yet to unfold is that years after South Ossetia was forcibly reunited with North Ossetia, there have been no repercussions. Georgia gets along fine without the formerly semi-autonomous region. And the Ossetians are a reunited ethnic group. I doubt that Putin will move on Ukraine proper.

False. North Ossetia and South Ossetia are not unified. Georgians who lived in South Ossetia still cannot return. Georgia still refers to South Ossetia as occupied territory. The people on the ground are fairly friendly with each other, but the government of Georgia does not get along with South Ossetia - they just have no choice but to accept the facts on the ground due to continued Russian military presence

.
Really? There is no longer an international border between south and north Ossetia. And the local government of South Ossetia never got on with the Federal Georgian government when they being kept forcibly within Georgia.

The border is a mountain range with a tunnel through it. Whether that border is enforced is not the point - S Ossetia is regarded by Russia (and N Ossetia & Alania) as a separate entity. They are not united. just look this stuff up.

Russian military presence on land that Russia claims as its own isn't surprising is it?

They do not claim S Ossetia or Abkhazia. Officially they recognise the independence of both places.

But not because of anything the West would do. Simply because he doesn't see the Ukraine proper as Russia. And he doesn't have a popular base of support asking for reunification with Russia as he had overwhelmingly in Ossetia and has at least a majority in the Crimea. (If one can count on the results of previous elections as predictive of how a referendum might go. And I think because it can we should expect a referendum in a few months.)

False. In the east of Ukraine there are other regions which are majority Russian, and it's not at all inconceivable (especially if internal problems escalate) that areas like Donetsk and Luhansk (each over 67% Russian) would also request secession from Ukraine

.
Yes. this is true. And really the only thing that is significant in all your nits...
But, if the regions are 2/3 Russian , and if the vast majority of the citizens want to join Russia, is this the same as the situation in the Crimea.

Similar, yes. But the history is different, as Donetsk and Luhansk are historically Ukrainian.

Ray Jay wrote:I think that's a good point. It seems like Ukraine is somewhere in between these examples. There are about 250,000 Tartars living in the Crimea. There are some Ukrainians living in the eastern provinces, and some Russians living in the western province. There's no good solution here and I'm just exploring the best of bad outcomes. I think if we rescue West Ukraine from Russian occupation and enable East Ukraine to be the Russians that they are, we may be able to come up with some sort of solution. It beats a real war, and it beats Russian occupation of the whole thing.

By allowing partition? that's what happened to Ukraine 300 years ago. Besides, it's not thick line down the middle, but more of a continuum So where the line gets drawn will be contentious. By the way, there are also Ukrainians in Crimea.

However, most of Ukraine's industry is in the East. The West (apart from Kiev itself) is more agricultural, and also has the Chernobyl zone. Such a plan could render a rump Ukraine economically very insecure (and, even more dependent on a more powerful Mother Russia.

Excellent idea! It's a shame that we haven't done so already considering that Russia supports another government that has killed 140,000 of its citizens and created 2 million refugees, 1 million of them who are children. Let's boot the thugs from the table.

Kerry is talking about scrapping the conference as well.

Ricky P:

False. Stalin died in 1953. Crimea was transferred from the Russian Federation to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954

Okay. And that is a significant difference how?

It goes to your credibility and whether it is worth readying anything that you write.

Give it a rest guys. It's hardly the most egregious error he could have made is it ? All of us have made slight factual innacuracies at some point in this thread. Dan earlier said that Crimea had been part of the Ukrainian SSR since 1919 and nobody batted an eyelid, even though he was 35 years out.

Sassenach wrote:Give it a rest guys. It's hardly the most egregious error he could have made is it ? All of us have made slight factual innacuracies at some point in this thread. Dan earlier said that Crimea had been part of the Ukrainian SSR since 1919 and nobody batted an eyelid, even though he was 35 years out.

Yup. mea culpa.

Ray Jay - there is a clear difference between Czechoslovakia and Ukraine.

While the Czechs were not too supportive of Slovakian independence, they did not have too much an issue with it. From the formation of Czechoslovakia through to the Velvet Revolution, there had been moves to and from federalism in the country - after 1968 they were two Socialist Republics in federation (although Prague dominates). The Czechs and the Slovaks were distinct communities were not very mingled - the boundary between them was well defined and people didn't tend to spread across it. The Czechs seemed to do well out of the Communist era and the Slovaks less well, which did spur separatist sentiment - the Czechs were subsidising the Slovaks, and the Slovaks were poorer. Even though opinion polls in 1992 in both parts did not show majorities in favour of a split, the recent elections has seen the Presidency go to someone who wanted resolve the issue either way, and a large vote for Slovak nationalists. So a political deal was done. Clearly if the people had objected they would have made their feelings known at the time, but they didn't.

