Scottish independence would affect the world

And as others have noted, (see: "Why the world should care about Scottish independence"), the UK without Scotland would tip away from Labour toward the Conservative Party; and the UK without Scotland would make Britain more of a Euro-skeptic and less likely to vote "Aye" on a proposed referendum for EU membership.

Scottish Independence Would Shake Up the Global System

September 9, 2014 | Stratfor

Polls released today showed for the first time that a majority -- an extremely small majority, but a majority nonetheless -- of Scots favor independence, although other polls suggest the no camp remains in the lead. A poll is not the election, which will be held Sept. 18, but it is still a warning that something extraordinary might happen very soon. The political union between Scotland and England might be abolished after 300 years. The implications of this are enormous and generally ignored.

Obviously, this raises a host of question about how such a divorce might take place, whether the expected time frame -- divorce by 2016 -- will be adhered to, and how state property might be divided. It also raises the question of Scottish foreign policy. Will Scotland remain in NATO? Will it have membership in the European Union? Will it continue to use the pound sterling, and if not, how will it roll out its own currency?

These are important questions, but far more important issues will follow. One of the principles of the postwar world was the inviolability of Europe's borders. Border disputes were the origin of centuries of war, and so Europe's borders were frozen after World War II to avoid discussion. This may have left some people of one nationality on the wrong side of a border, but this was accepted since the risk of opening the door to border redefinition was considered far greater than any discomforts stemming from the borders that were locked in place.

This principle has been weakened since the end of the Cold War. Still, though the disintegration of the Soviet Union created fully independent states, these were recognized republics within the context of the Soviet Union. One could argue that this did not in fact represent border change. Later, the "Velvet Divorce" of Czechoslovakia into Czech and Slovak successor countries represented another shift, but in a country that had only existed since the end of World War I. The separation of Kosovo from Serbia was a more radical shift but was justified by claims of Serbian oppression. Though each shift weakened the principle of inviolable borders, each came with an asterisk -- that is, each had an aspect that stopped it from being the definitive case.

Scotland separating from England, by contrast, can't be minimized. If that centuries-old union can be revised, then anything can be revised. Scottish separatists' reason for splitting is that they are a separate nation, that each nation has the right to its own state and the right to determine its own destiny, and that they no longer choose to be in union. But if they have the right to determine this, why shouldn't others in Europe enjoy the same right?

For example, modern Spain is an amalgam of regions. One, the Catalan region -- which contains Barcelona -- has a strong separatist movement. If Scotland can leave the United Kingdom, then why shouldn't Catalonia be allowed to leave Spain? Farther east, the Treaty of Trianon gave Romania and then-Czechoslovakia large portions of Hungary along with the Hungarians living there. Why shouldn't Hungarians living in those territories have the right to rejoin Hungary? Meanwhile, if French-speaking Belgians and Dutch-speaking Belgians wish to part ways and return their two regions to their respective countries of origin, why should they not be allowed to? And why shouldn't the eastern part of Ukraine be allowed to secede and join Russia?

Raising the stakes, this is an issue that goes far beyond Europe. There are seemingly innumerable separatist movements in India, China, Africa and so forth. If Scotland has the right to leave the nation-state it is part of and form a new one based on ethnic identity, why can't anyone follow suit? And if anyone can do it, but they are blocked by the state they wish to leave, is resorting to violence in pursuit of independence legitimate?

The Scottish issue -- the claim that the Scots are a separate nation and that all nations have a right to self-determination -- simply cannot be asterisked. Having this happen in the heart of Western Europe would set a clear precedent that would expand geographically and conceptually. It would legitimize similar movements globally and force a reconsideration of what a nation is. Ultimately, a nation would be whatever the majority says it is.

It is doubtful that the Scottish precedent could be contained in Europe. And it is hard to imagine how this precedent might not lead to conflict somewhere, not in the British Isles but somewhere where the existing state would be less inclined to grant the right of self-determination to a separatist movement.

Of course, the separatists in Scotland may well lose, sentiment might change in the post-election negotiations, and so on. But if England and Scotland divorce, the right to separate will become an integral part of international custom -- and it will arouse other movements.

Alan Grayson is wrong this time (on Crimea)

Rep. Alan Grayson is somebody I agree with most of the time and really admire for his guts, but this time he's got it all wrong. I fear he's having an Ameri-centric, knee-jerk left-wing reaction against the right-wing reaction against Putin.

First, "bloodless" cannot be the measure by which we judge the legitimacy of armed incursions by foreign powers. I daresay the U.S. could bloodlessly take over many countries if we came in with enough force quickly enough.  But that wouldn't make it right.

