Mange wrote:
I, as well as others, have already pointed out the irregularities at that joke you call a "referendum". I have no desire to repeat myself ad nauseum. Also see further below.
Answer the question I actually put to you. I repeat: why is the Crimean referendum - even with all the irregularities you've invented out of thin air that you think deligitimise the result - less legitimate than some members of Kosovo's Assembly simply declaring independence?
What? Please tell me you are joking? It's a violation against international law
No shit, really? What bearing does this violation of international law have to do with the results of an election? NATO's bombing of Serbia was a clear violation of international law as well. Does that mean the Kosovo independence declaration is illegitimate?
This is like pulling teeth - instead of whining about stuff on which we all agree, can you stay on topic?
EDIT: oh, and its totally cool how one of they principles of the June 1999 agreement (
Resolution 1244 refers) that saw an end to NATO's bombing was Point 8, which stated inter alia:
"substantial self-government for Kosovo, taking full account ... of the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia"
And yet when Kosovo declared independence in 2008, it was promptly recognised by multiple western countries, at the drop of a hat. So much for that eh? International law!
Two things: I've already discussed the issues concerning the so-called "referendum" and whether the Crimeans wants to belong to Russia or not is irrelevant. International law doesn't guarantee independenc and the matter should have been dealt with in a legal manner. If Russia was so concerned about the Russians, then they should have taken the matter to the Security Council (or, at the very least, shouldn't have annexed the area against international law).
So you're hanging your hat on a selective application of international law where independence can be selectively approved depending on the whims of certain powers i.e. "international law doesn't guarantee independence". And I'm supposed to be surprised that Russia appropriated these whims for itself?
And I don't doubt that a majority of the Russian-speakers would vote for joining Russia. Heck, in a referendum in 1919, 95.5 percent of the electorate on the Swedish-speaking Åland Islands, which belonged to Finland, voted to join Sweden as the population was afraid that they would become assimilated by the Finnish-speakers after the Finnish independence. The League of Unions decided against allowing Åland joining Sweden and the islands were retained by Finland. But who knows? Now that the True Finns party has gained traction and with incidents in which people belonging to the Swedish minority has been harassed, perhaps we should invade the Åland Islands and the Swedish-speaking parts of Ostrobothnia and fix ourselves a little referendum, huh? No, that's an alien concept (though Sweden should've protested more loudly when the Swedish minority in the occupied Baltic states was being oppressed by the Soviet authorities in the '40s onwards).
I'm not really sure what your point is here.
Right or wrong, those countries, including my own, which have recognized Kosovo has done so under the provision that it's a special case. The circumstances that existed in Kosovo hasn't existed in Crimea and the process in Kosovo took ten years whereas it took ten days in Crimea. While that would be a joke under any circumstances, the Crimean process was not the result of an expressed will of self-determination as the region had been invaded and was under military occupation of another country (a circumstance that the ICJ in its ruling on Kosovo noted violates international law) and with no proper debate, discussion of practicalities, the fears of the minorities wasn't addressed and the "referendum" wasn't allowed to be monitored by internationally recognized organizations. To make it brief: The process wasn't the result of a strive for self-determination, but it was the result of a process lasting less than two weeks in which only one side was able to make its case. Anyone with a functioning brain would realize that.
"Right or wrong certain countries decided Kosovo was a special case" is the very
heart of the problem. The issue is this: countries that feel aggrieved by Kosovo do not accept that reasoning and Russia has the power to appropriate the Kosovo reasoning for itself - and it has. You don't get to just say "its a special case" and expect everyone to fall into line. You just don't. Gregor Gysi just gave a withering speech in Germany talking about the Pandora'a Box Kosovo opened, and he was right.
As to military invasion and occupation, does NATO's occupation of Kosovo at the time count? Or was it ok because the populace clearly wanted them there? No serious argument can be made that the majority of Crimea's populace weren't perfectly fine with the presence of Russian troops.
No proper debate? I'm sure the Kosovo declaration was the subject of much debate between the overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian populace, right? Rights of minorities? Tell me, did the rights of the Serb minority get addressed in any significant way by the declaration? You know, the delcaration they didn't even participate in? No, because when you're in the minority you don't tend to get what you want. This should not be shocking to anyone.
