South Ossetia and Abkhazia which would probably be reintegrated into Georgia and pave the way for potential NATO or EU membership.
Transnistria integration into Moldova.
LDR / DPR maybe even Crimea back to Ukraine.
Abkhazia fought a war in the early 90s to split from Georgia. South Ossetia also fought several wars to become independent. So both those territories might strive to become fully independent but will absolutely refuse to be re-absorbed by Georgia.
Moldovans are actually a minority in Transnistria, which has also seen open tensions since the fall of the USSR.
Lastly, Crimea, which was Russian until 1954, will definitely require a war and ethnic cleansing if Ukraine want to take it again and to keep it.
Curious that, at least in the case of Georgia and Ukraine, those territories only decided they didn't want to be part of their countries when Russian troops rolled in and made totally non-threatening offers.
That's not entirely true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abkhaz%E2%80%93Georgian_confli...
Sure, there may be a slice of population that wants to leave but how can that be gouged properly when Russia keeps influencing the people and supplying weapons to separatists? There's a cause and effect here.
I bet they would be much richer than today. Being a part of Russia sucks from the economic point of view. IDK if Crimean Russians are so nationalistic that they would rather live in a semi-starved, heavily sanctioned, economically isolated country.
It's not because Russia has taken Crimea back in a rather cavalier way that they should be split again just to weaken Russia. This can only perpetuate resentment and problems.
I would not be starkly opposed to Crimean independence, nor even Russian-integration, but in essence it looks like Russia took Crimea and then held a fake referendum to legitimize it.
But the question always goes - where do we draw lines. Should we support the concept of the Confederate States of America seceding from the United States? If California or Texas wanted to secede, should we support it? Wales? Okinawa? Quebec?
How should governments determine actual stake and determination over a specific part of land?
Yes. The Tenth Amendment reads, 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.' There is no power delegated to the United States by the Constitution to eject states, therefor the power to leave the union is reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Secession was and is perfectly constitutional. The fact that the Confederate States did so for a truly bad reason doesn't change that fact. The right thing would have been to … let them go.
Brexit is a great example of how things should work: a state freely decided to leave a suprastate body, and that body let it.
Scotland voted against its independence referendum in no small part due to fear-mongering about an independent Scotland being barred from joining the EU. The independence issue was then considered absolutely settled for a generation at least. However post-Brexit that has rightly called this into question, with still strong SNP support Westminster will have to reckon with that soon enough. Irish reunification isn't something I'm too familiar with the intricacies of, but they were pro-EU too and the Irish Sea border doesn't exactly strengthen the unionists case.
So I think this is a case where Putin's actions did align with what the people actually wanted even if that's too hard for the West to acknowledge publicly (I'm sure that they accept that Crimea is not going back to Ukraine).
So are parts of Ukraine who are vigorously resisting the Russian invasion.
Identity is tricky. Many once ethnic and/or linguistic Russians may choose to identify differently, to be governed differently, and that’s their right. The modern “Russian” ethnicity, as one distinct from e.g. Ukraine, is only a few hundred years old [1].
To be pedantic, Ukraine's regular military forces are vigorously resisting the Russian invasion, not parts of Ukraine. Regarding the ethnic and identity composition of Ukraine's military forces -- I have no idea.
There is widespread protest and limited insurrection in occupied cities, together with mass enrolment by the population in the military. The Ukrainian people, perhaps more than the state, are repelling this invasion. (In strong alliance with Moscow’s military incompetence.)
> But the question always goes - where do we draw lines. Should we support the concept of the Confederate States of America seceding from the United States? If California or Texas wanted to secede, should we support it? Wales? Okinawa? Quebec?
Why drawing a line? It's either you allow everyone to choose their country, or noone. Allowing Crimea but not California, or allowing Kosovo but not Mexico and allowing Slovakia and not Catalonia is the worst solution. Right now, it's completely arbitrary, and this arbitration is what leads to wars and conflicts.
I would say, let them all decide for themselves.
Do you want to allow Ukraine to be independent? Then also allow Donbas republic to be independent of Ukraine, and consequently allow cities in Donbas that wish to stay in Ukraine to secede from Donbas. And even within those cities, allow neighbourhoods that want to stay in Donbas to stay.
