Ukraine War Thread

[mr friendly guy]

While it may come down more to specific actions by China rather than just the claim's, while there has not been anything like sanctions so far, there have been real international diplomatic consequences for China.

In a rather eye opening reaction given the Philippines history with Japan during WW2, its government had the following explicitly positive response to Japan revising its constitution to allow its military to be more aggressive in its posture in the future.
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/107485 ... t-military

Given the way the U.S. got basically kicked out of these Philippine bases, the fact they have recently been welcomed back to a degree is also notable.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/ ... GE20140314

There is even talk about US forces getting regular access to Vietnamese bases in the future, which in combination with recent Vietnamese links with Japan suggests China is well on its well to creating a general regional alliance against it.
http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/vietnam- ... ter-china/
http://news.usni.org/2014/06/02/japan-p ... -next-year

Ah, so if in your opinion they are not "getting away with it" why then will they suddenly think they will just because of what Russia did given Russia has faced somewhat stronger diplomatic consequences? After all your original premise was that China would think they can "get away with it," because Russia apparently has.

My objection was never with setting up buildings in the first place if you read my post again. It is specifically about creating NEW islands which is a completely different matter altogether.
http://news.usni.org/2014/06/02/japan-p ... -next-year

Its this specific action which is so troubling and suggests a dangerous future disruptive precedent if it gets to be an accepted method to determine sea boundaries.

Firstly for it to determine sea boundaries when it clashes with the EEZ of other islands, you would have to first accept those other islands are someone else sovereignty. This is still being disputed.

Secondly I need a bit more than vague statement that there weren't islands there before and I will explain why. Because the legal definition of an island only requires a small amount of land above level. Some of what are called reefs can support bases on them. This is the basis of the Phillipines legal argument from your own article, that is what China occupies isn't legally an island. What land reclamation does is increase the amount of space so they can put in bigger military bases to better protect their claims if the conflict ever turned hot. In terms of EEZ a nation is allowed to claim 200 nautical miles from an island. The island can't be made that much bigger and is small compared to the 200 nautical miles allowed for EEZ.

You're talking about a propaganda video whose focus was mostly elsewhere rather than China's true legal boundaries, and is certainly not the sort of source that would be considered reliable regarding this sort of thing. I am rather astonished that you would even bother bringing it up as a point of evidence to be blunt.

The propaganda part is why Americans need to fight in China, not China rules Tibet. The video is even titled Why we fight. This is blatant dodging the point and ignores the fact that China was accepted by major powers including the most powerful nation as having sovereignty over Tibet pre WWII as per your own criteria.

It even proceeds to show "China proper" with more limited boundaries which further undermines the point you appear to have been trying to make.

Now I know you either didn't watch the video or are being dishonest. It divides China up into regions which includes what it calls China proper, Tibet, Sinkiang (Xinjiang) and a few others. Either you ignored the rest, or just watched the first few seconds and didn't wait for it to finish the part when it talks about China's geography.

To be possibly truly relevant, it would need to be something like a formal US or map from an intentionally recognized authority, (possibly the League of Nations give the time frame) specifically showing country boundaries. (Admittedly this is getting somewhat off topic from the original thread subject.)

So when I satisfy your own criteria of before post WWII sovereignty you now demand more evidence. Videos for the US government aren't formal enough are they? How about you find your list of nations in that time frame which disputed Chinese sovereignty instead of me doing the work then having you say it doesn't count because that would admit you were wrong.

You appear to have missed my specific objection was with China's EEZ claims and not their claims on the islands in question persay.

Basically in this case you're talking about islands that have basically been historically uninhabited and historically had disputed claims to them. Given the relatively recent permanent stationing of even troops on the island, I put them in a very different category than say the Falklands which has had a long term resident non-military population. (I also put uninhabited islands with long undisputed or clearly settled territorial claims in a different category.)

You appear to have missed my specific point in regards to those claims being POST WWII and not to the EEZ per se. I even stated post WWII in the post you replied. This looks like you are pretending I am NOT addressing your statement " Basically in the post WW2 world barring generally extreme circumstances country boundaries should stay the same because any other rule gets messy in a hurry", and pretend that I am trying to address your EEZ claims in this post.

[mr friendly guy]

BTW under Omega18's before post WWII criteria, China has made claims before that time and did put an effort to occupying those disputed areas. Its rival claimants did not. So why is China singled out when they are the only one who fulfilled Omega18's criteria on boundaries.

[Lolpah]

Well, one thing is certain: tibetans do have a higher life standard and a better life than the ones that were left nominally independent under an idiotic fundamentalist monarchy in Bhutan.

Could you give sources to back this up?

[Omega18]

Firstly for it to determine sea boundaries when it clashes with the EEZ of other islands, you would have to first accept those other islands are someone else sovereignty. This is still being disputed.

