Russia Grabs the Crimea…and More???. April 24, 2014 {My first BLOT (cross between Twitter and Blog)}.

Russia Grabs the Crimea…and More??? {My first BLOT (cross between Twitter and Blog)}.
Mickey Glantz, April 24, 2014

Ok. So Putin’s Russia made a play to take over the Crimea, deemed to be important to it global power status because of its Black Sea naval facilities. But now we see “ultra pro-Russian nationalists acting out in the Eastern part of the Ukraine demanding support from Putin in the form of annexation peacefully if possible but militarily if necessary. Who will intervene actively to stop irredentism (redeeming the lost Russians ‘stuck’ under Ukraine rule. Ok, so after the continued balkanization of the Ukraine, what next?

I think the next step by Putin to protect threatened Russians living in a foreign country can occur in several places. the pretext for protecting Russians can be used to protect those in Russian enclaves in many countries, not only neighboring ones.

Let’s play out a far-fetched possibility. the European Union once challenged the fiscal responsibility of …Cyprus. sanctions were to be applied to the country which happens to be a haven for rich Russians and maybe and also serves as a way to get money out of the Russian Federation to foreign banks in Europe, America and elsewhere other than in Russia. Putin responds noting that Russians in Cyprus are at risk to anti Russian ultra-somethings and it is his obligation to protect them. it is a joke of course to suggest such a thing.

wherever Russians congregate becomes fair game for Putin?

But a look back at Eastern Europe before WWI and especially between WWI and WWII highlights the fact that large percentages of populations in each country in the region were composed of sizable ethnic minorities from neighboring countries. Several of the leaders of those countries sought to repatriate their brethren on the other sides of their borders, borders that were re-drawn as a result of the breakup of 4 empires in the region. Little regard was paid by the victors of WWI to ethnicity and to the potential ethnic animosities and conflicts that would arise in future decades.

O’Keefe cartoon capture reality

Putin’s arguments for taking the Crimea by duplicity and threat of force, now followed by similar (blatant, really) pursuits in the Eastern Ukraine under the guise of protecting Russian minority populations in neighboring countries, is in the name of national (ethnic, really) self determination. BUT, the same argument can be used by sizable ethnic minorities in Russia to bite the Putin in the proverbial butt as large minorities within its borders are making the same argument for self determination. while Putin professes to help oppressed Russians minorities in other countries to demand self determination (in Georgia, Moldova, Belarus), it stifles such demands in Chechnya and Dagestan for example. What hypocrisy. What imperialism. Stalin would be proud of Putin! Right now there is little that will stop him. It is a return to the geopolitics of the 1800s and 1900s!