The old standard under Vienna was "the ability to stand alone". That is the ability to form relations with neighboring countries that guarded the territory they control. Russia obviously qualifies under this standard.
The question is, at what point are things so bad that you should violate another country's sovereignty?
I don't think they have to be that bad. Border adjustments don't need to be traumatic.
Russia clearly did more than offering to annex. They actually ran the referendum after sending their military in semi-covertly, ensuring history books will forever question the legitimacy of the vote.
Their military was already there. The population was heavily involved in the military. As for the legitimacy of the vote Crimea became part of Ukraine because one guy moved it. How it got to be part of Ukraine was far less legitimate than a poorly run referendum.
The level of mob involvement has dropped off in Russia under Putin considerably. Both Russia and Ukraine are new democracies. You do understand that Ukraine just had a violent overthrow of their elected president and a replacement with an unelected government. This is not as clear cut as you are making it.
Mostly what you are saying is you like Ukraine better. Which is fine but Crimeans made the opposite choice. You are arguing they aren't entitled to live in the society they want.
You see, anything beyond proper referendum is a wild guess, and we really ought not to take it into account.
We have to estimate using the best data we have. And the best data is strong support.
seeing armed people and violence in the streets is quite another.
So far there has been very little violence. Conversely the overthrow of the pro-Russian government by the pro-Western faction was extremely violent from the start. I'm not sure how this standard doesn't cut the other way.
- a lot of Russians think Alaska should be "returned" to motherland as well.
That analogy doesn't fit because Alaskans don't want to return to Russia. They are happy to be in America. There is no harm to self determination in allowing Alaskans to remain American.
The entire western 2/3rds are obviously staying in Ukraine.
All of this needs to be redone for 2.5 million people!
Those 2.5m people are asking for it to be redone.
140 million of Russians, who don't really want to live in their home country, just added 2.5 millions, out of whom perhaps 1/3 want to live there, but have a high chance of changing their minds pretty soon!
I know lots of people in Russia they do like their life there. Obviously some want to leave. OTOH I also know Ukrainians who want to leave.
So in my other post what if you as an Ukrainian owned land and a home and had a job in Crimea? Would you want to loose your identity as an Ukrainian and be under Putin's thumb instead of Ukrainian and perhaps be part of the more open EU later on?
I'm not sure about "under Putin's thumb". There is a different way of life between the two countries but there isn't some horrible contrast. It isn't like one society is a miserable dictatorship and the other a wide open European country. It is like USA vs. Canada vs. Mexico there are plusses to any of these countries and minus to any. I'm Western so I'd like what the Eastern Ukrainians want. OTOH I can see the downsides and why people might prefer Russia.
That doesn't sound far to me unless you are Russian and then you are screwing your neighbors over by supporting this?
That's because you are supposing that Ukraine is good and Russia is bad. Make it more balanced in terms of plusses and minuses.
Yes. It is very much like America where people's ethnicities are mixed and their are issues of identification. And BTW there was intermarriage for centuries before the Soviet Union as well. On the other hand what language is spoken at home isn't an unreasonable standard:
This is about societies not individuals. When building a society the best we can do is where people are going to need to live under a system their neighbors in the aggregate like. What is being debated here is a system that even the neighbors don't like.
You really out to have some sort of argumentation as to whether polling changed when Russian military sprang all over the peninsula, and if it did, into which direction it happened to change and how far.
Well yes. Polling typically changes radically when a policy proposal is on the table vs. when it is something that's only supported by a small group of activists. Once a policy is genuinely being considered you would almost always expect support to go up. The only question is how far. What we know from the on the ground evidence both before and after is that there was strong support for Crimean succession once it was offered.
via a properly arranged referendum, with international observation, etc.
I think that's a reasonable request. I think Putin was a fool for cheating when he could have won honestly. But the referendum being handled badly is different than all the other counter arguments that the Crimean people should be forever trapped in a country they no longer wish to be a part of.
As for Africa - the "nations" thing in developed world is no longer used to draw borders.
Well yes they do that's what we are seeing. And frankly it is happening in Africa too where tribes are rearranging themselves in line with borders and effective governing areas arranging themselves in line with nations. I think the nation-state makes a lot of sense.
which is always much worse economically and socially than, say, policies and contracts based on international law
The problem with international law as it exists today is that it doesn't include a right to self determination. We have a bad international law. I'd certainly agree that good international law is preferable to war but I don't agree that avoiding war is reason to give up self determination.
continues doing so with the rest of Ukraine (my home country, btw).