Secondly I need a bit more than vague statement that there weren't islands there before and I will explain why. Because the legal definition of an island only requires a small amount of land above level. Some of what are called reefs can support bases on them. This is the basis of the Phillipines legal argument from your own article, that is what China occupies isn't legally an island. What land reclamation does is increase the amount of space so they can put in bigger military bases to better protect their claims if the conflict ever turned hot. In terms of EEZ a nation is allowed to claim 200 nautical miles from an island. The island can't be made that much bigger and is small compared to the 200 nautical miles allowed for EEZ.

Again this claim in flat out wrong because the "islands" China is ignoring EEZs for include elements of the Philippines proper rather than just disputed territory for instance. China is simply ignoring that at most the EEZ is supposed to be split 50/50 in those circumstances. China's full claims also clearly go beyond the 200 mile EEZ limits at various points.

The fact of the matter is some of the recent claims stick with a loose definition of what counts as an island such as Scarborough Shoal and the like.
http://www.rappler.com/nation/4459-why- ... yan-island
http://globalbalita.com/wp-content/uplo ... flag.5.jpg

To be blunt, its not as if China historically inhabited the "island" or truly ever "used" the island historically. (They only used the area as fishing ground which defiantly doesn't give modern EEZ claims according to intentional law.) The claim is purely about extending how far an EEZ claim the China can press in relation to the Philippines and whether China can get away with it. Its not even a case where China can claim that the Philippines does not have historical claims of its own on the "island" in question.

The propaganda part is why Americans need to fight in China, not China rules Tibet. The video is even titled Why we fight. This is blatant dodging the point and ignores the fact that China was accepted by major powers including the most powerful nation as having sovereignty over Tibet pre WWII as per your own criteria.

Since you still don't get it you showed an essentially meaningless video clip to the question at hand and made preposterous claims from it. (Its simply not the right document if you're showing evidence that could actually effect Tibet's legal status during the period.) Again, the video clip gave a sloppy general summary of the situation with China and not a detailed summary of all historical claims in the period in question. More relevantly, since the original comment by me was my personal opinion about what was right and proper behavoir, the official position on the subject by the US during WW2 is almost completely utterly irrelevant. (The whole subject of Tibet again is really off topic as far as the thread is concerned regardless, especially since I made it clear I am not actually advocating the international community doing much about it other than trying to look out for the rights of Tibetans at this point.)

You appear to have missed my specific point in regards to those claims being POST WWII and not to the EEZ per se. I even stated post WWII in the post you replied. This looks like you are pretending I am NOT addressing your statement " Basically in the post WW2 world barring generally extreme circumstances country boundaries should stay the same because any other rule gets messy in a hurry", and pretend that I am trying to address your EEZ claims in this post.

The point about post-WW2 claims is basically they apply to areas actually truly controlled by countries rather than merely claimed. (I will put inhabited land attached to inhabited land or right next to inhabited land in a different category. As noted clearly long term undisputed established rights to an uninhabited island are also in a different category.)

Any pre-WW2 permanent occupation of the Spratleys for example was clearly not done by China. It also clearly fell into the category of islands whose ownership was in dispute at the end of WW2. More to the point, islands like the Spratleys (especially some of them) were basically historically seen as mostly irrelevant, which makes one country getting everything they want merely for putting in claims first especially problematic. Essentially my view is in situations like geography and the impact of a country's EEZ should be taken into account when determining who should have rights to specific islands, and these disputes should be settled by international authorities. (Its not like the Falklands where you have a long established population.)

Edit: You're simply flat out wrong about China being the only country to make pre-WW2 claims by the way regarding the islands in question. Vietnam definitely made claims on the Spratleys in the past, and France (which had Vietnam as a colony at the time) both asserted claims and even occupied portions of the Spratleys in 1933.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratly_Islands

Vietnam also certainly had similar historical claims for the Paracel islands in addition to China's. The key point you seem to be missing is that my definition was actual control at the end of the WW2 (the true cutoff is actually strictly speaking a little bit post WW2 when you factor in certain cases which basically involve WW2 fallout). It again applied pretty much exclusively to physically occupied islands or land physically attached or almost next to land that is physically occupied. (With again uninhabited land with uncontested claims accepted by others, or clearly resolved ownership being its own category.) Simply having technically put in claims in the past without doing much about it and those claims being disputed or not accepted by others does not count. (With again additional considerations involving uninhabited islands which were not really significant until they affected EEZ control also applying to these cases.)

[mr friendly guy]

Again this claim in flat out wrong because the "islands" China is ignoring EEZs for include elements of the Philippines proper rather than just disputed territory for instance. China is simply ignoring that at most the EEZ is supposed to be split 50/50 in those circumstances. China's full claims also clearly go beyond the 200 mile EEZ limits at various points.

