Should Ukrainians simply "get over it" and accept that they've lost Crimea and the Donbas? It's been almost a decade since they've lost it. It's a tricky thing deciding when the terms of resistance should logically expire.
Should Ukrainians simply "get over it" and accept that they've lost Crimea and the Donbas? It's been almost a decade since they've lost it. It's a tricky thing deciding when the terms of resistance should logically expire.
Ideally, no, but youтАЩre also not 100% wrong in the implication. The Ukrainians may realistically come to a conclusion that they canтАЩt actually take Crimea and Donbas back by force without overt NATO involvement. Russia, for all their saber rattling, is meticulously seeking to avoid having any of their munitions even accidentally crossing NATO borders, and NATO is similarly avoiding anyone who answers to a western capitol fire a shot inside Ukraine, for the same reason: that turns this into World War III very quickly, and the spectre of human civilization ending in a half hour time span makes that Something No One Wants.
So our calculus/balance is, give Ukraine enough to make Russia want to get out, without doing so much that this escalates in that fashion. Obviously weтАЩre in a place where we think that trend line will be in UkraineтАЩs favor unless Trump wins the election and pulls the rug out from under them. Russia, in turn, is assuming we wonтАЩt have the patience to do so.
That said... if weтАЩre wrong, and Ukraine canтАЩt do this before they run out of disposable bodies? Yes, theyтАЩre functionally going to have to make some other deal where they let Russia keep this stuff, but Russia is also forced to accept that whatтАЩs left is going straight into NATO, so there will be no further тАЬborder edit warsтАЭ going forward.
I guess that whole international "rules based order" is a lot more fickle than we're willing to admit (or selectively enforce for that matter). Taiwan better watch its fucking back lol.
I did write and then delete a sub paragraph in there where I observed that there is a debate to be had about whether nuclear weapons have improved the world by preventing major powers from directly fighting, or made it worse by enabling bad actors with nukes to get away with whatever they want because the consequences of stopping them are always worse than letting them.
Two thought experiments on that: 1. What happens in Ukraine if nukes didnтАЩt exist? The likely answer IMO is тАЬweтАЩre probably already in World War III to get Russia out.тАЭ 2. What if Hitler (and most of the major former Allies) had had nukes in 1938, or if heтАЩd waited a decade to make his move until he did? The likely answer is, he probably doesnтАЩt ever invade France and the USSR, but France and Britain probably donтАЩt directly declare war to keep him away from the Czechs and the Poles, either. OR the central European countries along with Belgium and Holland put themselves under a French and British nuclear umbrella much like NATO today, and Hitler wouldve cynically picked on everyone who wasnтАЩt, much as Putin is doing today. Is that a better world than our having consigned the Nazis to the ashbins of history when they went too far? That is... highly questionable.
If nukes keep the peace then we shouldn't be worried about nuclear proliferation, we should be encouraging it. In my opinion, the inverse is the reality: the presence of nukes prevents potential world war at the expense of enabling genocide and atrocity. We didn't go into N Korea because they have nukes. We went into Iraq because they didn't. Nukes often enable countries to do awful shit without consequences because anyone who would think to stop them is too worried about nuclear retaliation--which is why we fucked up Saddam when he went into Kuwait in '91 but we didn't lay a finger on Putin when he went into Ukraine in '22. If Hitler had nukes when he launched the Blitzkreig in '40, would the US have invaded Europe in '44?
Welll.... Crimea is a bit of a special case, because, afaik, it used to be part of Russia until Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine (when Ukraine was part of the USSR, of course).
That said, Russia is freaking HUGE and yet they're still trying to grab more land for themselves, because Putin is a bloodthirsty scumbag. Israel is a TINY sliver of land that is literally the only homeland of the Jewish people. Everywhere else that Jews live, they live surrounded by a Gentile majority, with a very strong cultural memory of "yes, things are cool now, but the majority could turn on us (see: 1000 years of pogroms, expulsions, witch hunts, topped off with the f**king Holocaust)." To paraphrase something Steven Pinker wrote, given the history of the Jewish people, their tenacity in holding onto their land can hardly be held against them.
Crimea is important because it's the only warm water port that Russia currently owns (it leases some out of Syria, which is why that civil war was so important to them). Without a warm water port, they can't import/export year round in an efficient manner (they have to use ice breakers in the north several months a year to inefficiently make up the difference, and even then can't power project their military into the med or atlantic nearly as easily).