Why not, if that's what people want? And that would mean no war. Yes, it may be complex in an administrative way. Who wants to show passport to cross the street and go to the store. Or to cross borders twice when going to work? Or to apply for a work permit? But exactly that complexity would quickly lead to different agreements and territorial rearrangements if people decide it's better for them. Again, why not? If they agree, they can change the state every year or so. If you let people power to decide, they will be more responsible for purely selfish reasons. That's how capitalism works, why not politics?
As soon as you draw a line who can and who can't decide, you are creating a conflict that may or may not lead to war and other atrocities.
What is so controversial about giving the right of self-determination to everyone?
If everyone, regardless of the colour, race of gender has equal right, why some people should, and some should not determine if they want to live in one country? You can even choose your gender now, but can't live in an independent state?
Maybe I am missing something obvious. I Would really like a counterargument here instead of simple downvotes.
> Allowing Crimea but not California, or allowing Kosovo but not Mexico and allowing Slovakia and not Catalonia
Slovakia had a popular recognised referendum and decided to vote for the velvet divorce
Catalonia had an informal referendum that was not legally recognised, but afaik there is still technically a path to do so.
Kosovo - I do not know a great deal about Kosovo.
California can secede and there doesn’t seem to be a huge interest in doing so.
Mexico … idk where you’re going with this one.
But importantly in Crimea the Russian “little green men” showed up, took over, hastily ran a referendum that was very dubious and happened to just coincidentally deliver the result that said exactly what the Russians wanted. It was a fix.
I think you know this though, and that you’re engaging in what’s known as “sealioning” :-)
> I think you know this though, and that you’re engaging in what’s known as “sealioning” :-)
I learned a new word today. Thanks, although I don't think I'm engaged in it, since I idealistically think that everyone, with the accent to everyone, should have a right of association and disassociation with willing partners, and that our current state system is not the healthiest way of governing humans.
Having Russian military bases on their south flank is a major security problem for Ukraine.
I don't know much about Crimea and its situation but I've spent considerable time in both Abkhazia and Transnistria; I have a number of businesses that I have based out of Tiraspol and Sokhumi. While far from a fan of Russia's interventions in both regions, I have long felt, form talking to as many people as possible in both nations, that the majority (although not necessarily an overwhelming one) support the countries being independent from Tbilisi and Chișinău, respectively.
I'm more than happy to have my priors re-adjusted here.
Looks like you are spreading Russian propaganda in bad faith.
The whole point of their struggle was Russian invasion so Russians could build military bases there (which they eventually did)
Also, there are no "oppressed minorities" in Georgia, never was. That would be part of Russian propaganda.
Georgian language on other hand is the most widely-spoken of the Kartvelian languages and serves as the literary language or lingua franca for speakers of related language.
Before Soviet Union, it was Georgian territory for thousands of years, South Ossetia - is Russian name, in fact it is named Samachablo, Ossetians migrated there from North Ossetia en masse during Soviet Union times and re-named area to South Ossetia to give it impression as if two Ossetia's where same area.
The point incorrect, Chechens do not desire to go back to Russia and fought war over it, but they lost because Russians committed their genocide.
You can not simply settle somewhere and then want to break-away, Why is this so hard to understand?
Can anybody confirm this? I haven't seen any state official talking about getting Königsberg or Karelia back. Where has this positioning been hinted? I might have missed something.
The Kaliningrad exclave is a huge territorial and security headache for the EU.
A small, Russian-speaking nation under EU's influence (and presumably future EU member) would be a good thing for the EU, to show off to the world (and specifically to Russia, as a positive example).
Could you provide some links? I would like to learn more about that. As far as I knew until just now the treaties between russia and china aren't all that old and the PRC has no claims on any currently russian land. But I am not well informed about the topic at all.
(After some research: The ROC and freer press were quite unhappy with the treaty and ROC still formally claims those areas if I understand it correctly.)
Overall it is an interesting (albeit very unlikely) scenario, maybe because it reminds me so much of old EU4 matches I had.