I am talking about the claims of the islands. The EEZ can be measured once we decide who owns what.

The fact of the matter is some of the recent claims stick with a loose definition of what counts as an island such as Scarborough Shoal and the like.
http://www.rappler.com/nation/4459-why- ... yan-island
http://globalbalita.com/wp-content/uplo ... flag.5.jpg

I will read the links later as no time now.

To be blunt, its not as if China historically inhabited the "island" or truly ever "used" the island historically. (They only used the area as fishing ground which defiantly doesn't give modern EEZ claims according to intentional law.)

However the claims of the others are at least just as dubious, and under your criteria of post WWII even worse than China. Why is China being singled out? Most probably for the same reason you think they occupy Tibet.

The claim is purely about extending how far an EEZ claim the China can press in relation to the Philippines and whether China can get away with it. Its not even a case where China can claim that the Philippines does not have historical claims of its own on the "island" in question.

Except the others do claim some islands as well, so its the fact China might think an EEZ could extend further than calculated is irrelevant to your original post about China claiming the islands. Its only when I shown that the other claimants have worse claims under your criteria that you start focussing on about this "extending EEZ claim." That's a separate topic, but that can be worked out after we decide who owns what.

Since you still don't get it you showed an essentially meaningless video clip to the question at hand and made preposterous claims from it. (Its simply not the right document if you're showing evidence that could actually effect Tibet's legal status during the period.)

Bullshit. Sovereignty has always been affected by recognition of territory by other states. The most powerful nation recognised Chinese sovereignty pre WWII as per your own criteria. If you dispute it find some states which recognise an independent Tibet at this time - hint you can try Mongolia only. Too bad.

Again, the video clip gave a sloppy general summary of the situation with China and not a detailed summary of all historical claims in the period in question.

It showed America recognition of China's sovereignty. What do you think it was supposed to do? Go into a detailed history lesson? Fuck if I showed you a map made in the 19th century Europe showing China (Qing dynasty) you could still say it wasn't a detailed summary of all historical claims and doesn't count. The fact is, you can shift the goalposts continuously in an effort so that you aren't wrong. You made some simple errors which is why I think you pulled the China card to use, but are using very poorly.

More relevantly, since the original comment by me was my personal opinion about what was right and proper behavoir, the official position on the subject by the US during WW2 is almost completely utterly irrelevant. (The whole subject of Tibet again is really off topic as far as the thread is concerned regardless, especially since I made it clear I am not actually advocating the international community doing much about it other than trying to look out for the rights of Tibetans at this point.)

It is relevant to the part when you talk about border changes after WW2.

The point about post-WW2 claims is basically they apply to areas actually truly controlled by countries rather than merely claimed. (I will put inhabited land attached to inhabited land or right next to inhabited land in a different category. As noted clearly long term undisputed established rights to an uninhabited island are also in a different category.)

In which case then all other claimants would have weak claims in the Spratleys, although China has a good claim in the Paracels since they actually controlled it. The next thing is to ask is a) if this establish control isn't clear for either party, whats the next step and b) again why is China being singled out if the others don't have control over it either.

Any pre-WW2 permanent occupation of the Spratleys for example was clearly not done by China. It also clearly fell into the category of islands whose ownership was in dispute at the end of WW2. More to the point, islands like the Spratleys (especially some of them) were basically historically seen as mostly irrelevant, which makes one country getting everything they want merely for putting in claims first especially problematic.

Again, why is China being sinlged out when every other claimant also has the same problem? In fact at least China had a pre WWII claim.

Essentially my view is in situations like geography and the impact of a country's EEZ should be taken into account when determining who should have rights to specific islands, and these disputes should be settled by international authorities. (Its not like the Falklands where you have a long established population.)

1. So China gets the Paracels then? Its clearly closer to Hainan Island whose sovereignty is not disputed. But I bet you'll continue to dispute this as well even though under the criteria you yourself state gives China a stronger claim than its rivals. What's the betting you'll shift more goalposts.

2. That's might convenient to say whoever is closer gets things except when its a claim for a Western nation, then other factors like history of settlement wins out. Both Argentina and the UK have used some form of historical argument to buttress their claim (they use others as well) but it seems its not allowed when its someone else doing it.

Edit: You're simply flat out wrong about China being the only country to make pre-WW2 claims by the way regarding the islands in question. Vietnam definitely made claims on the Spratleys in the past, and France (which had Vietnam as a colony at the time) both asserted claims and even occupied portions of the Spratleys in 1933.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratly_Islands

Sorry, I thought it was clear I was referring to other claimants. I know France certainly made claims at the time, but they are not one of the current claimants. Try again.

