How do you feel about Russia's occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine?

That's an entirely different question. But I understand Russia's annexation of Crimea, I understand there was some justification and I also think that it's likely the will of the Crimean people to rejoin Russia. As a believer in the right of self-determination for all people I can support Crimea rejoining Russia 'if' that's what the want.

As for Eastern Ukraine afaik it's not under Russian occupation. In fact afaik the leaders of the Luhansk and Donestk people's republics sought a similar deal to Crimea in rejoing the Russian federation shortly after the Maiden Coup and Putin rebuffed them, thus precipitating the current civil war. If Russia really had annexed Eastern Ukraine the same way the did Crimea do you really think the Ukrainian government would dare carry out operations there?

Solid trolling

Surprised to hear that you didn't know about the Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine! It's been in the news a lot, and since you're interested in Ukraine, I thought you knew about it. Here's a wikipedia article with an extensive and detailed discussion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia...2%80%93present)

Man, you are going to be blown away by some of this stuff!

looks like Crimeans do/did want to rejoin Russia?

Of course it's an implicit justification. Russia jails gay people and murders journalists, among many other abuses. They have no moral high ground on any human rights discussion. So in the context of them currently threatening to invade a sovereign foreign power, to repeatedly point to some unsavory characters in the Ukrainian government as your only commentary on the issue, certainly suggests support for what they are doing.

What makes it even easier to see it for what it is is gwald's history of defending Russia at all costs.

There are literal Nazis in the American government and integrated into the American security forces, and that also has as much to do with Russia seizing Ukranian ships as whatever the **** you're trying to say.

Yep and when gwald opines about US politics his ire for some reason isn't directed at these folks either.

Yeah maybe, after you rig the game by doing some good old ethnic cleansing like they did with the Tatars and replace them with Russian settlers. Whole lot of Russian majority territories in Eastern Europe that became Russian majority mid 20th century that could get instantly invaded the day when the local economy becomes worse than that of Russia's across the border.

Russian tanks massing on Ukraine's border, president tells Sky News

Surprised this all didn't happen sooner with Trump and a big chunk of europe not giving a single damn.

Just there for the Nazis comrade.

Assume Joe Crimean is behind this at a near 100% clip. Should a reunification between Crimea and USSR Russia be handled a) diplomatically or b) at the barrel of a T90?

Google "Sudetenland" I mean we've been over this dot ikes

if we assume that the overwhelming majority of people within the Crimea want to leave Ukraine and join Russia,

then Russia has the right to assert its newfound jurisdiction over the territory


so long as you subscribe to the social contract theory of sovereignty

fwiw for your future efforts, calling it "the Maiden Coup" is a huge tell

I'm not familiar with the bolded, maybe I need to be.

But I'll never agree with, "Hey look at the results of this plebecite we have every right to march in and take what's ours what's the big deal?" if that's its conclusion because, again, we've seen this before in Sudetenland, Austria, etc.

social contract afaiu:

the government's ("legitimate") authority to rule over individuals derives from the individuals' voluntary submission to said authority in exchange for the government's protection (the alternative being the perpetual war of all against all)

when the government stops protecting the people it rules over, it no longer has legitimate authority to rule over them (even though it likely will continue to rule over them, albeit illegitimately)

when the people reject the contract, they waive the protections of the government and their government's claim to "legitimate" authority over them vanishes along with it


in the Crimean referendum scenario, it appears that the Crimean people rejected the deal with the Ukrainian state and opted instead to sign with the Russian state

I know a little about Sudetenland. Like Austria, it was carved out of the remains of the post WW1 Austro-Hungarian Empire.

After a little reading - the German people living there didn't want to be subject to the Czechoslovakian government, but the US basically told them "too bad".

I don't see anything inherently wrong with the post-war reunification of the Germanic peoples. Of course the banner under which they reunified is another story... Actually, it is possible that, had the Germanic people not been forcibly separated, the nazi party may not have been able to seize power to begin with.

But the Jewish people living there lived happily ever after.

...

Seems like this is easily exploitable and you can just annex territory endlessly by migrating enough people to outnumber everyone else 50.1 to 49.9, if it's backed by the Russian government and military then even better, first country to run the program will be the only country in the world soon enough.

This is basically where I was heading with the added corruption caveat of faking/forcing plebecite outcomes to justify a predetermined course of action.

Obviously it’s more difficult to rig now than in the 1930s but by no means impossible.

And does it apply to territories within states? USA#1 fought a bloody war over the question

You have just made an argument for border control.