Satanists and gypsies don't have their own country, shall we start carving off parts of other people's territory to accommodate them and give them a country of their own? Where's the Theodore Hertzel of the Uighurs or Sufi Islamists at? They don't have a country of their own either. Even the African slaves we brought to the US stuck around after the civil war despite the pogroms they endured. They didn't just carve off a chunk of Liberia for themselves and "go back to Africa" as was often suggested back then--including from Lincoln at one point if I recall correctly.
It's not that I'm against Israel holding onto land, it's that I'm against Israel holding onto its war conquests while denying statehood for some other groups of peoples. Why do the Jews deserve self-determination and statehood while the Palestinians don't? (I ask this as an American Jew btw)
The Palestinians themselves are largely choosing not to. When Israel was formed, they rejected the partition in hopes of their Arab neighbors destroying Israel and just getting it all anyway. That... didnтАЩt work out for them.
And even today, even the most peaceful Palestinian leaders still annually commemorate IsraelтАЩs founding as a disaster, and will not accept any peace terms that do not include a тАЬright of return.тАЭ Whereas Hamas overtly calls for IsraelтАЩs destruction, even Fatah still demands that all descendants of 1948 refugees be permitted to return to Israel, which would still end Israel as a Jewish state even in the unlikely event that it did not involve actual ethnic cleansing.
Not surprisingly, Israel will never peacefully allow this. But the Palestinians are, in effect, unwilling to accept just the occupied territories. And so, they are stateless.
I never said Palestinians don't deserve statehood. I would be happy with a two-state solution, a Palestinian state and Israel, side by side, both peaceful and prosperous and, perhaps not friendly toward each other, but at least recognizing each other's right to exist. But I can't want it more than they do.
"But I can't want it more than they do." Exactly. Until Palestinians reject Hamas, they will never be in a position to "want it." The same could be said of Israeli citizens voting in politicians who refuse to end West Bank settlements. Israel should be preserving the West Bank as a bargaining chip for Palestinian statehood should the Palestinians ever come to a place where they're willing to get rid of Hamas. But neither side is doing what it needs to do, so this never really ends until they do.
Should Ukrainians simply "get over it" and accept that they've lost Crimea and the Donbas? It's been almost a decade since they've lost it. It's a tricky thing deciding when the terms of resistance should logically expire.
Ideally, no, but youтАЩre also not 100% wrong in the implication. The Ukrainians may realistically come to a conclusion that they canтАЩt actually take Crimea and Donbas back by force without overt NATO involvement. Russia, for all their saber rattling, is meticulously seeking to avoid having any of their munitions even accidentally crossing NATO borders, and NATO is similarly avoiding anyone who answers to a western capitol fire a shot inside Ukraine, for the same reason: that turns this into World War III very quickly, and the spectre of human civilization ending in a half hour time span makes that Something No One Wants.
So our calculus/balance is, give Ukraine enough to make Russia want to get out, without doing so much that this escalates in that fashion. Obviously weтАЩre in a place where we think that trend line will be in UkraineтАЩs favor unless Trump wins the election and pulls the rug out from under them. Russia, in turn, is assuming we wonтАЩt have the patience to do so.
That said... if weтАЩre wrong, and Ukraine canтАЩt do this before they run out of disposable bodies? Yes, theyтАЩre functionally going to have to make some other deal where they let Russia keep this stuff, but Russia is also forced to accept that whatтАЩs left is going straight into NATO, so there will be no further тАЬborder edit warsтАЭ going forward.
I guess that whole international "rules based order" is a lot more fickle than we're willing to admit (or selectively enforce for that matter). Taiwan better watch its fucking back lol.
I did write and then delete a sub paragraph in there where I observed that there is a debate to be had about whether nuclear weapons have improved the world by preventing major powers from directly fighting, or made it worse by enabling bad actors with nukes to get away with whatever they want because the consequences of stopping them are always worse than letting them.
