There is nowhere else on earth comparable to the four "frozen conflicts" left over from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria and Nagorno-Karabakh have never been governed in practice by post-Soviet Georgia, Moldovo or Azerbaijan, and were never part of pre-Soviet Georgia, Moldavia or Azerbaijan.
Their two active and two soon to be active claims to independence should be evaluated in terms of their motives.
Do they, as Kosovo did and Chechnya does, want into the nexus of, on the one hand, globalisation, European federalism and American military-industrial hegemony, and, on the other hand, the militant Islam to which those forces pretend to be opposed but are in fact closely allied? Or do they want out of states moving in that very direction?
Manifestly, it is the latter.
They therefore deserve full recognition and every possible support.
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The worrying thing is the Crimea... that was only added to Ukraine at the whim of comrade Khruschev - If the Ukranians try to kick Russia out of Sevastopol......
ReplyDeleteThey wouldn't be that daft now. They have seen from the Georgian experience that there would be no Western backing.
ReplyDeleteEven if the eastern Ukraine declared independence, the likes of Condoleezza Rice and David Miliband would hop about at Russian recognition before doing, er, absolutely nothing.
Well, what *could* they do? What can they do today? We are talking about Russia here. Not Iraq. Not even Iran. Russia.