12-12-2021, 12:24 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-12-2021, 12:31 AM by Eric the Green.)
(12-11-2021, 10:45 PM)Anthony Wrote: But spoiling for a fight with China over Taiwan isn't the only danger we face.
Spoiling for a fight with Russia over Ukraine is also a definite possibility.
And a totally pointless possibility too: Both Crimea and the Donets Basin are more than 75% Russian - and the reason the Russians had to retake them in 2014 is because Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred them from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954, which didn't really mean anything until the Soviet Union shattered in 1991.
We're poised to make the same blunder that Bill Clinton made when he chose to recognize Tito's similarly arbitrarily-drawn internal borders for Yugoslavia, only to see those borders get blown sky-high when the center couldn't hold there either (it was a miracle that Tito's successors managed to keep the lid on that pressure cooker for a decade after he died).
I don't disagree, mostly. It was Serbian activists' long-held dream to set up a south-slavic state under their rule. World War I was fought to give it to them. But the other south-slavs never readily agreed to Serbian rule any more than they liked Austrian, Nazi or Russian rule. Once a brutal dictator took over Serbia and Yugoslavia, and the Russian Warsaw Pact disintegrated, the Serbian reign of the south slavs ended.
I don't think we will directly enter a war against Russia over Ukraine, at least not under Biden or under Trump. But both Russian invasion of Ukraine and Chinese invasion of Taiwan threaten now.
Personally, I oppose one state taking over another through military invasion. That method of statecraft should be retired, and not allowed. I am also opposed to letting tyrants take over more people. They rule over far too many people as it is. So I would support giving more support to Ukraine and Taiwan if attacked. But it is not the job of the USA alone to enforce international law and impose democracy by force. I hope someday, perhaps at the next "new world order" Uranus-Neptune conjunction in Aquarius in 2165, that the UN will be empowered to enforce these rules by most states of the world, and most states will agree with these rules.
If I got my way, I would have the UN set up elections in Donets and Crimea and let the people decide which country they want to join. All troops except UN troops would be withdrawn or disarmed during this election. The people would have to decide between freedom and democracy versus ethnic identity and cohesion.