Monday, March 17, 2014

Gander, Goose, Duck and Drake, each served in a different sauce


There have been many examples in history of national boundaries being altered following a plebiscite.    To take one example unlikely to rouse my readership to an instant foaming wrath:  in 1920, Denmark received northern Schleswig  following such a referendum.

It’s politics, and power politics at that.   All the blather about yesterday’s vote in the Crimea being “illegal” in the view of (a shadowy, unspecified) “International Law”  consists just of syllables, sub-semantically strung together.   If the geopolitical playing-field were momentarily tilted slightly differently, you’d have Congressmen standing on their chairs shouting for the inalienable rights of the freedom-loving Crimean People to determine their self-determination themselves  (pop, pop, pop  go the flashbulbs.)    As it is, both sides would have it their own way:

Putin:  The 1981 referendum that led to the Ukraine breaking away from the Soviet Union, was illegal.
The 2014 referendum, that may lead to the Crimea breaking away from Ukraine, is legal.

The West:  (simply reverse both judgments)



[Update 14 September 2014]  A very perceptive article in today’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung, pointing out some overlooked similarities between goose and gander:

Allzu oft wird weggehört, denn gross ist das Bedürfnis, im Kampf gegen Putins rabiates Expansionsbedürfnis nur noch Gut und Böse gelten zu lassen. Kriege vernichten intellektuelle Grauzonen. Das ist ein fataler Fehler. Nicht alles, was auf ukrainischer Seite kämpft, ist gesättigt mit europäischen Werten und demokratisch. Sogar in der Selbsteinschätzung Odnoroschenkos ist das Asowsche Bataillon eine «rechtsextreme, nationalistische» Organisation. Dies zu bemänteln, ist schädlich, denn es diskreditiert die solide, westliche Argumentation gegen Putin.



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