Posted on 03/04/2014 3:47:13 PM PST by SJackson
One hundred years after a spark in Central Europe ignited a conflagration from which the world has not yet recovered and from which Europe will never recover, armed forces have crossed an international border in Central Europe, eliciting this analysis from Secretary of State John Kerry: “It’s a 19th-century act in the 21st century. It really puts at question Russia’s capacity to be within the G8.”
Although this “19th-century act” resembles many 20th century (and 16th, 17th and 18th century) acts, it is, the flabbergasted Kerry thinks, astonishing in the 21st century, which he evidently supposes to be entirely unlike any other. What is more disconcerting — that Kerry believes this? Or that his response to Putin’s aggression is to question Russia’s “capacity” — Kerry means fitness — for membership in the G8?
For many centuries, European peace has been regularly broken because national borders do not tidily coincide with ethnic, linguistic and religious patterns. This problem was intensified by World War I, which demolished the Habsburg, Romanov and Ottoman empires. Ukraine is a shard of the first two, and a neighbor of a remnant of the third.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Sure, self-determination did have the potential to destroy countries and empires. I'm not sure that it was the cause of WWII, though, even though Hitler did invoke it when it served his interest.
bttt
Not the sole cause, but imagine if Hitler’s sole objective was German “self determination”, aka making Europe safe for Germans as Putin will for Russians. Absent antisemitism, most of the key scientists at the Manhattan Project would have been in the German hinterlands rather than Chicago and New Mexico.
Poor Kerry, blamed for the years of incompetence by Obama and Hillary that led to this fiasco- because the media rabidly covers up for them.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy!
After WWI few were given the self determination vote because by 1919, there were no clearly demarcated lines surrounding one ethnic group separating them from the others.
Russia not invoking self-determination but the right to intervene on humanitarian grounds.
I don’t think there is anything objectionable to it. Russia is not saying Ukraine does not have the right to be a sovereign country, it has no right to persecute minorities through the justification of state sovereignty.
No country has the right to mistreat its subjects.
Peace through Superior Firepower.
Is there anyone more clueless than an American progressive lecturing Russia about being on the wrong side of history?
But we are democrat socialists, and Russia’s Democratic Socialists of the USA is our party so why isn’t our up line political sponsor playing nice with the USA, asks Mr. Kerry and President Obama??? Ah, the rub is that the old USSR is still very angry and the only reason they have sponsored Socialism in the USA is to defeat the US once the hand-holders have achieved power.
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