I'm 3/4s ethnically Ukrainian myself. But I've never been. My wife (Russian) has been and she always considered Crimea to be Russian because the people are Russian not Ukrainian.
Guess how badly this annexation is going to hurt?
No clue. I've heard similar argument though Russia might create a land bridge by grabbing other ethnically Russian areas leaving behind 2/3rds-3/4s of Ukraine that is all western and ends up part of the EU. But whether it is a good deal or a bad deal I think that's a choice the Crimean people are entitled to make. I think the Iraqis were insane not to agree to become a US colony (effectively) and instead be a PIA during the occupation, but that is their right. The people of Crimea get to decide how they want their economy organized. If it turns out to have been really really stupid they live with the consequences.
____
There is another problem with your argument. You can take a post national perspective that borders don't matter and all that matters is economics in which case what Crimea did is rather irrelevant. Or you can take a national perspective in which Russians pulling together makes sense. But it seems inconsistent to analyze Russian action by saying it violates post national norms and then argue it is so terrible because it violates sovereignty which is a rather traditional concept. Why does it matter who governs what if we all live in a world controlled by corporations anyway?
A keyboard is connected but that doesn't change wanting more interface options. For example the ability to move the applications back and forth from smaller to large form factors. Traditional (1990s) desktop OSes don't allow applications to move to smaller form factors. They also are very restrictive about input methods. So for example I can't use Siri to edit a powerpoint on my phone or drop an image easily into an Excel cell so that it shows up in an a Excel report...
That's a dispute of fact. I'd suggest asking American Russian and Ukrainians and asking them if any of them doubt the outcome. Or for that matter most media. Crimea remember did vote overwhelming for the pro-Russian / anti-Western (anti-Ukranian) candidates before the soldiers. The soldiers were mostly containing the Ukrainian soldiers as far as I know.
Absolutely Putin managed to cast a shadow on his referendum when it was pointless. That was a bad move on his part. I'm not going to deny that but... do you have any evidence but your gut that Crimeans don't want to be part of Russia?
The polling changed when Russia offered the opportunity to be annexed. Until then it appears that most Crimeans favored some sort of federalism. Certainly I'm not going to disagree this moved fast, perhaps too fast.
As for Africa... Africa mainly has had a pretty good agreement not to modify borders. IMHO one of the reasons that African states are so dysfunctional is that they aren't nation states but rather you have nations scattered across multiple countries and countries each containing multiple nations. Cleaning that mess up I think would be good for Africa.
As for the economics of Crimea. I've heard people say Crimea isn't economically viable detached. They may be true, but ultimately I think that's a choice for the Crimean people. As for Ukraine investing in Crimea vs. Crimea's investment in Ukraine.... where are you getting figures on net inflows and outflows?
I'm not sure about that. It seems like the people of Texas were deeply divided about what they wanted: part of Mexico, part of USA, independent. The USA never held Texas in a situation where the overwhelming majority was against being held.
Assuming the results of that referendum with 123% voter turnout is legit.
I understand the point of 123%. We had regions in Minnesota with turnout like that for Bill Clinton in 1996, that doesn't mean that Bill Clinton didn't win the American election.
This is/was a UKRAINIAN province.; why the hell should RUSSIA get to decide where it goes?
They shouldn't. The people of Crimea however should get to decide where Crimea goes. The only thing Russia can do is either offer to annex or refuse to offer to annex if the Crimean people wish to be part of Russia.
And you're complaining about "forever binding the Ukrainians to Ukraine"?
The people of Crimea don't want to be Ukrainian anymore. This is like a divorce it dissolves the relationship. The same way Ukraine is no longer part of the Soviet Union.
Never. You don't get the right to vote by being impacted by a country. What Iraqis did get was the right to vote in their own elections. Now if Iraq wants to apply for statehood (which is incredibly unlikely) they have a responsive agency which could guide them through the process.
I'm not sure how you are disagreeing with me above. I agree there were tensions. Things like the Fugitive Slave Act were required. But regardless the south (the CSA) is not a good example of self determination because of slavery while a modern succession would not have that problem.
That's called democracy. The majority get to decide on the form of government, within limits and people have the right to move to governments they approve of. No one is being forced to move. Crimea either has to be part of Ukraine or part of Russia. If it is part of Ukraine the majority is unhappy. If it is part of Russia a minority is unhappy. One of the basic ideas of government in such a situation is to side with the majority all other things being close to equal.
