Posted on 04/23/2023 8:22:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Emmanuel Macron has been trying to triangulate between the U.S. and China, and it isn’t going well. China’s ambassador to Paris has now embarrassed the French President by declaring that the former nations of the Soviet Union aren’t really sovereign under international law.
China’s Ambassador Lu Shaye was asked on Friday on French TV whether he considered Crimea to be part of Ukraine under international law. In 2014 Russia occupied and annexed Crimea, which had been part of Ukraine since the dissolution of the Soviet empire.
Mr. Lu didn’t stop at Crimea. “Even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have effective status, as we say, under international law because there’s no international accord to concretize their status as a sovereign country,” Mr. Lu said. The “as we say” is a nice diplomatic touch since the only international law that Beijing recognizes is what serves its increasingly imperial interests.
The diplomat is saying that the many countries that declared their independence when the Soviet Union dissolved aren’t independent at all. That would include Ukraine, but also the three Baltic states, Moldova, and the countries of central Asia like Georgia and Kazakhstan. The clear implication is that Russia is justified in its attempt to conquer Ukraine, and perhaps the other countries too.
The Baltic states are furious and said they’d summon the Chinese ambassadors to their countries on Monday. The French Foreign Ministry responded with what it called “consternation” at Mr. Lu’s remarks and said Beijing should “say if these comments reflect its position, which we hope not to be the case.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Free Tibet.
Macron is a buffoon. But so is most of the Western leaders who did nothing when China violated it’s treaty with the UK when it effectively terminated rule by representation in Hong Kong, calling the treaty a “historical document that imposes no restrictions on the present”.
What China meant by that it will honor all treaties, accords, and agreements insofar as it serves its interest, and the moment they no longer do so, China will toss it away as another “historical document”.
Macron was an embarrassment long before the Chinese Ambassador opened his mouth.
Georgia isn’t located in central Asia. Georgia is in Caucasus, which is South Europe... Time to buy a globe...
It would also include Russia, itself.
Regards,
Europe is North of Caucasus. South Caucasus is Middle East.
“The most convenient geographic boundary—one that has been adopted by most geographers—is a line that runs south from the Arctic Ocean along the Ural Mountains and then turns southwest along the Emba River to the northern shore of the Caspian Sea; west of the Caspian, the boundary follows the Kuma-Manych Depression to the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait of the Black Sea. Thus, the isthmus between the Black and Caspian seas, which culminates in the Caucasus mountain range to the south, is part of Asia.”
https://www.britannica.com/place/Asia
https://www.britannica.com/place/Kuma-Manych-Depression
Did the USSR constitutionally enact legislation to dissolve itself and confer independence to the successor states, or was there any treaty between the USSR and the successor states to do that?
The US became legally independent of the UK by the Treaty of Paris.
I don’t recall a legally equivalent basis for the independence of the USSR’s successor states, so the Ambassador is possibly technically correct.
The there states that created the USSR (the Russian SSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Belorussian SSR) abolished the treaty that established the USSR.
So according to Chinese logic, the Belovezha Accords confirm that the establishment of the USSR is a “historical document” that has been consigned to the dustbin.
And any nation state admitted to the UN since is de facto and de jure a recognised independent nation state.
Since China wants to reabsorb Taiwan, what did Macron think they would say?
How does any of what Macron or Xi are saying affect the Taiwan situation?
RE: I don’t recall a legally equivalent basis for the independence of the USSR’s successor states, so the Ambassador is possibly technically correct.
Several things supersede any formal treaty signed
1) THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE LIVING IN THESE COUNTRIES. Do they WANT to be part of Russia or WANT to be under Russian dominance? If not, then their will supersedes any formal treaty.
2) ARE THESE NATIONS RECOGNIZED BY THE UNITED NATIONS AS INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES?
3) Worse comes to worst, Russia and its leaders ought to ask themselves— is it better to correct this legal oversight and formalize it? Or do they prefer to sacrifice hundreds of thousand more lives to force these nations back to Russian domination?
China views itself as strong and others weak. So China is testing the waters to see how far it can push other countries around.
RE: The US became legally independent of the UK by the Treaty of Paris.
Yes, but a bloody war had to be fought before the Treaty could be signed.
Russia has a choice : To fight a bloody war to absorb these Baltic States against their will ( meaning, to risk a world war ), or be a good world citizen and like King George of old, simply legalize their independence by signing a formal treaty with each of these nations.
I believe this long sentence spells it out perfectly:
“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
It seems to me an actual declaration of independence followed by a successful admission to the UN (which is the “among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station” clause) should be the formal recognition of that nation as a nation.
It’s great to intellectualize this discussion but the Chinese and Russian dictators are evil and they plan to take as much as they can and they don’t care how many people they kill or starve as they do it. This is the reality we are living in and if we don’t get ready to start fighting them and stopping them things are going to get much much worse for us.
The disputed status of Taiwan is different. If China had gone public in 1991, signing a document explicitly abolishing its claim to Taiwan, for added impact said its old legal/political claim over Taipei was no longer a fact in “geopolitical “reality”, endorsed Taiwan joining the UN and signed binding international assurances to respect its independence, then the China/Taiwan situation would be analogous to Russia/Ukraine.
Macron is an opportunist, he was licking CCP boots because Airbus is about to launch a second assembly site in China, and Chinese airlines have hundreds of Airbus aircraft on order... always follow the money...
The will of the people is not the top priority there.
If the people are properly consulted and the declaration of independence is a majority view, OR the body it is seceding from accepts the division, then both sides agreed to the split and it becomes an established international fact. Good example: the separation of Czechoslovakia.
If countries that are quasi independent choose to leave a union that they helped to create, that is a legal process leading to a legal fact.
If all members of a union of nations agree to terminate the union or accept in writing that it has already been dissolved, that again becomes a legal fact.
The USSR was terminated by the joint decision of the leaders of Ukraine, Belarus’and Russia. It’s not open to renegotiation. No matter what the public majority position was, governments can choose to end the treaties signed by their predecessors.
A popular of less than 5000 Russian settlers and pro Russian separatists arbitrarily declared themselves the governments of the Donbas without consulting the settled population of the region. They’ve refused point blank to prove there was any wider mandate in any election. As long as Ukraine views it as an illegal takeover by less than 1% of the population, Ukraine technically is in the right.
Likewise, China refuses to accept the independence ambitions of Taiwan. But unlike the Donbas, Taiwan isn’t seceding because of a 1% minority hijacking the administration.
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