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The outcome of the war in Bosnia was its division into two federal states - a Croat-Muslim Federation, and the Republika Srpska (whose number one export appears to be postage stamps).
What is the possibility of essentially the same outcome in Ukraine? A Ukrainian Federation, encompassing most of the country's territory, and a Russian Autonomous Oblast, consisting of Crimea, Donbas, Luhansk, and Kharkiv?
After all, the origin of both wars is the same: A Communist tyrant - Tito in Yugoslavia's case, Khrushchev in the Soviet Union's - arbitrarily redrawing the internal borders of both countries, marooning millions of people in the "wrong" republic.
"These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation" - Justice David Brewer, Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 1892
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Looks like Ukraine will not end like Bosnia. Maybbe Russia will.
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(03-30-2022, 09:58 AM)Anthony Wrote: The outcome of the war in Bosnia was its division into two federal states - a Croat-Muslim Federation, and the Republika Srpska (whose number one export appears to be postage stamps).
What is the possibility of essentially the same outcome in Ukraine? A Ukrainian Federation, encompassing most of the country's territory, and a Russian Autonomous Oblast, consisting of Crimea, Donbas, Luhansk, and Kharkiv?
After all, the origin of both wars is the same: A Communist tyrant - Tito in Yugoslavia's case, Khrushchev in the Soviet Union's - arbitrarily redrawing the internal borders of both countries, marooning millions of people in the "wrong" republic.
I expect a post-Putin regime to get Sevastopol (with its big naval base) and access thereto (which means the "Crimean Riviera" and the western bridgehead over the Strait of Azov in return for areas of Ukrainian population now in Russia. People migrating to an area from an adjacent country for economic reasons are free to keep their culture* and to expect political equality, but not to impose an alien political system where they move. Example: Mexican electoral politics end at the US/Mexican border. The PRI and PAN (political parties of Mexico) do not operate in areas with majorities of Mexican-American people in the USA. Democrats and Republicans get to compete to serve Mexican-American populations inside the USA.
Khrushchev assigned the thinly-populated (with a small Russian minority) parts of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR that include the Crimean Tatars while insuring that the USSR would dominate the largely-Russian "Crimean Riviera" and make the legal authority of the Ukrainian SSR meaningless there. Yeltsin arranged for Ukraine to keep Crimea in exchange for its share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal while recognizing Russian domination of the area immediately surrounding the big Soviet (and now Russian) naval base at Sevastopol.
By the way -- I expect a post-Putrid Russia to imitate Ukraine even down to military doctrines.
*Mexican-Americans can assimilate non-Hispanics culturally... and do. But that is voluntary, and it reflects that Mexican-American culture has its attractions.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