The only thing you've got to hang your hat on really is that the Crimean referendum was conducted quickly, whereas some members of the Kosovo assembly just up and declared independence - with no referendum - almost 10 years after NATO bombed the shit out of Serbia. I fail to see how this difference makes the Kosovo delcaration look good in comparison.
Nonsense. Again, the ICJ didn't rule
Who cares on what the ICJ didn't rule on? Russia has taken what the ICJ said and used it. The fact remains that Kosovo's independence declaration has been treated as kosher. Period. The relevant question I put to you remains.
So, there you have it: That caveat renders your question moot as the circumstances surrounding the declaration of independence and the Russian annexation of Crimea which followed violated international law.
Yes, let us continue to pretend the bombing and subsequent occupation of Yugoslavia by NATO did not actually happen. The sheer chutzpah on display is stunning. You think Russia forgot?
You can ask me that question again after you've taken a hard good look in the mirror.
What are you even talking about? Have I ever advocated treating the US as a pariah for all of its transgressions over the years, and all sorts of punitive action? No, I haven't. So why don't you answer my question instead of trying to dodge it, which is getting to be a pattern with you whenever something inconvenient comes up?
I haven't said a word about 100,000 ethnic Albanians having been killed, but I really don't care if it's 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000
Why don't you pay attention to what is actually being discussed? I said that NATO engaged in a one-sided propaganda campaign against Serbia - that is absolutely true. They told the world a fairy tale about 100,000 ethnic Albanians being killed by Serbs - an exaggeration orders of magnitude above the
total casualties- from all causes, on both sides, that actually took place in that civil war. This is an uncontroversial fact which you can easily verify if you do a modicum of research.
Therefore, my claim that there was such a one-sided campaign - which you scoffed at - remains true. Thanks for conceding that fact, but admitting that you just don't care.
EDIT: and wow, you don't recally care if its 1,000? Fantastic - so basically, in circumstances where NATO killed anywhere between 500 to almost 6,000 Yugoslav civilians (depending on which figures you believe) nevermind maiming who knows how many more and generally bombing the shit out of an entire country, this is a rational response to 1,000 people being killed in a civil war.
Because Proportionality!
Lets get real here - I don't think you actually believe what I just said. What's more likely is that you - like so many - think of the Glorious Humanitarian Intervention in Kosovo in purely abstract terms. I imagine for the innocent civilians terrorised and killed by insane troll logic like "bombing for humanitarianism", it was a lot less abstract.
as the campaign to ethnically cleanse (if not outright genocide) the area of Kosovo Albanians has been well-documented and recognized.
Bullfuckingshit. You've swallowing NATO propaganda, the same as the average Republican who continues to swear, up down and around, that Iraq had WMD and was responsible for 9/11. The civil war in Kosovo was a typical civil war. There was no justification whatsoever for NATO's bombing campaign, which was an act of pure aggression and illegality
easily in excess of anything Russia has done in Crimea. The fact that you dismiss outright lies like 100,000 Albanian dead as if it doesn't matter speaks volumes as to your partisanship and hypocrisy in that regard.
EDIT: "if not outright genocide" implies that there's even a question that genocide took place. There is no question. There was no genocide in Kosovo. Even the UN admitted that. "Ethnically cleanse" is a lovely inflammatory phrase to describe a population being kicked out of their homes whether by a: direct action of opposing forces in ethnic strife (and was something the Albanians would have - and did - do to hundreds of thousands of Kosovo's native Serbs when the war was over), b: a natural consequence of conditions on the ground in war time, but I don't think being made a refugee is a justification for a third party to conduct a massive bombing campaign and kill the shit out of people. The appropriate solution was a political one.**
(Nevermind that NATO obviously bears direct responsibility for the people who had to flee the area from virtue of their campaign, unless you're really going to drink the Kool Aid and tell me that all the civilians could tell the difference between KLA / Yugoslav Army mortar / arty shells and NATO's lovely Freedom Bombs.)
I'm of the firm opinion that NATO acted in good faith and that the campaign was fully justified.