I don't think Russia in 1990 has the right to forever bind the Ukrainians to Ukraine. The idea of intergenerational unbreakable contracts is how one legitimized intergenerational slavery and serfdom. Absolutely Russia is in violation of the treaty with Ukraine. But the solution to that treaty violation is not to leave the Crimeans in a country they no longer want to be part of.
I think we know with a very high degree of confidence that the support for being annexed with Russia is sky high. We have polling that conforms the strong support and the lack of any opposition on the ground also confirms the strong support. Absolutely, unquestionably Russia should have handled the referendum better so these sorts of doubts wouldn't exist. Russia didn't have to cheat and they shouldn't have. At some point in the future there will be fair election in Crimea and I suspect the pro-Russia parties will win by huge margins. So let's put aside the issue of how the people would have decided I think for reasonable people we know with 99% probability what would have happened had their been a valid referendum.
Given that, no I don't agree that this is absurd I don't see any reason that we shouldn't have a world where self determination is important. I don't see any reason that sovereign territory should be permanent. Having governments have to compete for lands and peoples doesn't strike me as a bad thing. I believe the American Revolution was legitimate. I think the anti-colinial movements were legitimate. I think people have the right to determine their government. I just don't see the great problem with granting people the right to have a government of their choosing.
I can imagine rules like requiring 60% for a region to change ownership to prevent territories from flipping back and forth. But I can see no reason for denying 80% their will. I think one of the big accomplishments of the last few hundred years is getting rid of serfdom and getting rid of the more advanced form of it that the UN supports seems to me to be a good thing.
They shouldn't. After Ukraine splits up ethnically there likely will and should be an exchange of minority populations so that people in the now smaller Ukraine who want to be in Russia are in Russian and the people in Russia who want to be in Ukraine are in Ukraine.
The claim above was that Texas is like Iraq. Hence the response. As for how the USA handled Iraq... I think overthrowing the Ba'ath government wasn't a bad thing. Staying for years was a bad thing and very expensive. Leaving was a good thing. Iraqis didn't want to become Americans.
Before the civil war: North was fighting for the union South was fighting for slavery
Because the war was so destructive both sides had been discredit. So after the fact both sides used the reverse of the other side's arguments North was fighting to end slavery South was fighting for state's rights.
And of course slavery played a huge part in the issue. That was the issue they couldn't resolve that caused the underlying conflict.
If touch finds itself on a screen big enough to do serious work, then people will want it to look more desktop like.
On big screens the touch isn't on the screen you are using but instead a screen pad. This has been a common setup for artists for 15 years. You have a large screen which you read and a small screen which has the same pixels (possibly reduced or blended) as the big one which is about 9-13".
The big reason touch currently calls for a different approach to UI is simply that touch screens are small and fingers are fat, tablets and phones tend to be used one handed (with the other holding it), and without a keyboard.
That capacitive. That's very useful. But there is also resistive which is quite accurate. The Microsoft Surface pro for example has both as do most Windows 8 machines.
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The old standard under Vienna was "the ability to stand alone". That is the ability to form relations with neighboring countries that guarded the territory they control. Russia obviously qualifies under this standard.
I don't think they have to be that bad. Border adjustments don't need to be traumatic.
Their military was already there. The population was heavily involved in the military. As for the legitimacy of the vote Crimea became part of Ukraine because one guy moved it. How it got to be part of Ukraine was far less legitimate than a poorly run referendum.
The level of mob involvement has dropped off in Russia under Putin considerably. Both Russia and Ukraine are new democracies. You do understand that Ukraine just had a violent overthrow of their elected president and a replacement with an unelected government. This is not as clear cut as you are making it.
Mostly what you are saying is you like Ukraine better. Which is fine but Crimeans made the opposite choice. You are arguing they aren't entitled to live in the society they want.
We have to estimate using the best data we have. And the best data is strong support.
So far there has been very little violence. Conversely the overthrow of the pro-Russian government by the pro-Western faction was extremely violent from the start. I'm not sure how this standard doesn't cut the other way.
That analogy doesn't fit because Alaskans don't want to return to Russia. They are happy to be in America. There is no harm to self determination in allowing Alaskans to remain American.
I'd use language spoken at home as a better metric then you get: http://blogs-images.forbes.com...
The entire western 2/3rds are obviously staying in Ukraine.
Those 2.5m people are asking for it to be redone.
I know lots of people in Russia they do like their life there. Obviously some want to leave. OTOH I also know Ukrainians who want to leave.
