The United States used to have a method they’d use when they wanted to annex part of some foreign country. They’d send a lot of Americans to the province they wanted to annex, then the Americans in that province would rebel and declare independence. Then the newly independent “nation” would petition the United States to be annexed. This pattern started in 1810 when the United States annexed West Florida. It continued in 1836, when Texas rebelled and after some furor between pro and anti slavery parties over votes in the Senate was annexed into the United States in 1845, and reached its peak in 1846, when California rebelled, petitioned to be annexed by the United States, and was promptly annexed. The final use of this tactic was in 1893, when American planters in Hawaii rebelled and petitioned for annexation, which after some debate in Washington was finally done in 1898.
Putin studied this when he was in school, of course. Any dirty, sneaky, underhanded thing that nations have ever done to other nations, you can bet he studied. So when I watched the news from the Ukraine and Crimea the past couple of weeks, culminating in Russia officially annexing the “newly independent” Crimea after the Crimean legislature petitioned for annexation, I could nothing other than slowly applaud at a sneaky underhanded scheme well done.
So anyhow, to understand why Russia wants Crimea, you have to go way, way back. Russia conquered Crimea from the Tatars and Ottomans between 1768 and 1783. They did so for a reason — as a place to station ships year-round that wouldn’t freeze over, and as a place through which they could export their goods year-round via sea transport. Those reasons didn’t cease to exist with the creation of the Soviet Union, or with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Unless the West is willing to go to war with Russia over Crimea, Russia isn’t going to give it up — it’s simply too valuable to them. There are no other ports on the Black Sea coast of Russia that could hold all the ships Russia currently has stationed there, and with the government of Ukraine being unstable, Russia isn’t going to trust said government with control of “their” naval base.
So *should* the West go to war with Russia over Crimea? Well, the last time we did that, in 1853, we won. At horrible cost. If we wanted to do so again, we’d win again, while Russia has nuclear weapons I doubt they would use them in defense of Crimea (if we crossed the border into Russia proper, on the other hand, they’d have no trouble nuking our formations in their tracks). But the question is, at what cost? Russians are not Iraqis. Especially not Tsar Putin’s Russians. They may have more vodka-fueled bravado than brains, but there’s a lot of them, and they don’t quit coming,as the Georgians found out to their dismay back in 2008. Furthermore, Russia has a real air force, and the defensive depth to defend its front-line airstrips from rearward airstrips that our fighters can’t reach. It would be the first war since 1944 where the West did not have complete and total air superiority and while we’d eventually win, it’d be after years and thousands of planes shot down and replaced at tremendous cost and hundreds of thousands of lives lost.
Is it worth the cost? I doubt the average American would be willing to say so. Most could not find the Crimea on a map. I doubt the average European cares who owns the Crimea either. In the end, I suspect Tsar Putin is going to get away with it because Russia values Crimea and is willing to pay the cost to get it, while the West doesn’t, and isn’t willing to pay the cost to restore it to Ukraine. Either that or the West goes on another irrational adventure like the ill-fated conquest of Iraq that put an Iranian agent in charge as its President at the end of the day, where eventually we declared victory and went home having accomplished nothing at all other than a massive waste of human life and capital… but hopefully we’re tired of that kind of adventuring. Hopefully.
– Badtux the History Penguin
The question is: What does Russia regard as its territory? I’d place a side bet that if NATO were to move troops into Ukraine, Russia would regard that as an act of war.
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I sure hope we stay out of there, we are too tired and broke for that kind of adventuring right now. I do fear Putin wants ALL the old Soviet bits glued back onto his map of ‘all the Russias’ he’d like to tsar it up over — but I also fear it is none of our damned business.
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That was part of th thinking in the War of 1812 too – “Upper Canada”, what is now Ontario, was full of Americans who had come up to farm, and the Warhawks thought that they would rise up and join them. As it turned out, they didn’t because the logistical side of the invasion was so poor that the American troops ended up looting farms for food and shelter, alienating the people they thought woudl greet them as brothers and liberators.
Same but different thing happened in “Lower Canada”, what is Quebec nowadays – they thought that the French peasants would fight with them against the British occupiers, but no Quebecois helped them – the Catholic clergy said they would not give the last rites to anyone helping the Americans, but what really set them against the Americans was when they tried to pay for things with worthless American paper dollars!
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The russians need the crimea to much, an ice free port for their shipping and commerce. Most of the people are holdovers who were disenfranchised by the Khrushchev turnover. But could they claim their backpay as russians, or would they be getting their retirements from kiev? So many problems. Asides from archangel where they have part of their sub fleet, that is all that is left for cold weather ports that are open. Plus, they may have found that hacker, i wounder how much he got out of them, which will never be released.
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Speaking of logistics, a casual glance at the map doesn’t show a clear marching route for the Next American Crusade. I’m trying to imagine any of those countries along the way being eager to let the Americans through, what with Putin watching all along.
And don’t even mention the laughable notion of bringing ships into the Black Sea. Only a Fox or CNN anchor could say something so moronic.
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There’s an old Salvic proverb my grandmother used to say: life is short, memories are long.
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