As of March 8, 2022, China has no claims on Russian land, but history shows that if a juicy opportunity turns up, countries start to come up with claims that were previously forgotten.
Yes, this scenario is unlikely. But not beyond reasonable doubt. Multinational empires have imploded and disintegrated before (Tsarist Russia, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire), and a lost war was the usual cause.
I guess that a potential takeover of the territory would look more like the takeover of Tibet in 1950. A fait accompli executed on a very short timeline.
All this talk about taking over Russian territory is just pure fantasy. Russia, on a liberal / anti-imperialist wave, even in a bankrupt, extremely weakened state could only become kind enough to detach Yakutia, Caucasus, and some other distinctly ethnically different autonomous regions, but it won't allow anything to happen to the ethnically Russian regions, nor these regions themselves could imaginably see themselves separate. Russia would still be a nuclear power, and I doubt the Chinese would risk a world apocalypse for a piece of tundra.
What happens if western russia gets politically split off from siberia and can't be a petrol state anymore? Who gets the nukes? Can they even keep track of the nukes?
Siberia is enormous and closer to china. An oil rich china sounds scary.
EU is not a country and to my knowledge none of the neighbors wants to join that territory. It's quite a poor region with Russian population... Germans effectively left in the late 40s'
Well, let me expand that knowledge then - Poland would love to integrate that bit of land, because currently the fact that the only entrance to the Polish port of Elbląg is controlled by Russia is a major ballache that stops the development of the region, enough so that the Polish government has agreed to spend billions of Polish zlotys to dig a canal that will allow ships to skip going through Russian controlled waters.
The region is poor, but adding a statelet with 1 million people into a union of 450 million is a negligible burden. And local economy is already sort-of semiintegrated with the Lithuanian and the Polish one. There used to be quite a lot of cross border trade in peace times there.
There's no good solution for Koningsberg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuation_of_East_Prussia#K%C...
My father-in-law's family considered themselves very lucky to have had distant relatives in Niedersachsen (West Germany) and to have gotten out of Tilsit (now called Sovetsk) at all. He's never been back.
I don't know about that. A lot of anti-Brexit folks really seem to have felt loyalty to it the way others feel to their states. It sends ambassadors to other states, so it has its own foreign policy. It doesn't have its own military, yet, but it does have a common defense framework. Seems to me that it is at least a semi-state.
Is the United States one state or fifty plus one?
Konigsberg (Kaliningrad) being a great example with Germans fleeing/being expelled and replaced by ethnic Russians wholesale.
The Silesians, Hanoverians, Saxons, etc. all viewed themselves as different people from the Brandenburgs/Prussians and each other. As toyg said, ethnic-based nationalism—viewing themselves as "Germans" and thus deserving a single German nation—is a 19th-century phenomenon; further, the various German states (not excluding Prussia) viewed and suppressed such nationalism as subversive. Mutual cooperation nonetheless grew during the century, notably the customs union.
That won't last forever, but as of now, the EU is quite a cohesive force - for the first time in this century.
This just brought to mind the idea that it's remarkable that America has weathered at least one and possibly three (depending on the definition of success) lost wars in the past 50 years without severe political consequences: Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It wasn't without consequence but it did not cause anything like Russia in 1917 or Germany in the 1930s. The worst we got was a shirtless jackass wearing horns on the Senate podium.
OTOH, if you commit a behemoth like Austria-Hungary where 40 per cent of the country belongs to disadvantaged minority ethnicities and then you lose the war and the population is reduced to digging roots from the ground and making soups out of leather boots (I am not exaggerating), there isn't any reason to continue the existence of such a structure left. Only fear that the uprising may get you killed, but if the soldiers are demoralized too, they won't shoot.
On the contrary it looks like democracies have a hard time even deciding to defend themselves, because people will never decide risk a war on their country. And Putin is exploiting just this, IMO.
But many important Western European countries were at least flawed democracies since approximately the last quarter of the 19th century. For example, Italy was a democracy when it launched an abortive attempt to conquer Ethiopia in 1896.
Iraq did a bit better in that respect, but it isn't a new Japan.