Ukraine does not have two distinct regions in the same way (again, it's more of a continuum, with the far West being more 'Ukrainian' and the far East more 'Russian') - although Crimea is perhaps more distinct because it is a narrow-necked peninsular and has a Tatar minority as well as Russian / Ukrainian people. There hasn't been a long history of distinct federation within Ukraine, and Crimea has been all over the place.

Crucially, however, another major difference is that The Czechs and the Slovaks were only dealing with each other. Neither group were associated with another country. Neighbouring countries were not too bothered, as long as neither state failed (which they showed no signs of doing and have not so far), and none of them had any stake in it. Ukraine is very different, because Russia does have an interest - they don't really want a strong westward looking Ukraine, they want a supine partner; the 'separatists' are Russians.

Now, compare with Bosnia (far more messy). Bosnia had significant populations of Serbs (and so Serbia had an interest) and Croats (so Croatia has an interest). The three-way split was further exacerbated by the religious divides (Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim) and the fact that the area had been a border between the Austrian and Ottoman empires and so had been moved between them over the centuries. And also the Serbs and Croats had already fought a bitter war when the latter left Yugoslavia.

Ukraine is not quite so bad, because at least Ukrainians and Russians are both Orthodox, and there isn't a third country from the other side looking to protect/promote it's people.

It's not entirely true that both Ukrainians and Russians are orthodox. A lot of the population in the west is catholic.

danivon wrote:Do we do that? Not that I've noticed. The problem is that they may not be a moral equivalent, but the are a major power and have to addressed on those terms as well.

We disagree. With the reset button, Kerry's comments, and Obama's "speech," I think we have missed the mark in regard to appealing as opposed to speaking forcefully, with clear moral authority.

Sassenach wrote:It's not entirely true that both Ukrainians and Russians are orthodox. A lot of the population in the west is catholic.

About 6% of the Ukrainian population is Catholic. Most of those are 'Greek Catholic', rather than Roman Catholic. There are also Protestants and Jews and Pagans, but basically the vast majority of religious people in Ukraine are Orthodox.

Addendum - the main point is that Croats were mainly Catholic, the Serbs mainly Orthodox and the Bosniaks mainly Muslim, and those religious identities were often totally conflated with national ones (the claim is that Bosniaks are really descendents of Serbs / Croats who converted/were forced to convert).

Ukraine's two main communities both share the same sect in the main, and Orthodoxy is part of both Russian and Ukrainian identity. The Tatars are different, but the problem is that they seem less happy to be ruled by Russia / Russians than by Ukraine.

DF - The USA lost a lot of moral authority already by invading Iraq. As much as we might want to skip over that, it remains a problem for diplomacy.

Doctor Fate wrote:We disagree. With the reset button, Kerry's comments, and Obama's "speech," I think we have missed the mark in regard to appealing as opposed to speaking forcefully, with clear moral authority.

Speaking forcefully with moral authority? And that would impact Putin how? Why would he care in the least about such things? Money and/or power is all he's going to care about.

The Post had an op-ed on the crisis:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-putins-error-in-ukraine-is-the-kind-that-leads-to-catastrophe/2014/03/02/d376603e-a249-11e3-a5fa-55f0c77bf39c_story.html

Not sure I buy that Putin's making a mistake, but it's a good read.

An aside: My son and I were out and about yesterday and happened to walk by the Russian embassy where there were a bunch of folks with yellow and blue flags. Shortly later and we passed another group of people wrapped in yellow and blue, following a priest carrying a cross headed that way. It was a teaching moment.

Well, the Russian stock market lost a lot of value over the past day or so. Which hopefully will in itself be a wake-up call to Putin (but probably won't).

I'm disgusted to see today that our government is supporting sanctions (but not immediately) as long as they don't hit the City of London. Either you make a principled stand, or you don't. UK seeking to ensure Russia sanctions do not harm City of London.

This is why sanctions fail - it doesn't take much to wriggle out of them in the name of profit.

geojanes wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:We disagree. With the reset button, Kerry's comments, and Obama's "speech," I think we have missed the mark in regard to appealing as opposed to speaking forcefully, with clear moral authority.

Speaking forcefully with moral authority? And that would impact Putin how? Why would he care in the least about such things? Money and/or power is all he's going to care about.

It's not about impacting Putin, but about moving the world to action. Putin is a crook and a bully.

danivon wrote:Well, the Russian stock market lost a lot of value over the past day or so. Which hopefully will in itself be a wake-up call to Putin (but probably won't).

I'm disgusted to see today that our government is supporting sanctions (but not immediately) as long as they don't hit the City of London. Either you make a principled stand, or you don't. UK seeking to ensure Russia sanctions do not harm City of London.

This is why sanctions fail - it doesn't take much to wriggle out of them in the name of profit.

Principles. Morality. Doing what is right without regard to the bottom line.

Sadly, too many are willing to chase a buck while their fellow man is killed, displaced, or tortured. This is the history of Man.