As for Vietnam, I am sure in imperial times both them and China made the claim, but if you are going into relatively modern times (like I was when there is an international community), China did it pre end of WWII. Vietnam wasn't even independent until after. Which reminds me, since you criticise nations for seemingly making claims out of nowhere, why isn't Vietnam or the Phillipines accused of the same? I guess it sounds better to say Russia in Crimea will embolden China to do bullshit, than saying it will embolden Vietnam or the Phillipines right?

Vietnam also certainly had similar historical claims for the Paracel islands in addition to China's. The key point you seem to be missing is that my definition was actual control at the end of the WW2 (the true cutoff is actually strictly speaking a little bit post WW2 when you factor in certain cases which basically involve WW2 fallout). It again applied pretty much exclusively to physically occupied islands or land physically attached or almost next to land that is physically occupied. (With again uninhabited land with uncontested claims accepted by others, or clearly resolved ownership being its own category.)

Then you would know that China (ROC) did have people briefly on the Spratley and the PRC certainly held the Paracels. So by this logic only the Spratley's are truely disputed under this criteria.

Simply having technically put in claims in the past without doing much about it and those claims being disputed or not accepted by others does not count. (With again additional considerations involving uninhabited islands which were not really significant until they affected EEZ control also applying to these cases.)

Ok, so why you complaining about what China is doing then based on this criteria. Think about it, those claims made by China or rival claimants don't count unless they did something about it. So they are all in the same boat. When they do decide to do something about it, then it strengthens their claim. So they are doing something about it.

[K. A. Pital]

I'm reminding that this is a thread about Ukraine; the discussion of China will be split if continues.

[mr friendly guy]

I'm reminding that this is a thread about Ukraine; the discussion of China will be split if continues.

Please split it. Omega doesn't seem to want to discuss the "What Russia does in Crimea will embolden China because Russia gets away with it," part any more anyway.

[Omega18]

Please split it. Omega doesn't seem to want to discuss the "What Russia does in Crimea will embolden China because Russia gets away with it," part any more anyway.

I'll slightly address the subject further if split, (since you simply are continuing to make specifically dubious or wrong claims) but frankly I am getting tired of spending too much time of going into all the details of an issue I genuinely don't personally care that much about the details of other than objecting to China's extremely aggressive conduct regarding the matter. (As noted I view the whole thing as mostly a pissing match by pretty much all the sides involved.)

You did not even attempt to actually address the fact a portion China's South China broadest sea claims are clearly in violation of international law and the 1982 UN Convention China signed REGARDLESS of whether China wins absolutely every island dispute in the area in question.

(The relevance of the emboldened China aspect of my observation comes down to an individual judgment to a great degree anyways, so there are limits to going on further on this issue unless there is a specific point to discuss.)

[mr friendly guy]

Then I will address the emboldening part then.

If China has already "gotten away with it," then Russia getting away with it really won't change much. I interpret the fact that nowhere has anyone even bothered to give China the same piss poor sanctions they gave Russia (even those who China has disputes with) as them "getting away with it."

If China has NOT gotten away with it (which seems to be what Omega is driving at), as witnessed by the fact there is some reaction to their actions, and we consider this reaction worse than the consequences Russia has to deal with, then we have to ask an obvious question. Is this deterring them? The answer appears to be no. Therefore they will most likely interpret Russia "getting away with it" as Russia being in a different situation due to various reasons which gives Russia an advantage in its dealings with Ukraine compared to China's dealing with countries in the South China Sea. They might even wish they could "get away with it" like Russia did. However Russia getting away with it doesn't change the situation with China, because China is still continuing on business as usual even if they haven't gotten away with it.

Either way, Russia's actions and the West's reaction would have little bearing on China's actions in its own territorial disputes. In short, playing the China card to use as an argument against Russia's action in Crimea while similar various other rhetorical flourishes used by politicians, its still just as poorly thought out.

[K. A. Pital]

No, I'm not entirely decided on splitting it as you try to keep the comments partly relevant to the subject at hand (Ukraine, Russia, Crimea). But if you wish, there is a thread for the South China Sea which isn't gone far away - please, you can continue the discussion of the more China-specific points there.

[Vympel]

More from Larison on the dangers of obsessing about 'credibility' and similar issues

There was a recent exchange on Twitter about the importance of “credibility” that deserves some follow-up comments. This contribution from Rob Farley sums up the skeptical view fairly well. Earlier in the conversation, I had remarked that credibility was a useless thing to worry about. What I meant by this was that it is useless to be anxious about something that has no meaningful effect on how other states judge U.S. commitments and threats. In addition to being useless, however, obsessing over credibility is potentially quite harmful in that it makes us think that the U.S. must take certain actions that don’t make sense on their own merits in order to impress and/or intimidate other states so that they take U.S. commitments everywhere else seriously. For instance, China doesn’t judge the reliability of the U.S. commitment to Japan based on what Washington does or doesn’t do in Syria, or Ukraine, or Iraq, but on how seriously the U.S. takes its security commitments to Japan, how capable it is of fulfilling them, and how important Japanese security is to the U.S. Obsessing over credibility encourages people to treat vital interests and peripheral ones as if they were all of equal importance and effectively interchangeable, and that leads to numerous mistakes in analysis.