Mongols/Buddhists have a long history in Russia.
I don't think Russia is even unique here, all major nuclear powers, that have an ability to destroy the whole humankind multiple times, would rather see the whole humanity disappearing, then only their empire collapsing.
Russia, as any empire can be dissolved only from within, by the wish of Russian people. But that's dangerous too, since instead of one nuclear power, we would end up with 5, 6 nuclear powers all having the ability to destroy the whole world.
Five million reservists called up into barracks are useless if you cannot transport them into the theater and keep them supplied.
For Ukraine the victory might be that Russia will most likely be unable to take Kiev and need to "withdraw" closer to their own borders i.e. the victory is not submitting in the "heroic" sense. However with a staggering economic loss and loss of life (including the refugees that might never return).
For Russia their victory will be claiming they "secured" the 2 rebel republics/Crimea. Also at a staggering loss - some of it army but mostly incredible economic sanctions. It remains to be seen if Putins regime will be able to survive that in the long run.
In terms of the classical definition I guess you could call it a stalemate - don't see how either of them can win - everybody loses. Who loses less - arguably I'd say economic sanctions still do not hurt as much as the decades Ukraine will need to rebuild. And Russia still has a huge amount of natural resources that others need and are willing to pay for.
I don't doubt that once this is over, the US and the EU will launch a generous reconstruction plan. Ukraine may end up with much better infrastructure in place of the destroyed one.
This could be financed from seized oligarchs' wealth. No need to spend taxpayer money. And Western construction companies will like those contracts, doubly so after Covid.
Some of those losses are the Russian military revealing itself to be incompetent and quasi-unequipped, but the number of losses is just too high.
This appears to be something like 75% of their total operational power, with obvious, serious problems, like relying on civilian GPS, being evidently wholly unprepared for the mud, the fact that there's no comms chain back so they rely on Ukrainian comms networks staying up, the lack of a supply chain, the fact that the domestic population is finally catching on to the fact that Putin is illegally using his conscripts on the front line, the consequent astonishing rate of desertion from an army who weren't told they were invading until they crossed the border to "keep peace", the death of two generals, more aircraft losses than they expected, etc.
It's quite a big fraction of their power and what is very striking is that they appear unable to fully support it
The only people really surprised by this attack appear to be essentially all ranks of the Russian army -- an army spoiled by corruption and grift.
The bigger question is which ends first? The war, or Putin?
So their _own_ GPS-system Glonass, not the US GPS.
When I was at the military we "learned" that encrypted communication makes no sense when the transmitted content effects events no longer than half a day into the future as the opponent cannot take effective countermeasures anyway.
>> The intelligence arm of the Ukrainian defence ministry said Maj Gen Vitaly Gerasimov, chief of staff of the 41st Army, had been killed outside the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, along with other senior officers.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/andrei-sukho...
>> Andrei Sukhovetsky was the commanding general of the Russian 7th Airborne Division and a deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army, and by far the most senior Russian figure to have died in the conflict so far.
>> Mr Putin confirmed that a general had been killed in a speech updating the Russian people on the progress of the conflict, eight days into the deadly invasion.
NATO will increasingly be seen as an ineffective formulation for security of Europe as it has been demonstrated by Russia to Europeans. (The choices [it affords] are roll over or start a nuclear war. That's not a 'security' framework.) Sovereign European states will definitely (re)consider reaching 1-to-1, direct, security and treaty arrangements with Russia. Some may object to my prognosis here, and we'll soon find out after the Baltic States matter takes center stage. (Yes, imo Ukraine will surrender and accept terms.) NATO may actually go the way of Warsaw Pact sooner than you think.
US Dollar dominance has been, apparently by US itself, dealt a fatal blow. UK's ill-gotten "oligarch" wealth safe kitty has also suffered. The Swiss too pissed on their neutrality. Powerful entities and individuals will be seeking alternative safe havens. What many Americans fail to recognize is that US Dollar dominance is what permits this nation to manage stupendous levels of debt. What they also fail to recognize is that non-American elite in US orbit were OK with the political arrangements as long as they got to get a cut of the global financial arrangement and lived in "security", but being forbidden to invest in other countries and a rapidly shrinking non-sanctioned global pie is most certainly affecting these long standing calculations.