I'm not sure about "under Putin's thumb". There is a different way of life between the two countries but there isn't some horrible contrast. It isn't like one society is a miserable dictatorship and the other a wide open European country. It is like USA vs. Canada vs. Mexico there are plusses to any of these countries and minus to any. I'm Western so I'd like what the Eastern Ukrainians want. OTOH I can see the downsides and why people might prefer Russia.
That's because you are supposing that Ukraine is good and Russia is bad. Make it more balanced in terms of plusses and minuses.
Yes. It is very much like America where people's ethnicities are mixed and their are issues of identification. And BTW there was intermarriage for centuries before the Soviet Union as well. On the other hand what language is spoken at home isn't an unreasonable standard:
http://blogs-images.forbes.com...
This is about societies not individuals. When building a society the best we can do is where people are going to need to live under a system their neighbors in the aggregate like. What is being debated here is a system that even the neighbors don't like.
Well yes. Polling typically changes radically when a policy proposal is on the table vs. when it is something that's only supported by a small group of activists. Once a policy is genuinely being considered you would almost always expect support to go up. The only question is how far. What we know from the on the ground evidence both before and after is that there was strong support for Crimean succession once it was offered.
I think that's a reasonable request. I think Putin was a fool for cheating when he could have won honestly. But the referendum being handled badly is different than all the other counter arguments that the Crimean people should be forever trapped in a country they no longer wish to be a part of.
Well yes they do that's what we are seeing. And frankly it is happening in Africa too where tribes are rearranging themselves in line with borders and effective governing areas arranging themselves in line with nations. I think the nation-state makes a lot of sense.
The problem with international law as it exists today is that it doesn't include a right to self determination. We have a bad international law. I'd certainly agree that good international law is preferable to war but I don't agree that avoiding war is reason to give up self determination.
I'm 3/4s ethnically Ukrainian myself. But I've never been. My wife (Russian) has been and she always considered Crimea to be Russian because the people are Russian not Ukrainian.
No clue. I've heard similar argument though Russia might create a land bridge by grabbing other ethnically Russian areas leaving behind 2/3rds-3/4s of Ukraine that is all western and ends up part of the EU. But whether it is a good deal or a bad deal I think that's a choice the Crimean people are entitled to make. I think the Iraqis were insane not to agree to become a US colony (effectively) and instead be a PIA during the occupation, but that is their right. The people of Crimea get to decide how they want their economy organized. If it turns out to have been really really stupid they live with the consequences.
____
There is another problem with your argument. You can take a post national perspective that borders don't matter and all that matters is economics in which case what Crimea did is rather irrelevant. Or you can take a national perspective in which Russians pulling together makes sense. But it seems inconsistent to analyze Russian action by saying it violates post national norms and then argue it is so terrible because it violates sovereignty which is a rather traditional concept. Why does it matter who governs what if we all live in a world controlled by corporations anyway?
A keyboard is connected but that doesn't change wanting more interface options. For example the ability to move the applications back and forth from smaller to large form factors. Traditional (1990s) desktop OSes don't allow applications to move to smaller form factors. They also are very restrictive about input methods. So for example I can't use Siri to edit a powerpoint on my phone or drop an image easily into an Excel cell so that it shows up in an a Excel report...
That's a dispute of fact. I'd suggest asking American Russian and Ukrainians and asking them if any of them doubt the outcome. Or for that matter most media. Crimea remember did vote overwhelming for the pro-Russian / anti-Western (anti-Ukranian) candidates before the soldiers. The soldiers were mostly containing the Ukrainian soldiers as far as I know.
Absolutely Putin managed to cast a shadow on his referendum when it was pointless. That was a bad move on his part. I'm not going to deny that but... do you have any evidence but your gut that Crimeans don't want to be part of Russia?
The polling changed when Russia offered the opportunity to be annexed. Until then it appears that most Crimeans favored some sort of federalism. Certainly I'm not going to disagree this moved fast, perhaps too fast.
As for Africa... Africa mainly has had a pretty good agreement not to modify borders. IMHO one of the reasons that African states are so dysfunctional is that they aren't nation states but rather you have nations scattered across multiple countries and countries each containing multiple nations. Cleaning that mess up I think would be good for Africa.
As for the economics of Crimea. I've heard people say Crimea isn't economically viable detached. They may be true, but ultimately I think that's a choice for the Crimean people. As for Ukraine investing in Crimea vs. Crimea's investment in Ukraine .... where are you getting figures on net inflows and outflows?
