Or viceversa…
Where is your ‘evidence’ that the over-powering majority of Ukrainians over Crimeans would ever vote to give up control of that asset which has hundreds of miles of coast-line jutting out in to the Black Sea and is home to Ukrainian military, air force and naval bases as well as a source of income from, and leverage over, Russia on leasing rights for the Russian Navy base that is there. There has also been some gas and oil drilling rights approved off the coast of Crimea.
My ‘evidence’ for objecting to your design of an impossible probability ‘on paper’ for the sake of having a weak argument rather than no argument at all is the political and numerical population related reality that exists in Crimea and Ukraine. You have no contextually reality-based supportive evidence to support your stretch of imagination that its possible that Ukrainians under the rules of the constitution would permit Crimea to secede. You have a whimsical argument that is far less based on evidence than what you know is practically 100% the clear political reality.
I answered that up-thread. The USA being engaged in the same things that they’re now criticizing Russia for does nothing to justify or damn what the Russians are doing. However, the thing about people or nations vehemently protesting when others do as they do themselves is that it’s hardly credible that their protests are based on the actual principle, rather some other issue at stake. The USA is not really protesting that the Ukraine has been invaded, but that US interests has been compromised by Ukraine having been invaded by Russia. Why should I be overly concerned that the USA feels its own national interests are being upset by Russia? Looking at the matter through the interests of USA does not seem to be conductive to a workable solution.
In fact I have come to seriously doubt that US interests on this matter align very well with even Western European. I wonder how deep lies the sentiment in the USA that Ukraine should be used as a tool to undermine Russia in a conflict of economic and cultural attrition or even engulf Europe in a bloody war of destruction. Russia is a European nation. The rest of Europe has absolutely no interest in pushing it away.
You Guess? So ‘rule of law’ to you is a matter of getting it ‘close’ but not necessarily having to be followed as they say according to the ‘letter of the law’? We are talking about the Crimean’s right of self-determination which in part according to them was because the ‘letter of the law’ in the Constitution was not followed by the central state authorities.
I see that you are quite able to construct your judgment on other peoples of the world based upon observations that rely upon varying and contrasting degrees of interpretations and enforcement or lack of enforcement of the law.
Also, I’ll remind you that my argument on Morsi’s removal was not a denial of violation of constitutional law in effect - it was that it was right to break the constitution by the agency that could restore calm with the least amount of bloodshed as a continuation of the revolutionary movement that ousted Mubarik. Ukraine has had twenty years of experience with democracy and elections as opposed to Egypt. And in Ukraine the military and police did not ‘protect’ the elected head of state who received a million votes from Crimea. The Ukrainian security forces may have played a passive role in the legislative coup in Kiev that touched off the chain of events now being debated, but a passive role that allows the head of state to be left in harms way is participation in the coup. Perhaps the security forces suffered confusion in the midst of constitutional chaos but the bottom line is they did not protect the head of state that was favored by Crimeans from physical violence prior to his being illegally so called impeached.
Why do you think Crimeans should agree that Kiev ‘deserves credit’ for the way they deposed an elected head of state and assigned a new one to take the nation in the direction that followed the demands of violent protesters and those involved in a popular uprising? There certainly is the appearance that ‘violent acts’ produce desired results by not following the law.
And you seek to enforce the ‘letter of the law’ on Crimeans by arguing that the Crimeans should have pursued an impossible legal path to separation after stipulating that violating the letter of the law in Kiev deserves some credit … you guess. That is quite interesting to say the least.
I didn’t make a claim, you did. Once that you’ve failed to support with any evidence beyond your own musings. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m asking you to demonstrate that you are right.
“Close” is better than “Not at all”, certainly. How could it be otherwise? Impeaching the President is a power the Ukrainian parliament possesses. Removing the president and supressing his political party is not a power the military of Egypt possesses. It’s the difference between Congress passing a law without a proper quorum, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff dissolving Congress and ruling the U.S. themselves. Both are illegal, but one is a far more grievous attack on the rule of law than the other.
You were talking about that, sure. I was talking about Russia’s actions, not the people of Crimea’s.
Huh? Yes, I like it when the laws of a democratic nation are followed. The more they are ignored, the less I support the people doing the ignoring.
What do you base your judgment on other peoples of the world on, in matters of overthrowing governments? It seems to be how much you like the outcome, regardless of the process.
So why the double standard? Why wasn’t it right for the Ukrainian parliament to break the Constitution to restore calm with the least amount of bloodshed? Why is it wrong for the military and police in Ukraine to not protect the head of state, but right for the military in Egypt to arrest the head of state and put him on trial in a kangaroo court?
Are there any principles you use in these situations?
I’d wager that if you asked them if they’d prefer to experience what Egypt did - their President removed from power by the military and put through a farcical trial, and his/their political party brutally suppressed - they’d rather things have played out the way they did.
Same old story with you: guess at the other guy’s position and attack it. No, I didn’t argue that they should have pursued the legal path to separation in the Constitution. I said you were wrong that the Constitution ‘forbid’ their secession. My rancor in this matter is directed squarely at Russia, not the Crimeans. Thanks to Russia, no one can confidently say that the Crimeans actually exercised self-determination in this matter. People who support the rule of law lost, and people that support self-determination lost, in this matter.
You offer a false dichotomy, but I’m at a loss to understand what “interests” the US has in Crimea.
Also, I’d like to know when was the last time the US annexed part of a sovereign country.
Probably 1898.
The U.S. was annexing before it was cool. 
Anyway, this obsession some posters seem to have with US hypocrisy is not only scary, since the issue at hand is the carving up of a European country, but also besides the point. This thread is about how “The West” will respond, not whether or not the US is the worstest country everrrrr.
I can’t imagine there is a single poster in this thread who lives in a country that is having a significantly different response than that of the US.
