Sorry, I didn't notice it at the time, but your original question was a loaded one, since I never denied "self determination". All I said was that countries should be careful about what they determine since determinations have consequences.
Well, there you go. He seems to have joined a customs union already. I had not been aware of that.
My source is The Russo-Ukranian War by Serkii Plokii, a professor of history at Harvard and Ukranian national. Where does Putin say that this information is an "utter lie"? Plokhyii seems slightly biased in favour of Ukraine, but his account of the war ...
You seem to be advocating that might makes right. Might needs to be reckoned with. Obviously it doesn't make right, but that seems to be irrelevant. I think it's unwise for a country to base her foreign policy on an assumption that a strong neighbour will ...
Now you are just being silly. I have never denied that what has been going on in Ukraine is actual warfare.
Sorry I've done it again
The result of the Russia-Ukraine war has been to frighten every neutral country within Europe into NATO Fine. Now they know what Russia will do if threatened. They can put in their pipes and smoke it.
Now you are just being silly. When Have I ever denied that the invasion was actual warfare.
All countries, I suppose, have pockets of poverty, some more than Russia's. That doesn't make them "basket cases". [Please remove the text from your user name in your next comments, thanks - Incognito]
If you think that movement of NATO to the Russo-Ukranian border was either not threatened, or was not in fact threatening, then you would seem to be someone who engages in wishful thinking.
[Does this therefore imply that you don't believe that self-determination is a workable strategy for the 21st century?] I've never really thought of self determination as a strategy. A strategy is a plan aimed at achieving some goal. If the goal is, say, ...
"Self determination", as you are using the term, would seem would seem to imply that a country can adopt whatever policies it likes regardless of the consequences for other countries. By that argument Russia can adopt a policy of making defensive ...
I don't agree with that. Russia has a right to defend itself, even if that requires preemptive action. In any case fighting was occurring before the invasion, so her action was not entirely preemptive.
Russia went from having what was internationally considered to be one of the best ground armies in the world, to something approximating 3rd tier status Russia pulled out of Afghanistan because their economy had deteriorated to such an extent that they ...
What they believe is merely what they believe. It ain't necessarily so.
If Russia regarded the EU (which is the only alliance that Ukraine had proposed making) as a "mortal enemy" – it's pretty clear that their policy is being driven by paranoia, rather than by reality. It wasn't that that brought about the invasion. Military ...
Yanukovych tried to set up an alternative seat of government in Kharkiv but failed. He then planned on setting one up in the Crimea but, on his way to the peninsula, he was picked up by Putin's agents and taken, against his will, to Russia As far as I know...
I think Russia moved, troops, tanks and armoured vehicles into Donbas on August 24 2014. The fighting started before that though. (MH17 was shot down on July 17th, and there was a Ukranian fighter Jet shot down shortly before that.) It was not a full scale...
Actually, and further to the question of whether they had right to attack, but when Ukraine was severed from Russia just after the Orange Revolution, Yeltsen indicated that there was still a border dispute in existence, but that Russia would probably not ...
They have the right to make foreign policy Of course they do, but they have to be willing to accept any consequences that a policy may entail. That does not give Russia the right to attack and invadeUkraine. Russia did not invade because they believed they...
They have no friends. They have few trading partners Oh, I don't know. At the end of the day it's Mr Geography who decides these things, and attitudes change over time. As Kissinger said: America has no friends, only interests. Perhaps the same thing ...
You asked if this denial of self determination applied only to Russia. I indicated by way of reply that it applied also, and perhaps more so, to the US as well.
Does this dismissal of national self-determination only apply to ex-Soviet countries? Or do you believe this principle (that might is right) should apply elsewhere? The US does not seem to worry about international law. It believes itself to be the "...
The US already has "world hegemony" – through economic means. They don't need to fight wars. Russia, on the other hand, is an economic basket case – despite their substantial natural resources Russia is not a basket case. If it were it would not be capable...
Funny. Russia redefines "defense" as ordering your armies over borders to invade peaceful neighbours. Where are these peaceful neighbours you mention? Surely you don't mean Ukraine, where there was a civil war going on between the government and some ...
I don't really believe the google definition quoted above. But as Humpty Dumpty said "When I use a word it means exactly what I intend it to mean..."
China acquired Hong Kong from Britain in 1997. This has probably been recognized by the UN.
Their legally elected president, Yanukovich, accepted an economic assistance deal from Russia, which was by all accounts a better deal than the EU were offering, at which point all hell seems to have broken loose. Yanukovich, who we would assume had the ...
PS: The Ukranians have certainly chosen to regard the idea of freedom as "ephemeral".
They are effectively losing in Ukraine inasmuch as they have ambitions of world hegemony, and the likes of Russia and China are the main obstacles to this. They are losing probably because they are unwilling to put "boots on the ground" otherwise they ...
What about freedom to form an alliance with your neighbour's mortal enemy. That was probably the only thing Russia said was not OK. It seems ironic that Ukraine appears to be on the point of losing their freedom and sovereignty as a result of stupidly ...
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