During the Syria and Ukraine debates, we saw many versions of this argument. Hawks tended to take for granted that the case for direct intervention and/or a more aggressive policy was not all that compelling to most Americans (and the case was extremely weak in both places), and so they sought to find other reasons not directly related to the countries in question that they thought would make Americans more supportive of taking a harder line. In practice, this amounts to little more than fear-mongering and a new round of silly domino theory speculation, but it can make restraint superficially appear far more dangerous and risky than it actually is. Worrying about credibility is the all-purpose fallback argument for “doing something” abroad, because all that a hawk needs to do is to create anxiety that something undesirable might happen in a place that actually matters to the U.S. in order to make Americans more receptive to an interventionist policy in a place that matters very little or not at all. “You may not think that intervention in Syria is a good idea,” this sort of argument goes, “but if we don’t follow through on our stupid threats there we might have to repel a North Korean invasion in the near future.” It’s a transparently ridiculous argument, but if repeated often enough it can start to gain traction.

Obsessing over credibility can also be harmful when it allows the U.S. to be guilted into supporting a bad policy goal favored by an ally or client for fear that the ally or client will “lose faith” in the U.S. unless Washington eagerly does what its dependent wants done. The danger is not that the ally or client will seriously entertain aligning with some other major power. The connection with the U.S. is vastly more valuable to the client government than it is to the U.S. The danger is rather that the U.S. government will trick itself into thinking that this might happen and therefore indulge the client in its pet project regardless of its wisdom or necessity or relevance to U.S. interests. We have seen something like this in the complaints from eastern European NATO allies about Ukraine over the last six or seven months: they believed it was imperative to pull Ukraine out of Moscow’s orbit, and to that end they very much wanted a change in government in Ukraine, and so they were dissatisfied with any U.S. policy that didn’t pursue their parochial goals as vigorously as they preferred.

When this project backfired and resulted in a dramatic and dangerous Russian response, these same allies started demanding new commitments and deployments from the U.S. in order to be “reassured,” but this was just more of the same efforts to extract additional support above and beyond the major commitment that the U.S. had already made to them. These allies tried exploiting our political class’ obsession with credibility, and to some extent it worked in getting the U.S. to reaffirm its commitments to them and to go out of its way to “reassure” allies that the U.S. was already treaty-bound to defend. The problem here is that it is always in the allies and clients’ own interests to complain that the U.S. isn’t doing enough for them and to warn that Washington is neglecting its dependents, and no matter how much the U.S. does to satisfy them sooner or later something will happen to occasion a new round of complaining.

There are weaker and stronger expressions of the credibility obsession, but all of them suffer from the flaw that they invest Washington’s reputation with major and sometimes even decisive importance in influencing how other governments judge U.S. commitments. The reality is that it has no real importance except in the minds of some American pundits, analysts, and politicians. The more expansively one defines U.S. interests, and the more “indispensable” one believes the U.S. to be to the maintenance of “world order,” the more likely one is to use and believe the bogus credibility argument. The argument is very popular with supporters of U.S. hegemony and advocates of aggressive foreign policy measures, because it dovetails with other unexamined and unfounded assumptions that U.S. vital interests are at stake all over the world and the security of the rest of the world hinges on vigorously defending these often imaginary interests whenever they are threatened. The obsession with credibility is itself something of a confidence trick that hawks and our allies and clients play on the American public, and unfortunately far too many Americans are still willing to fall for it.

[montypython]

More from Larison on the dangers of obsessing about 'credibility' and similar issues

Indeed, this sort of over-obsession on credibility could be considered one of the underlying factors behind the decisions of the major World War I actors in pursuing war.

[Vympel]

Ukraine's dangerous drift towards chaos

Pretty balanced write up, from the National Interest as usual.

One of the most deplorable features of the Ukraine crisis has been the unwillingness of both Russia and the United States to restrain their respective allies. Until yesterday, when reports emerged that Washington is now counseling a go-slow approach to the prospective sieges of Donetsk and Lugansk, Washington has betrayed little anxiety that the Ukrainians might go too far. About the only daylight observable between the two states has been that the U.S. State Department refers to the insurgents as separatists, whereas the Ukrainians call them terrorists. But American officials have not condemned the use of that terminology by the Ukrainians, and they continue to defend Ukraine’s military actions as “moderate and measured.”

The language of the Ukrainian authorities is of a war to the death. "We will not stop,” said the newly appointed Defense Minister, Valeriy Heletey. He continued:

"We will bring in maximum numbers of troops and weapons, and strengthen them with National Guard soldiers, police troops and the Security Service - all will be thrown in to defend the Donbas . . . to defend those cities from terrorists.