I think you’re grossly underestimating the number of SDMBers who live in Nagorno-Karabakh
Well, that’s within the living memory of anyone over 120 (I figure you’d have to be at least 4 to remember stuff)! And look how quickly we moved to cut France and the Brits out and nefariously snag the Hawaiian islands out from under them! I think we signed a friendship treaty with Hawaii in 1849 and then rapidly moved to annex them in 1898, rail roading the whole thing through as rapidly as possible and before either France, the UK or the Hawaiians themselves had time to really react or counter our swift stroke of diplomatic tour de France…er, de force I mean.
[shrug] We needed a mid-Pacific coaling station.
I answered a specific question and as you can see from the answer and other posts, I am not obsessing over US hypocrisy since as I write I find the opinion of the USA pretty much irrelevant. So if it was up to me we could leave out everything American from this thread.
Neither do I think the USA is the worstest country evar (how’s that for passive aggressiveness). Just don’t think it necessarily has the same interests as Europe on matters of European future, nor do I think a crisis in Ukraine should be interpreted or dealt with from a perspective of what furthers US national interests. Can’t see how anybody can disagree with those two statements.
Look, let’s all face it: All legalities notwithstanding, Russia’s annexation of Crimea is now a fait accompli. It is supported by sufficient numbers within Crimea to make it stick. Without a major war on the issue, which nobody wants, the peninsula will not return to Ukrainian jurisdiction in your lifetime or mine.
How do we proceed forward from there?
Well, for one thing, I don’t think that the Europeans (let alone the US) agrees that it’s a fait accompli. The sanctions are still mounting at this point. I don’t believe that war or military intervention is in the cards (nor should it be IMHO), but I don’t think that Western Europe (or the US) are going to let it go or acknowledge the legitimacy of what was done. Russia may or may not care at this point, considering the territorial gain and internal political capital gained for Putin and Russia worth the pain of the mounting sanctions, but it’s not going to be accepted by the Europeans.
As to proceeding forward, that’s really going to depend on the Russians at this point. I don’t see them backing down on the Crimea…from their perspective it’s a done deal. I think that their forces massed along the Ukrainian border are pucker worthy, but what they do next is really in their court. They can simply accept mounting sanctions (if the Europeans follow through on that) and basically take their new territory and go home, or they can continue to escalate the situation, both in the Ukraine and elsewhere in their former territories. Personally, I think the Europeans (especially the Eastern Europeans and other former Soviet territories now aligned with the EU and the West) are rightfully nervous, and have ramped up their own preparedness, so maybe Putin will back down and just bask in his victory of snagging a piece of the Ukraine for Russia at fairly little cost (though I bet the political costs will be more than he bargained for).
Sanctions should be thrown on the thrash. They’re not effective all the while Europe is dependent on Russian energy (effective sanctions would hurt Western Europe more than Russia, and Russia would just turn their focus eastwards towards Asia), besides we need a compliant Russia on the world stage, and they’ll have to be scrapped eventually anyway which will merely be seen as an even bigger failure.
Ukraine is a mess; it needs a major economic injection and political upgrade. The EU should stop being such a bloody small-minded miser and take a bold ambitious forward thinking approach to Ukrainian development. It’ll take triple digit billions of euros in aid, as well as tons of help in the form of technical aid, all kinds of expertise, etc. If they had any guts they’d raise a special tax for the express purpose of getting Ukraine on its feet. Sadly most West Europeans don’t give a damn about Ukraine.
Ukraine and Western Europe needs to come to grips with the fact that a big part of Ukraine are Russian speaking and have close ties to Russia. That the guys we prefer to talk to and like to imagine is the whole of Ukraine only represent one part of the country.
The rest of Europe needs to stop treating Russia as an enemy, and instead welcome it into European family. With a clear, although long, path to EU membership. Deeper economic corporation, scientific corporation, university corporation, space program corporation, military corporation, easing of visa regulation, etc. In the meantime Russia needs economic and technical assistance too.
Western Europe needs to up its military investments, and invest heavily in fracking, nuclear energy and oil exploration so we can become energy independent from Russia, the Middle East and from the USA.
We should act proactively in solving the various unhandled issues to do with Transdniestria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Nagorno Karabakh, etc. and other parts of Ukraine. Use our expertise to help them with good and fair referendums, and if they wish to join the Russian Federation (or Armenia) then support that. Belorussia is a mess waiting to blow up. It too should be given a Russian reintegration option. Russia will need assistance to make such reintegration smoother.
The EU headquarters should stop the bloody circus of moving around Belgium and France and relocate the whole shebang to somewhere in eastern Poland to signal that this is the region where its focus should be.
“Mounting” is a fantasy. The handful of people “sanctioned” is [basically it](In Europe, Obama warns of further sanctions should Russia expand its reach Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/03/26/3731541/in-europe-obama-warns-of-further.html#storylink=cpy), unless Russia moves further into Ukraine. The “sanctions” so far are completely toothless, and are being made fun of all over Russia.
Well, yes, but not such a big part.
What Belarus needs is not Russification but revolution.
With all due respect to Obama & the European leaders, the pathetic nature of their first response has pretty much doomed the issue. Everybody knows that the West isn’t going to war over this. Literally everbody. The sanctions so far are nominal, basically just a formality, as were Russia’s retaliatory sanctions against Western leaders (eg, John McCain).
You don’t need a degree in political science to read the tea leaves here: The West really doesn’t care, and is just going thru the motions.
I disagree that the ‘mounting’ part is fantasy…and that the sanctions are a joke. Assets have been frozen and visas have been denied not just by the US but by the Europeans, and they are going to be painful to the individuals and banks thus far sanctioned. And this is just the first round…another, deeper round of sanctions have been proposed.