Second, as I've said before, the conditions in which the March 16 Crimean referendum were held, and the ridiculously short time frame, made the referendum illegitimate. Nobody in Europe would hold, much less recognize, a referendum organized under similar conditions on their own territory; so there's no reason for Europe or the West to recognize it in Crimea. To do so is actually a form of Western condescension: "Well, it's good enough for them."

(To illustrate it, I ask you to imagine a referendum for Florida's secession from the USA to join Cuba, since millions of ethnic Cubans live in Florida.  Imagine that this referendum started after Cuban troops invaded the Florida statehouse one night in Tallahassee; days later, those deputies who were allowed in by the Cuban troops, er, "local self-defense forces" voted to join Cuba (although there was no record or witness of the vote); then these deputies announced that this vote would be "confirmed" by a referendum in 2 weeks. This would be contrary to the U.S. Constitution and Florida's Constitution, just as Crimea's secession was contrary to Ukraine's and Crimea's, but that wouldn't matter, I suppose, under the ABSOLUTE right to anybody anywhere in any territorial sub-unit to their own self-determination.  Imagine further Cuba sending in troops to "protect" ethnic Cubans and "protect" their right to hold a referendum, while issuing ultimatums to local and state police, local military units, courts, etc. to pledge their allegiance to Cuba BEFORE the referendum was even held.... Need I go on illustrating how absurd this "legitimate" referendum in Crimea was?)

Third, let's recall that President Yanukovych fled Ukraine without explanation.  He was not "thrown out of power" by anybody; he chose, inexplicably, a day after coming to a compromise agreement with the opposition witnessed by EU ambassadors, (but not agreed to by Russia!), to flee Ukraine. This is not how a legitimate leader behaves.  In a few days it was discovered by the new government that $70 billion were unaccounted for in the state coffers; my guess is that Yanukovych fled preemptive to being arrested.

Finally, just to show that this is not  all about the U.S. and what we  think about a "second Cold War" or similar, just look at the reaction of Ukraine's neighbors in Poland, Moldova, the Baltics: they are not taking this "bloodless" revolution lightly, not to mention Ukrainians staring at 30,000+ Russian troops massing on the other side of the border. They are seriously frightened of Russia and what it might do next; and Grayson's official appeasement does not put their  fears at ease. 

Maps about Ukraine, ethnic Russians

I want to show you two maps.  This first one from 1918 gives the lie to the historical myth that Nikita Khruschev's return of Crimea to Ukraine was some kind of historical anomaly. It clearly shows that Crimea and parts of Belarus and Russia were all part of the free Ukrainian People's Republic before the Bolsheviks conquered it:

The second map is an infographic from NPR.  It shows you why other Russian satellite states are nervous about Russia's annexation of Crimea on the basis of ethnic kinship:

The greener the country, the more ethnic Russians live there. As the favored ethnicity in the Soviet Union, Russians were workers, soldiers, managers and party bosses all throughout the Soviet Union.  After the fall of the USSR, many of them or their descendants stayed put.

So the pretext that Putin gave in Crimea could be repeated in, say, NATO member Latvia, to "protect" about half a million ethnic Russians there.  Already, as NPR points out, "since the Crimean crisis broke out, Transnistria's local Parliament has asked Moscow to grant the breakaway region [of Moldova] Russian citizenship and admission to the Russian Federation." And parts of Kazakhstan are more Russian than Kazakh.  

So what is to stop Putin continuing in this way?  So far, only Putin himself.  That is precisely what worries the West and Putin's neighbors alike.

Crimeans who want Crimea to be Ukrainian could get 5 years in jail

This is exactly what I said earlier: the door of Crimea's "self-determination" only swings one way, toward Russia.  

Here's my translation:

From May 9, calls to action for the return of the Crimea to Ukraine will be punished by a heavy fine or up to five years, which follows from the act signed at the end of 2013 by Vladimir Putin, Law on Amendments to Article 280 of the Criminal Code.

Newly introduced Article 280.1 "public calls for action to violate the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation" complements article on punishment for calls for extremism and states that such appeals shall be punished by a fine or up to 300 thousand rubles, or two years of income, or by compulsory works for a term of up to 300 hours, or imprisonment for up to three years.

If those appeals will be in the media or on the Internet - by compulsory works for a term of up to 480 hours or by imprisonment for up to five years.

Funny, but I don't remember that little detail being discussed by Aksyonov, Putin, et al in the run-up to the March 16 referendum!....

Calls for a return of Crimea to Ukraine will earn a 5-year prison sentence

By Liliya Chalbash

March 24, 2014 | 15Minut

URL: http://15minut.org/article/za-prizyvy-vernut-krym-ukraine-budut-sazhat-na-pjat-let-2014-03-24-13-53-00

British gov't. to Russia: Crimea ain't Scotland

Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes: last year Russia passed a law banning "separatist propaganda" -- exactly the kind of propaganda that it funded in Crimea for months.  