The intelligence services of the West have also suffered a huge blow. They still have no idea of where this will stop as far as Russia is concerned, and far more importantly, US apparently has NO IDEA as to the level of agreement between China and Russia. They keep probing and asking. No one knows! Yesterday there was literally a flurry of articles in WSJ, FT, Asiatimes, etc. directly addressing China. Asiatimes did its best to put the fear of being cutoff from EU in top article.
Biggest losers in all this will be us little people in every country. Heavy handed security posture by states, surveillance, economic stress, and even greater jingoistic media in guise of "journalism" will be the order of the day. Looks like the 1984 vision was ultimately chosen over Brave New World.
(Just my opinion.)
(Not just my opinion, look it up for yourself)
> propaganda, either by being convinced by it, or generating it
A rather cheap shot. You prove my final point about even greater pressures coming to bear on free speech and exchange of ideas.
The the rest of the world clearly disagrees with your assessment, as if they did not, it would be reflected in the evaluation of the USD.
Entire supply chains (and everything that goes to make such things happen between nations and international corporations) have substantial inertia built in and will require adjustments. My prognosis is a terminal trajectory ("death blow") unless Russia collapses first, which would then force the hand of China, India, and the rest of fence sitters (which also include Mexico, Brazil, Israel, UAE, KSA, btw.)
You are aware that the GDP of Russia is less than that of several individual European countries? And I mean individual. Germany alone has twice the GDP. You are woefully overestimating the Russian economy in the first place.
But the global economic picture really requires understanding of how China decides to act. People tend to view the world according to their own civilizational context, so for example, the Western geopolitical analysis du jour posits a “Thucydides‘s Trap” vis a viz US and China. Chinese, on the other hand, have their own ready and applicable historic paradigms to apply to the global order. The ‘Three Kingdoms’ period of Chinese history is how the Chinese view the world. You will also need to understand that the fabled Chinese “century of humiliation” includes Russians in the list of offending nations. It’s a complex and subtle calculus for the Chinese leadership and having a very aggressive and successful RF on their border is not entirely in their interest in the long term. [but p.s. going “multi-cloud” definitely is what they want.]
Point to the "some in this forum were predicting Ruble going to 0 within a day". I don't buy it for a second. Or, I'm sure someone could have said it, but that too would be ridiculous. And, what is your point? Like, you said that the USD received a "death blow", which is bonkers. It makes zero sense in the global scale of things. And you can verify all of it. The index has had no short term negative effect, and the longer trend is still rising. That was the discussion. Some kind of ridiculous talking point about the dollar being unstable. I was keen to hear your thoughts regardless.
What I instead get is impressively, a complete board of geopolitics bullshit-bingo in a couple of sentences:
"civilizational context", "du jour posits a “Thucydides‘s Trap”", "ready and applicable historic paradigms", "global order", "‘Three Kingdoms’ period of Chinese history", "complex and subtle calculus for the Chinese leadership"
What on earth are you talking about? From your post history, it seemed like you were very interested in Russian economy, and Putin for that matter. Which is why I mentioned the Ruble. As for the other ramblings, if it wasn't auto generated, I don't know how that is relevant to anything. But, you do you.
Kaliningrad could transform to a puppet state of the EU, removing a serious gap in its territorial contiguity.
Various Kavkaz ethnicities could vouch for independence.
Tuva (ironically, where Shoigu comes from) is a Buddhist nation that fits into the Mongol-Chinese cultural sphere better than into Russian one.
Vladivostok used to be a Chinese fishing village once, and the Chinese hate the old Unequal Treaties.
Sakhalin is a part of the Japanese archipelago.
Vyborg (Viipuri) and Pechenga (Petsamo) are formerly Finnish territories and even though the irredentism has subsided, they could still be valuable economically. Vyborg is a major port and Pechenga gives access to the Arctic Ocean. Their reconstruction would be a huge money sink, though. Much like reconstruction of the DDR after reunification of Germany.