Posted on 05/03/2014 2:46:48 PM PDT by kathsua
Russia should respond to the situation in the Ukraine by following the precedent set by the United States in a comparable situation. Russia should offer to purchase the Russian populated areas whose residents want to leave Ukraine much like the United States purchased California from Mexico.
In the 1840's people from the United States had settled in parts of Mexico, but were not happy with the Mexican government. U.S. citizens in the Texas region had openly revolted and gained independence from Mexico. People in California were also interested in leaving Mexico. The United States annexed Texas and a border dispute led to war between the United States and Mexico. The United States won the war but instead of simply taking other territory from Mexico forced Mexico to sell California and additional areas to the United States. The United States also assumed some debts that Mexico owed to U.S citizens.
The Russians in the eastern Ukraine don't want to be part of Ukraine any more than the U.S. citizens in California and Texas wanted to be part of Mexico. Russia should help them leave by offering to purchase the region from Ukraine once the people of Ukraine vote for a new government. Government officials chosen in an election have authority from the people to act. Officials who came to power as a result of mob action have no authority from the people to act.
Russia should also consider compensating Ukraine for the its loss of Crimea. The separation of Crimea from Ukraine was comparable to a divorce. Often one party to a divorce will compensate the other by paying alimony to the other/ Russia could undermine claims that it "stole" Crimea by paying alimony to Ukraine. Paying for something isn't stealing.
The mob overthrow of a president from eastern Ukraine and talk of eliminating Russian as an official language indicates that many Ukrainians don't want Russians in their country. The presences of racist elements in the anti-government mob indicates the overthrow may have been in part motivated by ethnic prejudice. Russians in Ukraine fear that failure to allow the Russian region to leave Ukraine could result in use of violence against them.
Failure to allow the Russian region to leave could lead to prolonged efforts against the Ukraine government. European ethnic conflicts [such as the Basque conflict in Spain and the conflict between Irish Catholics and English Protestants in Northern Ireland] can last for generations.
Americans tend to think of ethnic conflicts in terms of differences in skin color, but differences in culture can produce the same results as was the case in Adolf Hitler's efforts to exterminate the Jewish people.
During the collapse of the Soviet empire, the residents of Czechoslovakia recognized that they would have a better chance of success if they split into two countries. Ukrainians made a mistake by keeping the arbitrary political boundaries set by the old Soviet Union. The Soviet Union to a large extent was a Russian empire. Keeping Russian regions in Ukraine means Ukrainians are still subject to control by politicians chosen in part by Russians. Eliminating the Russian regions from Ukraine would make Ukrainians truly independent of Russia.
Obama is showing all the weakness and lack of influence that libertarianism demands from America.
This will be hurting Rand Paul.
I am certainly not willing to be taxed or to see Americans killed for the purpose of keeping Slaviansk, for example, subject to the government in Kiev that was installed by a coup.
What you don’t get is ignoring the situation does not make it better. Events are spiraling out of control in Ukraine due to months of state sponsored terrorism by Russia. There was no unrest in E. Ukraine until Russian Green Men arrived.
Russia needs to GTFO out of Ukraine before other foreign nationals decide to join them on Ukraine’s side. Say Latvian citizens decide to send an international brigade to fight the Russians or their proxies in Ukraine. Then Putin bombs a NATO country. Boom. Huge regional war at a minimum. A large war in Europe will give a big economic hit to the US. Putin must stop his adventures. Period.
Too bad so many posters can’t get past the ghosts of the Cold War so that they can see that you are right.
You couldn’t be more wrong. Putin and the Russian chauvinists dreaming of empire are the ones stuck in the cold war.
Reconstituting the old Russian empire is a much more limited goal than the Soviets had. Do you really think that Putin wants, say, Angola? Didn’t think so...
Russia chauvinism has far more limited ambitions than messianic Marxism. The only Marxist true believers are here and in the EU, not Russia (or China).
Like so many here, you don’t seem to read. Act One in this drama was the overthrow of the elected government of the Ukraine by forces directed by the Obamalini administration and the EU. The reason was that Russia had offered Ukraine a better economic deal than the EU, and Yanukovich was going to take it. That is when the violence started, and it was started by our side. The Russians and ethnic Russians have followed suit.
You also don’t seem to realize that the Germans do not favor even the relatively weak sanctions that Obamalini is proposing because they don’t see Pution’s actions as threatening an apocalypse. The Germans are right.
It is not our job to keep Slaviansk from switching allegiance to Russia. Do you want your sons or grandsons to die for that?
As for the economic impact, it would be minor compared to the harm OBama and the GOPe are doing every day here.