Those not willing to give up arms [will] understand that waging a war against the Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian people is not just dangerous but it will mean doom for these people . . . We will continue the active phase until the moment there is not a single terrorist left on the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk."

Heletey, the fourth defense minister since February, was appointed on July 3; in his maiden speech, he promised to liberate Crimea. “There will be a victory parade,” he declared, “in Ukraine's Sevastopol.” The minister acknowledged that the people in the southeast “are disoriented and afraid of Ukraine, of Kyiv. They are afraid they will be punished and tortured.” But he also warned the residents, in effect, that you’re either with us or against us. “The residents have to . . . first and foremost not support, passively or actively, those terrorists. If it works this way, the process will be very quick," he said.

Another piece of ominous news, from the New York Times, is that the new Ukrainian forces have learned to kill their fellow countrymen without being conscience-stricken about it. This, the Times intimates, is great progress. "They have overcome that psychological barrier in which the military were afraid to shoot living people," says one local expert. Once the military had gotten over their silly phobia, “and it became clear who were our people, who were foes, the operations became more effective."

There is no shortage of similar talk on the Russian side. Begging for Russian assistance, and charging betrayal against the Kremlin, the leader of the insurgents, Igor Girkin, says the armed forces advancing toward him are “true fascists in the sense of the word that our predecessors had used—hellhounds, murderers, bandits, marauders . . . Real scum."

It is deplorable that things have been brought to such a pass, and it would be bad all around—that is, for everybody’s true interests—for the violence to proceed to further extremes. In a better world, the forces on both sides would be reined in by their external patrons.

When secession was proposed for South Sudan and Kosovo, the argument used by the West was that that the violence employed by the Sudanese and Serb regimes made them unfit to govern the people in their disaffected regions. Given those precedents, the Ukrainians should think long and hard about the methods they employ to “annihilate” the “terrorists” in their southeast. If the result of their military operations is a badly alienated population in that region, they risk forfeiting their right to rule these people; that seems, at least, to be the general idea suggested by the precedents of South Sudan and Kosovo. Western countries, of course, have a well developed capacity to look the other way when their own allies commit misdeeds, so it is not probable that the equities of the case will decide it. But they should. In determining such questions, as Woodrow Wilson said, “the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.”

A possible deal, likely to be spurned by Ukraine but worth exploring by the United States and Germany, is that the Ukrainian separatists evacuate their positions in eastern Ukraine and are given safe refuge in Russia. In return, UN peacekeepers occupy the territory and work with Ukrainian civil authorities and international observers to hold a referendum that will tell us what the local population wants. How to frame the referendum might raise delicate questions, but it would hardly seem improper if the people in the Donbass region were given the right to make their opinion known in a plebiscite. Opinion in the Donbass is probably alienated from both the armed insurgents and the Kiev authorities, but no one can be sure unless it is determined by a free vote (which the previous referendum was not). The basic idea would be to get the armed men to hold their fire for a bit, so that the world could hear what the workers and pensioners think. An international conference convened to ensure Ukraine’s pacification would not necessarily be bound by such a referendum, but it would certainly help the diplomats and the outside world understand the equities of the case.

The tension between “self-determination” and “territorial integrity” has a long and storied history. It was at the center of deliberation during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919; since that time, these competing principles have frequently lain at the heart of international crises. In Ukraine, that tension expresses itself in the right to self determination held by the people of the Donbass (or Crimea), and the right to preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Self-determination rests on the assumption that political authority is best constituted from the bottom up; territorial integrity rests on the fact that dangers to political stability can arise if provinces can secede at will.

Americans have believed in both self-determination and territorial integrity, but have struggled bitterly over their application to particular circumstances—that is, deciding which one to favor when they are put in conflict. Through most of its history, as Michael Lind notes, the United States was a champion of national self-determination. Americans believed in the right of every people to determine its own destiny. To be independent—that is, free from foreign rule—did not necessarily mean that every nation would or should become democratic; that had to be worked out by each nation’s own internal processes, in which it was improper for foreigners to meddle. There was wide consensus on this point, as Lind insists, but its attractiveness did not arise simply, as he also contends, from the thought that a world governed by this principle would be safer for the United States. It mattered also that this principle appeared as most conducive to justice.

But territorial integrity also counted. It did for Abraham Lincoln, most emphatically, in the war of southern secession. It did for Woodrow Wilson, who made the guarantee of political independence and territorial integrity the center of the League of Nations’ protections. It did for Lyndon Johnson, who sent U.S. forces to South Vietnam on behalf of that principle. Defense of territorial integrity (reaffirmed at Helsinki in 1975) was part of the Cold War consensus, but the affirmation of it also served then as the basis for détente.

