You are talking like Europe should accept being terrorized by Russia. Russian minority want autonomy? Give them, or Russia will invade you. Russian minority want to join Custom Union? Join, or Russia will invade you. Russian minority want blow job? Give them and swallow or...

"Just do everything to make sure that Russian people in your country are happy and not ask Mother Russia to invade you."

And after that Russia will do some provocation - hire some hooligans to beat their people in your country and they will invade you anyway.

I'm so sad right not because there isn't a way to send a slap or a kick in the butt over tcp/ip. I guess that's what a drone looks like when properly treated with CNN and FOX news :)
Sounds like current american geopolitical strategy to me

Yeah, the EU with its 500 million people and NATO is really under threat of being terrorised by little old Russia with 130 odd million.

If you treat your own citizens as enemies to be controlled and forced into the 'right' way of thinking they will become your enemies in fact, and they will be correct in that assessment. That's precisely why the regional language law repeal was so stupid.

Worrying about people's ethnicity is a self fulfilling prophecy. You'll alienate them, then wonder why they hate you.

The numbers surely don't really count much as soon as one or both involved parties have nuclear weapons. That's what I'm afraid of, not some tanks.

This weekend ukrainian protestors on Crimea have been beaten up by pro russian forces / russian forces. So one cannot really say what is in the best interest of all people on Crimea. It's much better they would take their time, discuss the pros and cons for an extended period, get an agreement of how to handle minorities rights...

But no, all this won't happen. What you have seen this weekend is a glimpse of the new order. Minorities will be bullied, people will loose property, a few will become rich - as always.

Even in North Korea they voted this weekend and what a waste of time. The same will happen in Crimea. I really don't know why they waste their time on fake/unfair elections. How can anyone expect a fair election when there are russian troops in the area. First you would have to negotiating peace and the date of a referendum, then you could think about a vote.

I guess NATO will become very popular in the future.

The question apart from the actual development is an interesting one. What needs to be present in order for a peaceful separation of a part or one nation from the mother country.

How strong have the wishes for independence to be? How many people must agree (simple majority), what if they want to go back a bit later? Is there a minimum size of the area or of the population? Do there need to be historic precedents (like the area was separated for a long time). What happens to minorities? What other alternatives are there? There are many, many questions to solve.

On Crimea nobody solves these questions. Nobody knows what other alternatives people there might like. Nobody will know because nobody is going to ask them this. And additionally there is big influence from the russian side. Therefore it is much more an annexation than anything else. It's foremost an annexation.

I saw the invasion of Iraq as critical as I see the invasion of Crimea now. What happened is that Russia invaded part of the Ukraine which implicitly includes a war declaration and the Ukrainian forces would have had the right to self defend themselves which actually they didn't which I see as sign of tremendous peacefulness on the Ukrainian side.

In both cases the best would have been an UN mission. Sadam Hussein was indeed truly bad for his people and getting rid of him would have been a good thing even without weapons of mass destruction. Here it is less clear. The people on Crimea might have a case for seceding but it needs to be discussed and any one sided non UN intervention would make the whole process biased and not worth much.

As we have it's basically the guarantee that the non-russian parts of the people on Crimea will get screwed heavily. That's for sure.

What Russia does is bad on an absolute scale. Sure we can compare it to other quite unrelated things but that doesn't make it better. Tartars will be the losers again.

My guess is that Russia feels that it doesn't have any friends in the world and therefore decided to not taking care of anyone. Of course this is the best way of making it real and keeping it like this. It's the path to a bit of glory and a lot of isolation.

I'd rather say that its a sign of fear, than peacefulness. If they attacked the Russian troops, Putin would have a good [enough] reason to invade the whole Ukraine. They'd make a nice spin on it, and make it seem, at the very least to their people, that its justified.

Russia can do whatever the hell it wants - want another example? They invaded Georgia recently and nobody cared.

Its not that they [Russians] dont care - they do it, because they know they can.

They have nuclear weapons, and very strong military in general. But that doesnt matter much, since apart from that they have gas of which many EU countries are dependent.

Nobody will react, unless they want to have the gas flow cut off, be forced to get it from a different source for a higher price and see their economy fail.

The US, and the western nations in general have a long history of stirring shit up in the middle eastern region.

If you really want to believe that it was done for some higher purpose, then there really is not much I can do in terms of convincing you, since you automatically assume that anything that is not a part of the official agenda is nothing more than a conspiracy theory for some conspiracy nuts.

The world is not black and white, and the US are the good guys saving the world only in the hollywood movies. In reality the goverment couldnt care less about that stuff, only what suits them matters.

If you want another example, take a look at what the US goverment has done in Latin America. During the cold war, there were a lot of cases of interference there, even helping various dictatorships, or helping abolish democratically elected goverments.

Its pretty hard to view them as the good guys ;]

As to the wiping out indians - take a look at the numbers, its not that far off...

Wow ... must be embarrassing to be a Russian at the moment ...

"I'm personally unconvinced that the Russians are wrong here " ... and here is where your post loses any credibility ....

Very true. In past we had at least some credential of being for a truth. Now we're simply worse than even Americans, so they have a right to do absolutely anything they will want in the future. Negative selection on its way. And well, its not just embarrassing, its utter shame.

Yeah just look at the early history of my island after the Spanish-American War. Pretty Brutal Stuff.

Well, European leaders before WWII took your advice. If we will be nice for Hitler, give him everything he want, he will be nice for us too. He defended German rights too. And we know how it ended.

I can assure you. Being nice doesn't guarantee your safety. It's not cartoon where you can handle everything with power of friendship. Even Scandinavian countries that were neutral stopped believing that thanks to Russia - they started gearing up and their politicians started talking about joining NATO. Serbia and Montenegro did split up in pretty peaceful way. Of course it's different scenario, but it shows that it can be done, but it takes time. Well, it's hard to react when country that guaranteed to defend your territorial integrity is invading you. I would be confused too. ;)

Fear or peacefulness, so far it was the right reaction although they would have the right to defend their territory against Russia. What would have happened would the Ukraine be part of the NATO and would they have fought back once russian troops landed. Would there have been a WW 3? It would probably already be over by now.

If the russian leaders were mental, then they just do what they want and rely on their nuclear weapons. Then this was the starter of pulling a new Hitler.

Or they are rational. Then I guess they decided they don't need or just won't get friends and that's why they don't need to take care. The path to isolation.

Well, decide it for yourself. Spoken plan is to keep the army behind woman and children, not in front of them, so "other side" wouldnt dare to shoot.

Probably a better example, yes. In any event I do take your point, and certainly am far from a MERRICUH! defender in these matters, but I also think state sovereignty is important and two wrongs don't make a right.

In the end if they vote to join Russia and Ukraine gets to move much further in NATO talks and towards Western style government as a result then hey, seemed to work out well for everyone, but that kind of pragmatism doesn't work well in dick-swinging diplomacy.