So now if any newly minted Russian citizens in Crimea have second thoughts about joining up and agitate for returning to Ukraine... they can be legally convicted and thrown in jail.  

That door swings only one way, my Crimean friends!

Anyhow, the UK flatly rejected Russia's comparison of the hastily organized and sloppily conducted Crimean referendum -- with no OSCE or UN observers -- to the Scottish referendum that is still six months away, and has the UK government's full blessing.  

U.K. to Russia: Crimea Isn't Scotland

By Matt Ford

March 17, 2014 | The Atlantic 

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/uk-to-russia-crimea-isnt-scotland/284455/

Palestinine's statehood bid in UN will show true stripes

I have no idea how much air time this is getting in the U.S. MSM (methinks not much at all), but it's incredibly significant historically.

It's not the least significant and accidental that Palestinians have taken this step under Pres. Obama, i.e. a Democratic administration: Palestinians have realized that political stripes in the U.S. don't matter, and they can't depend on a "liberal" U.S. president to represent them fairly. This is a move of desperation.

Certainly this motion will be carried by the majority of the UN, and vetoed by the U.S. More interestingly, who else will vote it down? Not all the countries secretly lobbying the Palestinians to abandon this vote in the UN, that's for sure -- their home populations won't stand for it.

There is enormous hypocrisy and grandstanding at work here. We can only praise the U.S. for maintaining a foolish, evil consistency in siding with Israel's opposition to the rest of the world, our "liberal" Democrat president notwithstanding.

Palestinians Seek To End Stalemate With U.N. Bid

by Sheera Frenel

September 14, 2011 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/nB8DjB

Buchanan: Our chickens have come to roost...in Tbilisi

I could not say this any better than old Pat. Take note of his phrase "democratic imperialism;" you'll be hearing it again.


Blowback from Bear-Baiting
By Patrick J. Buchanan
August 15, 2008 | HumanEvents.com


Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.

Nasser's blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili's blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.

Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.

Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli.

Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.

American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.

Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush.

True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"?

Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?

Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?

When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?

Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia?

That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili's provocative and stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia's nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany.

When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do?

American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia's doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members.
Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin's birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia's Black Sea fleet.

When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia?

The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an anti-missile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand.

We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic "revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus.

Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.

Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow.

How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?

For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia's space and getting into Russia's face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost -- in Tbilisi.

Moscow cites Kosovo to justify war, yet refuses Kosovo self-determination?

I may be wrong, but I've never heard official Moscow advocate self-determination for Abkhazia and S. Ossetia. If they did, then maybe it was only just recently, after the West granted Kosovo its independence from Serbia. My point is, you could argue that Russia's stance has been consistent: to quell separatist movements, as in Chechnya; and to make sure that "frozen" separatist movements stay frozen, as in Kosovo, Abkhazia, S. Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia occupies both separatist regions of Georgia in the guise of "peace keepers." This state of affairs has seemed to please Russia so far, without their calling for Abkhazia and S. Ossetia's secession from Georgia. (This would undermine their credibility as impartial peace keepers, to say the least.)

Anyway, why do Abkhazians and S. Ossetians have an "undoubted right to self-determination," as this Professor says? What makes them so special? Russia itself has about 100 ethnic groups! Does each of them undoubtedly deserve self-determination? That's a recipe for chaos and Balkanization. In this regard I sympathize with Georgia. The main challenge of any state is to maintain its territorial integrity; and anybody who challenges that threatens the very life of the country. (Hence Abe Lincoln could not tolerate S. Carolina's secession, and war ensued). Unfortunately for Georgia, however, the threat from Russian invasion is bigger than S. Ossetia's secession.

Russian cynicism revealed in Caucasus strategy
Published: August 14 2008 03:00
From Prof William G. Clarence-Smith.

Sir, South Ossetians and Abkhazian Circassians have an undoubted right to self-determination, which the Georgian government has violently and wrongly denied them, but Russian cynicism in this conflict knows no bounds. If Moscow was really concerned with Ossetian and Circassian rights, it would allow its own populations in the Caucasus, including Ossetians and Circassians, the right to secede. Instead, Russia has recently fought one of the nastiest wars in modern history to prevent the Chechens of the north-western Caucasus from achieving independence. This follows centuries of colonial conquest and rule in the Caucasus, in the course of which the Russians deployed a shocking degree of brutality. Moscow also cites the example of Kosovo to justify its war against Georgia, and yet refuses Kosovo the right to self-determination.

William G. Clarence-Smith,

School of Oriental and African Studies,

London WC1H 0XG, UK