Peter wrote:
Not “retake”; Crimea is and was Ukraine. A UN recognised country.
Sure, but historically it is not as clear-cut.
You can’t go back and redraw borders as you wish.
Take 1945. The USSR stole a bit of Slovakia. The Czechs stole a bit of Germany. But, whoops, CZ didn’t exist before WW1 or so. Let’s go back to Bismarck! He must have been good; came up with some great quotes.
Capitalism has nothing like the inherent expansion drive as communism. Capitalism expands naturally. Communism expands only by force, coercion, war.
Russia isn’t “properly” communist anymore but they continue the same broken system.
Peter wrote:
Not “retake”; Crimea is and was Ukraine. A UN recognised country.
Missing the point.
Russia de-facto controls Crimea.
Ukraine knows that it is not going to be re-gifted Crimea again. If it wants it, it has to take it by force. And it said it will do it.
Russia did not take that kindly and it was one of the major reasons it decided to attack Ukraine.
That’s all I said, without judgement who is right/wrong and who has what rights.
[personal attack deleted]
Peter wrote:
Capitalism has nothing like the inherent expansion drive as communism. Capitalism expands naturally. Communism expands only by force, coercion, war.
[personal attack deleted]
Communism expands by the force of its ideas. :-)
In fact, US has made/supported quite a long list of military coups in order to stop the communists/left-wingers that were elected into power.
[personal attack deleted]
Esteban – read the Guidelines.
esteban wrote:
Communism expands by the force of its ideas. :-)
That can be said about every “ism” in existence. The problem is there are always some people who see it as their mission (in every aspect of the word) to help this expansion go faster. For these people this expansion is so important that the goal justifies the means.
The war in Ukraine has nothing to do with “isms” IMO. It’s about “making Russia great again”. It’s not clear what Putin has against the West, other than it’s “not Russia”. He is a despot, pure and simple.
esteban wrote:
In fact, US has made/supported quite a long list of military coups in order to stop the communists/left-wingers that were elected into power.
Yes… let’s not glorify capitalism and US policy towards legally elected governments they didn’t like. I mentioned Henry Kissinger earlier in this context. Next year it will be 50 years (on significant date September 11th) since military coup in Chile backed by US when thousands of Chilean intellectuals, politicians, artists and ordinary people were brutally tortured and murdered (women and children included) by nazi/military regime in Chile, heavily backed by US government. Besides CIA operatives and US funding, coup was executed by right-wing extremists and Chilean army while torture methods were developed and supervised by ex-German nazi officers who found refuge in Chile after WW2.
Peter wrote:
You can’t go back and redraw borders as you wish.
Of course! I totally reject Russia’s occupation of Crimea which was and is totally indefensible. What I’m saying is that for historical reasons (some as recent as 1954) it is not so clear-cut whether Crimea “should” be part of Russia or Ukraine. IMO the wishes of the people who actually live there (or did, before 2014) is the most important consideration.
Emir wrote:
Yes… let’s not glorify capitalism and US policy towards legally elected governments they didn’t like. I
Not to mention the Iranian theocracy which we would never have seen if the US had not staged the coup against the democratically elected government in 1953.
Crimea may well form a part of some sort of settlement, as I wrote further back. In any case, one needs some territory where Putin lovers can live… we know they don’t want to live in Russia because they like their washing machines 
However, strategically, UKR should hang onto Crimea and instead give up – if they are to give up anything – some land in the east.
1953/1954 is a long time ago. Back then the policy was to support anybody who fought communism. Today is a bit different. The UK tried Suez, for example… another “smart” idea. Russia is more “contained” today.
Re “wish of the people”… well, not necessarily, because if you hold a referendum everywhere, you get all kinds of nationalist stuff rising up. Maybe Sweden is a totally uniform population, but elsewhere in the world you would never get the current borders retained. And most of the breakaway regions would turn into economic wastelands (poor parts of countries correlate with nationalist support, lower IQ due to historic emigration, etc) and the mobile portions of the populations would then relocate to where they can live better. This is a whole other topic of course. But the historical lesson is that Russia will not spend money on any breakaway regions they acquire, so anybody with mobility and 2 braincells will head to UKR where the EU and US money is and will be pouring in.