Two thought experiments on that: 1. What happens in Ukraine if nukes didnтАЩt exist? The likely answer IMO is тАЬweтАЩre probably already in World War III to get Russia out.тАЭ 2. What if Hitler (and most of the major former Allies) had had nukes in 1938, or if heтАЩd waited a decade to make his move until he did? The likely answer is, he probably doesnтАЩt ever invade France and the USSR, but France and Britain probably donтАЩt directly declare war to keep him away from the Czechs and the Poles, either. OR the central European countries along with Belgium and Holland put themselves under a French and British nuclear umbrella much like NATO today, and Hitler wouldve cynically picked on everyone who wasnтАЩt, much as Putin is doing today. Is that a better world than our having consigned the Nazis to the ashbins of history when they went too far? That is... highly questionable.
If nukes keep the peace then we shouldn't be worried about nuclear proliferation, we should be encouraging it. In my opinion, the inverse is the reality: the presence of nukes prevents potential world war at the expense of enabling genocide and atrocity. We didn't go into N Korea because they have nukes. We went into Iraq because they didn't. Nukes often enable countries to do awful shit without consequences because anyone who would think to stop them is too worried about nuclear retaliation--which is why we fucked up Saddam when he went into Kuwait in '91 but we didn't lay a finger on Putin when he went into Ukraine in '22. If Hitler had nukes when he launched the Blitzkreig in '40, would the US have invaded Europe in '44?
Welll.... Crimea is a bit of a special case, because, afaik, it used to be part of Russia until Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine (when Ukraine was part of the USSR, of course).
That said, Russia is freaking HUGE and yet they're still trying to grab more land for themselves, because Putin is a bloodthirsty scumbag. Israel is a TINY sliver of land that is literally the only homeland of the Jewish people. Everywhere else that Jews live, they live surrounded by a Gentile majority, with a very strong cultural memory of "yes, things are cool now, but the majority could turn on us (see: 1000 years of pogroms, expulsions, witch hunts, topped off with the f**king Holocaust)." To paraphrase something Steven Pinker wrote, given the history of the Jewish people, their tenacity in holding onto their land can hardly be held against them.
Crimea is important because it's the only warm water port that Russia currently owns (it leases some out of Syria, which is why that civil war was so important to them). Without a warm water port, they can't import/export year round in an efficient manner (they have to use ice breakers in the north several months a year to inefficiently make up the difference, and even then can't power project their military into the med or atlantic nearly as easily).
Satanists and gypsies don't have their own country, shall we start carving off parts of other people's territory to accommodate them and give them a country of their own? Where's the Theodore Hertzel of the Uighurs or Sufi Islamists at? They don't have a country of their own either. Even the African slaves we brought to the US stuck around after the civil war despite the pogroms they endured. They didn't just carve off a chunk of Liberia for themselves and "go back to Africa" as was often suggested back then--including from Lincoln at one point if I recall correctly.
It's not that I'm against Israel holding onto land, it's that I'm against Israel holding onto its war conquests while denying statehood for some other groups of peoples. Why do the Jews deserve self-determination and statehood while the Palestinians don't? (I ask this as an American Jew btw)
The Palestinians themselves are largely choosing not to. When Israel was formed, they rejected the partition in hopes of their Arab neighbors destroying Israel and just getting it all anyway. That... didnтАЩt work out for them.
And even today, even the most peaceful Palestinian leaders still annually commemorate IsraelтАЩs founding as a disaster, and will not accept any peace terms that do not include a тАЬright of return.тАЭ Whereas Hamas overtly calls for IsraelтАЩs destruction, even Fatah still demands that all descendants of 1948 refugees be permitted to return to Israel, which would still end Israel as a Jewish state even in the unlikely event that it did not involve actual ethnic cleansing.
Not surprisingly, Israel will never peacefully allow this. But the Palestinians are, in effect, unwilling to accept just the occupied territories. And so, they are stateless.
I never said Palestinians don't deserve statehood. I would be happy with a two-state solution, a Palestinian state and Israel, side by side, both peaceful and prosperous and, perhaps not friendly toward each other, but at least recognizing each other's right to exist. But I can't want it more than they do.
"But I can't want it more than they do." Exactly. Until Palestinians reject Hamas, they will never be in a position to "want it." The same could be said of Israeli citizens voting in politicians who refuse to end West Bank settlements. Israel should be preserving the West Bank as a bargaining chip for Palestinian statehood should the Palestinians ever come to a place where they're willing to get rid of Hamas. But neither side is doing what it needs to do, so this never really ends until they do.