I'm not sure about that. It seems like the people of Texas were deeply divided about what they wanted: part of Mexico, part of USA, independent. The USA never held Texas in a situation where the overwhelming majority was against being held.
The land belongs to the people who live on it ultimately. The purpose of states is to represent the people of those states.
Of course you can and this was a supermajority.
I understand the point of 123%. We had regions in Minnesota with turnout like that for Bill Clinton in 1996, that doesn't mean that Bill Clinton didn't win the American election.
They shouldn't. The people of Crimea however should get to decide where Crimea goes. The only thing Russia can do is either offer to annex or refuse to offer to annex if the Crimean people wish to be part of Russia.
The people of Crimea don't want to be Ukrainian anymore. This is like a divorce it dissolves the relationship. The same way Ukraine is no longer part of the Soviet Union.
Never. You don't get the right to vote by being impacted by a country. What Iraqis did get was the right to vote in their own elections. Now if Iraq wants to apply for statehood (which is incredibly unlikely) they have a responsive agency which could guide them through the process.
Yes assuming the population still wants to leave. Russia's handling of their dispute with Chechnya over oil and minorities was immoral.
I'm not sure how you are disagreeing with me above. I agree there were tensions. Things like the Fugitive Slave Act were required. But regardless the south (the CSA) is not a good example of self determination because of slavery while a modern succession would not have that problem.
I didn't GP did. Your argument is that annexing Iraq would have been a good thing which is irrelevant to whether did in fact annex Iraq.
That's called democracy. The majority get to decide on the form of government, within limits and people have the right to move to governments they approve of. No one is being forced to move. Crimea either has to be part of Ukraine or part of Russia. If it is part of Ukraine the majority is unhappy. If it is part of Russia a minority is unhappy. One of the basic ideas of government in such a situation is to side with the majority all other things being close to equal.
I don't think Russia in 1990 has the right to forever bind the Ukrainians to Ukraine. The idea of intergenerational unbreakable contracts is how one legitimized intergenerational slavery and serfdom. Absolutely Russia is in violation of the treaty with Ukraine. But the solution to that treaty violation is not to leave the Crimeans in a country they no longer want to be part of.
I think we know with a very high degree of confidence that the support for being annexed with Russia is sky high. We have polling that conforms the strong support and the lack of any opposition on the ground also confirms the strong support. Absolutely, unquestionably Russia should have handled the referendum better so these sorts of doubts wouldn't exist. Russia didn't have to cheat and they shouldn't have. At some point in the future there will be fair election in Crimea and I suspect the pro-Russia parties will win by huge margins. So let's put aside the issue of how the people would have decided I think for reasonable people we know with 99% probability what would have happened had their been a valid referendum.
Given that, no I don't agree that this is absurd I don't see any reason that we shouldn't have a world where self determination is important. I don't see any reason that sovereign territory should be permanent. Having governments have to compete for lands and peoples doesn't strike me as a bad thing. I believe the American Revolution was legitimate. I think the anti-colinial movements were legitimate. I think people have the right to determine their government. I just don't see the great problem with granting people the right to have a government of their choosing.
I can imagine rules like requiring 60% for a region to change ownership to prevent territories from flipping back and forth. But I can see no reason for denying 80% their will. I think one of the big accomplishments of the last few hundred years is getting rid of serfdom and getting rid of the more advanced form of it that the UN supports seems to me to be a good thing.
They shouldn't. After Ukraine splits up ethnically there likely will and should be an exchange of minority populations so that people in the now smaller Ukraine who want to be in Russia are in Russian and the people in Russia who want to be in Ukraine are in Ukraine.
The claim above was that Texas is like Iraq. Hence the response. As for how the USA handled Iraq... I think overthrowing the Ba'ath government wasn't a bad thing. Staying for years was a bad thing and very expensive. Leaving was a good thing. Iraqis didn't want to become Americans.
Before the civil war:
North was fighting for the union
South was fighting for slavery
Because the war was so destructive both sides had been discredit. So after the fact both sides used the reverse of the other side's arguments
North was fighting to end slavery
South was fighting for state's rights.
And of course slavery played a huge part in the issue. That was the issue they couldn't resolve that caused the underlying conflict.
On big screens the touch isn't on the screen you are using but instead a screen pad. This has been a common setup for artists for 15 years. You have a large screen which you read and a small screen which has the same pixels (possibly reduced or blended) as the big one which is about 9-13".
That capacitive. That's very useful. But there is also resistive which is quite accurate. The Microsoft Surface pro for example has both as do most Windows 8 machines.