Crimean Independence Referendum Is 3/16/14; Ukraine May Have One; Scottish Referendum Is 9/18/14

Lawmakers in Crimea voted unanimously to join Russia and/or become independent on 3/6/2014, and set a national referendum vote for 3/16/2014. Scotland has already set a Independence Referendum vote for September 18, 2014.

I believe that if most Americans (at the time it was around 80%) did not want to bomb Syria, that most Americans now could care less if Crimeans voted to join with Russia and/or become independent.

I believe that a referendum for Eastern Ukraine to join Russia was called for, but I am not sure if one has been officially set... I believe that if they were to hold a referendum to join Russia that most Americans would care less. Same with Scotland voting to become an independent nation...

Kosovo, though, was overwhelmed with illegals and voted to split off from Serbia, with most Serbians in Kosovo voting no then. I think that most Crimeans and Eastern Ukranians would vote to join with Russia even though Russian soldiers have overwhelmed the areas.

Crimea is not just part of any Eastern European country. Crimea was part of Russia from the 1780s under Catherine the Great. Before that, it belonged to the Ottoman Empire, now defunct. Before that, it belonged to the city-state of Venice, now defunct.

In 1954, when the Ukraine was the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev literally gifted the Crimea to Ukraine as part of an internal USSR political deal to secure the support of the Ukrainian party bosses for his succession following the death of Stalin.

This was a purely internal USSR political gift with no international consequences in the 1950s. The Soviet military bases remained Soviet military bases. Khrushchev's unilateral political gift was of no concern to the world until the breakup of the USSR.

The way that Russians see the situation is that Putin is undoing Khrushchev's blunder. What Khrushchev gave away, Putin is taking back, and returning to the Russian fold.

It's important to understand this history. Crimea is the location of Russia's all-weather naval bases, and has been for over 200 years. The fluke of "Ukrainian Crimea" only lasted from 1954 until 2014, sixty years, a blink in historical terms. Before Khrushchev's unilateral political gift, Crimea was never part of Ukraine for one single day in recorded history.

Imagine a dictatorial President Eisenhower, on his own, "giving" NYC and Long Island to Connecticut in return for CT electoral college votes to assure his election. That is how Crimea was transferred to Ukraine in 1954.

Now, Putin is a KGB Soviet Gestapo thug, leader of assassins, and probably the greatest thief in history. But it's important to get the history right in order to avoid mistaking the situation for something it is not, and blundering into a major war. Crimea is not analogous to Latvia, Poland, or even the rest of Ukraine.

"What is taking place in Crimea kind of reminds me of Kosovo leaving Serbia"

NATO intervention in Kosovo created a precedent in international law, we can see now its consequences US supported every secessionist group that wanted to break away from Yugoslavia, they bombed Yugoslavia into smitherness in 1999 (80 days of intensive bombing),to split it in two, and they declared the Yugoslav Army to be an occupier on its own territory.

The Assembly of Kosovo, a province of Serbia, approved an unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008. Kosovo was soon recognized as a sovereign state by the United States, Germany, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and others ...

The West cannot have it both ways. They can’t say, for example, that the right of Albanians to self-determination in Kosovo trumps Serbia’s right to territorial integrity, and then turn around and say that Ukraine’s right to territorial integrity trumps the right of Russians in Crimea to self-determination.

"Atzlan" is not 95% Mexican in population and has been part of the US for 166 years.

Kosovo was under Turkish rule for over 500 years, then under Serbian rule for about 83 (1912 to 1941 and 1945 to 1999).

The Crimean situation is more like Milosevic's use of ethnic Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia to try to enlarge Serbia's territory when Yugoslavia broke up, or Hitler's demand for the Sudetenland because the ethnic Germans were a majority there.

Estonia, Latvia, and Kazakhstan also have significant Russian minorities so Putin could use the same tactic against them. Fortunately for Lithuania, they have only a small Russian minority--but they do have a chunk of Russian territory to their SW (the northern part of what used to be East Prussia).

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