Justified
how? Quite frankly - how can you possibly have the sheer audacity to say that with a straight face, given you've been carrying on about international law this whole time to complain about Russia? The civil war in Kosovo was a purely internal affair and the notion that a massive bombing campaign on all Serbia was "justified" is by definition obscene, nevermind how ludicrous the allegation is that they "acted in good faith" when they objectively
lied through their teeth, pinning heinous and completely untrue allegations against the Serbs in service of aiding the KLA - an organisation the US State Department itself classified as fucking terrorists!
Oh wait, sorry, you've just said you don't care that they lied. The sheer hypocrisy is just stunning. I can only assume you were so young that it simply bypassed your critical thinking.
And a little all-inclusive anti-Western rant to round off the post with, huh Vympel?
Much easier to just whine that I said something saying than actually rebut it I suppose.
**And to talk a bit more about the political solution to Kosovo, and your ridiculous claim that NATO was "acting in good faith" - no less than
Henry Fucking Kissinger - an arch-realist if there ever was one, said of the Ramboulliet Agreement:
The Rambouillet text, which called on Serbia to admit NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia, was a provocation, an excuse to start bombing. Rambouillet is not a document that an angelic Serb could have accepted. It was a terrible diplomatic document that should never have been presented in that form.
Note that the Serbs had already accepted the political aspects of the proposed agreements - i.e. automony for Kosovo. Bombing was never the only solution.
Link on the 10 year anniversary
Though justified by apparently humanitarian considerations, Nato's bombing of Serbia succeeded only in escalating the Kosovo crisis into a full-scale humanitarian catastrophe. It is now widely acknowledged that the bulk of the ethnic cleansing and war crimes occurred after the start of Nato's campaign, with an OSCE inquiry highlighting "the patterns of the expulsions and the vast increase in lootings, killings, rape, kidnappings and pillage once the Nato air war began on March 24". Despite regular proclamations about Kosovo's supposed multi-ethnic character and minority rights provisions, the failure to first prevent, and then to facilitate the safe and sustainable return of, over 200,000 internally-displaced persons (IDPs) is testimony both to the shortcomings of the initial justifications for intervention and the international community's now almost decade-long mission to reconstruct Kosovo.
Indeed, though these much-vaunted humanitarian objectives were used to build widespread public support for Nato's intervention, Strobe Talbott, the former US deputy secretary of state, has written how "it was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform – not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians – that best explains Nato's war". Placing outwardly humanitarian or security-related motives at the service of political and economic objectives has done much to undermine the emerging notion of the "responsibility to protect" by breeding scepticism about the ultimate goal of such intervention.
Pre-intervention portrayals of the conflict in Kosovo were not, however, a failure of intelligence, but an act of willing deceit; designed to reduce the conflict to terms that betrayed the complexity of a situation involving a previously designated terrorist organisation, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and a heavy-handed state security infrastructure which had been for decades contending with ethnically-motivated crimes in Kosovo. Detailed reports by Amnesty International suggesting that the death toll was in the hundreds did little to deter talk of an on-going genocide. The media and NGOs, meanwhile, did little to challenge Tony Blair's portrayal of the war as "a battle between good and evil; between civilisation and barbarity; between democracy and dictatorship". This tendency to portray conflicts in terms of such dichotomies serves only to inhibit both the conception and voicing of alternative solutions to inherently complicated issues, whose roots run much deeper into history than is often acknowledged.
In bypassing the United Nations, engaging in disingenuous negotiations that precluded diplomatic solutions and manipulating the public case for war, Nato's intervention over Kosovo in 1999 was an important precursor to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As the region struggles to contend with the environmental and health legacies of cluster bombs and the use of depleted uranium, the 10th anniversary of Nato's bombing of Serbia must not pass in vain, but instead serve as a timely reminder of the need for dispassionate and neutral analysis of unfolding conflicts and their potential solutions; analysis that endeavours to explore the often tragic complexities of civil wars and the nuanced understandings that their transformation requires.
Gold. Pure gold.
I saw that a while ago. One thing that's fascinating about this whole thing is that more than once I've seen Western diplomats / leaders chide about the importance of Ukraine's "democratically elected" government. The two possibilities are:
