Reaping What We Sow

History has a way of unravelling historical mistakes. once the dead hand of authority is taken away .... 

Domino Effect Crisis After Crisis

.... and as we have seen in the Balkans and in Africa, artificial unions of borders and peoples, are often fated to unravel unless a greater force intervenes. 

 

Who can deny that if not for the UN and Western troops, Nigeria, Rwanda and a myriad other ex-colonial states would have broken up by now? Or that maybe one day the UK's and Western European flirtation with unpopular mass immigrations, via the 'greater authority' invested to the left by 'Political Correctness and Multiculturalism', or the EU's Rules, may well end in violent expulsions of those ethnic minorities who have failed to assimilate if the EU fails? 

So when for example in the Balkans, Serbia was forced by the overwhelming might of NATO and the US in the 1990's, to hand over its historical lands to the Albanians of Kosovo, because the West had made no attempt to understand the root causes of the conflict - 400 years of Muslim dominance over the Slav lands, coming finally to an end when Communism (which had kept the nations together by force), collapsed - there was much anger in Eastern Europe over these US actions. 

 

This use of indiscriminate force to ensure that Russia’s allies in Serbia lost out to the 'Turk', was thought by many to be a mistake at the time (especially as for example there are pockets of 'Turks' in Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria etc), and many more predicted we would pay for that mistake later, when the balance of forces was more even.

Those nations in favour of 'self determination' in some selected instances, or of respecting 'territorial integrity' in others, seem to have a collective schizophrenia about whose self determination they will act to enforce, and whose territorial integrity they will act to respect. So for example they will invade Iraq or Afghanistan, but demand that Ukrainian territory be respected by Russia, while ignoring the self determination wish of the Crimean's to be reunited to Russia again. After all, in February 1954 the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), gave away the Crimea, as a 'gift' to the Ukraine from the Russians, even though only 22 percent of the Crimean population were ethnic Ukrainian - a future cause of problems post 1991. 

 

Therefore this crisis is just another result of the last collapse of the age of empire in Europe …. When NATO and the US forced Serbia to hand over lands to the Albanians of Kosovo, Russia was unable to enforce its objections, as it was weak. Putin noted that fact as a humiliation, and now he will not allow what he perceives as Russia's interests to be broken by the EU, NATO and the US. Putin also took note of the climb down over his actions over South Ossetia and in Georgia, and even over his blocking of Western intervention in Syria. This despite the wish to do so by President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry, the British Parliamentary opposition and others. He is also aware that the balance of power was much altered with China now a global power.

Ironically, President Obama, is now using the same phrases that the Russians used to try and stop the US and West in earlier crises in Europe and the Muslim world .... here's a few that make you think.

“The United States calls on Russia to .....  allow the Ukrainian people the opportunity to pursue their own government, create their own destiny and to do so freely without intimidation or fear."

"We are well beyond the days where borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders." 

and that the Russian invasion of Crimea was a

"violation of international law."  

.... he even added that a Crimean vote to secede to the Russian Federation  

"would violate the Ukrainian constitution and violate international law."

You reap what you sow in politics and especially ignoring 'Real-Politik', so an ill thought out policy in the 1990's has resulted in a bigger crisis now …. one that I believe will only spread in the next few decades.