After the Cold War, policy continued its attachment to territorial integrity but made one great adjustment. Though initially resisting Yugoslavia’s breakup, the United States subsequently made the territorial integrity of the new states, especially newly independent Bosnia, its central objection to the Serb campaign of separation. The United States followed the same rule toward the former Soviet Union. In today’s Iraq, the mantra of preserving Iraq’s territorial integrity continues to be repeated by American officials, however distant it may be from the partition that is now at hand.

Experience suggests that territorial integrity is generally an excellent principle but cannot prevail in every circumstance. Experience also suggests that recent U.S. policy, when territorial integrity has been put into competition with self-determination, has almost entirely depended on whose ox is gored. Consistency was not among the virtues of U.S. policy toward Yugoslavia’s dissolution. The memory of how Russia and Serbia were thrice disadvantaged in the breakup of Yugoslavia, in turn, played an important role in shaping Russia’s response to the upheavals in Ukraine.

The fact that the current crisis in Ukraine has its origin in an unconstitutional seizure of power in Kiev, leading to a wholesale change in the regional composition of the government, is relevant to how far the principle of territorial integrity should apply in Ukraine. Having supported the violent change in the status quo, the United States utters with ill grace its contention that the status quo is now inviolable.

Unless Obama were to intervene personally, however, there is no chance that the U.S. State Department would be attracted to anything like the formula I have described. Germany is a better candidate for leading the charge toward some such resolution, though the Germans have seemed very reluctant to break from America or Poland in the crisis. Putin would embrace it, but since it is not on offer from the West, he faces one of two grim prospects: an intervention of Russian “peacekeepers”, which would be denounced as aggression and bring down on Russia’s head further Western sanctions and a war with Ukraine, or domestic outrage over abandoning people Putin had pledged himself to protect.

It is a reflection of the poor quality of Putin’s Ukraine policy that he should find himself in this dilemma. Russia had several levers of power in responding to the Maidan coup; it was not inevitable that Putin would choose the one that would lead to the current civil war. Seizing buildings in the east, in imitation of Svoboda’s seizure of buildings in the west before the revolution, was sure to give greater prominence to the extreme Ukrainian nationalists of whom the Russians were most fearful. If Putin didn’t mean to support the insurgents in the Donbass, he should have condemned their activities far more quickly and led them back from the brink. Instead, he tried to pair the disarmament of the insurgents in the east with the disarmament of nationalist paramilitaries in the west, together with ending the occupation of official buildings in Kiev. That objective was reasonable enough, but as it turned out, unrealistic. The West just ignored him. Instead of disarming the paramilitary forces, Ukraine absorbed them into its armed forces.

In this unfolding drama, Putin is less the devious tyrant anticipating every circumstance and more the elected president responding, somewhat incoherently, to his own domestic opinion. According to a recent poll reported by Fred Weir of the Christian Science Monitor, 64 percent of Russians “support Russian volunteers participating in the conflict on the rebel side, and majorities consistently say Moscow should do more to back the rebels. But 68 percent also say they fear the local conflict could develop into full-blown war between Russia and Ukraine, while 54 percent worry it could grow into ‘World War III.’” It seems deeply implausible that Putin intentionally put himself in this trap, in which he can neither advance, nor retreat without grave cost. Clearly, he miscalculated.

But the Ukrainians may be miscalculating too. The more they give vent to their hatred of Ukraine’s Russophiles, the more one must question the desirability of keeping these discordant peoples within the same state. The Ukrainian nationalists think they are dramatically making their case by proclaiming loudly their intent to annihilate the terrorists, but they may instead be demonstrating they are unfit to rule the distinct people from which those “terrorists” sprang. Mutual hatred is no basis for a civil relationship.

I note in relation to the Ukrainian pledge of a "victory parade in Ukraine's Sevastopol" - there'll be one, but in any world imaginable for the foreseeable march of history, they'd be Russian troops. Such ridiculous bluster is I'm sure very popular amongst the far right nonetheless.

[Vympel]

So a Ukrainian army unit (24th motor rifle I believe) was camping out in the open and was completely destroyed by a rebel BM-21 Grad strike on their position - dozens killed, more wounded.







The destroyed T-64 could indicate that the Grads(s) were loaded up with rockets carrying armor piercing bomblets.

In any event, the Ukrainians are utterly furious at the sheer gall of the rebels attacking a purely military target in what is clearly open combat, and have continued to throw around the "terrorist" label and threatening to kill 100 seperatists for each Ukrainian soldier killed.

Guess its much braver to shoot Grads at cities.

[Thanas]

Your partisanship is showing, how else are you going to retake fortified cities? Russians did much worse when they conquered Grozny.

[Vympel]

Your partisanship is showing, how else are you going to retake fortified cities?