Libertarianism demands a lack of intervention. This whole situation was triggered by US/EU intervention in the first place. It has nothing to do with libertarianism, a topic that few here understand.
Non-interventionism, by the way, was George Washington’s foreign policy.
And, no, I am not enthusiastic about Rand Paul.
So what is that we did to force Russia to start conquering again and rebuilding what Reagan destroyed?
What Reagan brought down was a Marxist state. Neither Putin nor anyone else is trying to bring that back. Putin is a fairly traditional Russian autocrat, and while I don’t find that appealing, the EUSSR and the Obama administration are no more attractive.
Evidently you don’t know that we’ve spent about $5 billion over about a decade promoting “political change” in Ukraine. We have been up to our eyeballs in Ukrainian politics for quite a while. This isn’t a secret. The trouble in Ukraine started, as I have pointed out and which is clear on the record, when the democratically elected government indicated that it preferred a trade deal with Russia to closer ties with the EU, which had offered a fraction of the incentives the Russians had. The Russians offered more because they didn’t want the EU and NATO on their doorstep and they didn’t want to lose effective control over Russia’s only warm water naval base, which is in Sevastopol. This outcome was “unacceptable” to the US and the EU, and it is clear even from intercepts of cables and phone calls (do you even know who Victoria Nuland is?) that we thought we could “shape” a different outcome in Ukraine. This is where the astroturf riots in Kiev began that let to the coup.
Russia wanted close trade ties with the Ukraine so that it would remain a buffer state between Russia and the EU and NATO. Now that the pot has been stirred, it is absurd to force this conflict into the procrustean bed of the Cold War. The Ukraine, like Czechoslovakia, is a combination of significantly different ethnic groups. In the case of Czechoslovakia, the different groups parted ways. In Ukraine they might have coexisted without outside interference. Now it is apparent that the predominantly Ukrainian speaking regions and the predominantly Russian speaking regions cannot coexist under the new government in Kiev. One solution is the obvious irredentist solution. Alternatively, it might be possible for there to be some sort of “federal” solution. In any event, despite propaganda from DC and Brussels to the contrary, Putin is not the Bogey Man of this affair. You might also give a thought to what we did in Bosnia and Kosovo.
As a side note, the Germans didn’t contemplate anything but smooth sailing after the coup. Now that it is turning out to be messy, they are backing away because they realize that destabilizing Ukraine has created a problem for their economy. Merkel isn’t living in fear of Russian tanks in Berlin. She knows that is boobbait for the US public. She does know that Germany’s economy doesn’t need more economic fallout from this little adventure. That’s why the Germans won’t really support even the weak sanctions Obama wants. The way the situation gets worse is for the Administration to double down in an effort to distract people from what is happening here, much like Clinton used the Balkan wars in the 90s.
Reagan brought down a Russian empire, one that Putin is now rebuilding in the face of your weakness.
You evidently don’t read and haven’t had a new thought since about 1988. Every event is “Groundhogs Day” for you. Got it.
I did miss whatever led you to become a supporter of Russian empire over NATO and the United States.
I do find NATO and America more attractive than Putin’s reassembled Russian empire of evil and oppression and hostility to the West.
You don’t read. If you did, you would know that I am not a supporter of “Russian Empire over NATO and the United States.” In this particular case, however, the EU and the Obama administration (which I consider traitorously anti-American)have created a crisis that didn’t need to happen.
Yeah, I read you correctly the first time, see post 31.
A really bad historical precedent for the US to invoke. In 1846 the population of what is now CA consisted of <10,000 Californios of "Mexican" ancestry, who'd been around for up to 75 years and about 150,000 Indians, who'd been around forever.
Something under 1000 Americans had recently entered the state, many if not most in the last year or two.
The idea that this truly tiny American minority (well under 1% of the people in the province, most of them very recent entrants) had any legitimate right to revolt and become the legitimate government is ludicrous, slightly mitigated by the fact that some of the Californios supported the American side.
To illustrate how tiny the American population of CA was, had the Donner party managed to make it across the pass before being snowed in, they would have increased the American population by about 10%.
Do you we could find someone foolish enough to buy them?
What is surprising is that so many conservatives believe Obama even though he lies about everything else.
Many of the people on FR lived through the Cold War, and I think they have a hard time grasping that things have changed radically since then internationally and that as things are now the lines between the “good guys” and “bad guys” are often very blurred.
There is no question that Obama’s administration was up to its neck in helping foment an insurrection in Ukraine just as the administration was instrumental in bringing about the so-called “Arab Spring”. In both cases, the administration’s policies led to disastrous outcomes.
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