Missing the point - the point is not the Ukrainians are killing civilians by bombarding them with artilley, its that they're such ridiculous morons that they have the audacity to act like a purely military attack is a terrorist one while they do worse to innocent civilians.

Russians did much worse when they conquered Grozny.

So what? Is that a good example example to emulate? Russia committed massive atrocities in Chechnya, what does that have to do with Ukraine? Are Russohpone rebels in East Ukraine responsible for the acts of the Russian government 15-20 years ago?

Anyway, lets just remember that there are no Nazis fighting for Ukraine, and its all just Russian propaganda. The rebels are Russian puppets and the east has nothing to fear from its Ukrainian liberators. Gotta love that Ukrainian President and his fine upstanding cabinet.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28329329

The key figures in the Azov Battalion are its commander, Andriy Biletsky, and his deputy, Ihor Mosiychuk.

Andriy Biletsky is also the leader of a Ukrainian organisation called the Social National Assembly. Its aims are stated in one of their online publications:

"to prepare Ukraine for further expansion and to struggle for the liberation of the entire White Race from the domination of the internationalist speculative capital"

"to punish severely sexual perversions and any interracial contacts that lead to the extinction of the white man"

This, according to experts, is a typical neo-Nazi narrative.

[Kane Starkiller]

The real question is how widespread the support for rebellion is.
It didn't succeed in Kharkiv and Odessa cities where Russian speakers are in the majority but ethnic Russians are in the minority.
It did succeed in Donetsk and Luhansk were ethnic Russians are the majority in the largest cities but not in the whole Oblasts.
To me the idea that Russian speaking ethnic Ukrainians would support joining Russia was always suspect. Bit like saying that English speaking Irish in Republic of Ireland would support joining England.

[Thanas]

Your partisanship is showing, how else are you going to retake fortified cities?

Missing the point - the point is not the Ukrainians are killing civilians by bombarding them with artilley, its that they're such ridiculous morons that they have the audacity to act like a purely military attack is a terrorist one while they do worse to innocent civilians.

Oh please, you know full well that there is a propaganda war going on.

And if you want to talk about heinous shit, then please remind me which side executed people live on camera and which side is engaged in more human rights abuse in their reign of terror according to Human Rights Watch?

That is also the reason you keep missing the point about the fascists. Are there some? Yes. Are they in power? No.

[Edi]

So, Vympel, if you take such exception to some of the actors on the Ukrainian side, what's your take on fucking Strelkov, who is a war criminal several times over for the shit he pulled in Chechnya, including massacres of civilians?

It's a civil war and it's going to be ugly as hell no matter which way you slice it and pretending that only the Ukrainians are the bad guys or have bad guys in their ranks is fucking ridiculous. Especially since the overall leader of the rebellion is a bloodyhanded war criminal.

Watch out that you don't break your neck falling off that high horse some time.

[K. A. Pital]

I must note that regardless of Strelkov's prior combat history, he has been following rules of war, attacking military targets. It is clearly a question of necessity, though, because rebels only thrive when the general population supports them.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

They should just fucking carve up the country already. But nope! Too much pig-headed face issues on all sides that it's now reached a point where no one is in a mood to compromise.

And all the atrocities and what not are just icings on the fucking cake. Even if the Kievan government wins, it will just further polarize the country, Nazis and no Nazis. It will be a Pyrrhic victory at best. And then fast forward to the next election, this entire war might get repeated again with a vengeance.

[Kane Starkiller]

What evidence do you have that majority of people in any region want to secede?
I mean Ukrainian army as shambolic as it is managed to put almost half of Luhansk and Donetsk oblast under control.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

What evidence do you have that majority of people in any region want to secede?
I mean Ukrainian army as shambolic as it is managed to put almost half of Luhansk and Donetsk oblast under control.

Have you been reading the very hostile comments of the locals in Slayvansk towards the Ukrainian army? Even if they didn't want to secede before, they sure aren't very happy with the Ukrainian government right now.

And you can betcha the Ukrainian government is bound to do some pig headed nonsense when they finally have victory, judging by very grandiose statements they have been making of late, like "we will have Crimea back!". Yeah, like that will ever happen.

[Kane Starkiller]

But this still in no way points to majority of the population in those regions supporting secession.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

But this still in no way points to majority of the population in those regions supporting secession.

Since when did anyone care what the people think? After all, isn't this all about buffer zones for Eastern Europe and Russia? Carve up the country, everyone gets their buffer zone, everyone goes home.

If anyone really did care about what the Ukrainians thought about this at all, this whole fucking matter wouldn't have even started. There are way too many state actors who had their hands in this matter for anyone to pretend they had nothing to do with this nonsense. If democracy really mattered at all, they should have taken into account the deep divide in the country from the very fucking beginning and not pretend it away.