Politics Will Russia Attack Ukraine?

[Malaparte]

He is now in, he can't get out easily. Obviously he needs to negotiate, but its clear that the Russians need Crimea/Sevastopol, that's non-negotiable, and the Ukrainians didn't compromise, they even stopped the water supply for the Crimea.
The Russians demanded at least autonomy for the Donbass, but they never fulfilled the Minsk agreement and shelled the "republics" constantly, threatening to eliminate his allies by force.
Putin and basically all important Russian leaders said that a NATO membership for the Ukraine is thick red line, but the West never stopped to move forward in that direction. They even motivated the Ukrainians to go on with the provocations and not compromise with Russia.

I do understand the Ukrainian side, but the current borders are ethnically and historically artificial, basically wrong. It became part of the Ukraine very recently, with a transfer within the Soviet Union:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_transfer_of_Crimea

Crimea was always strategically extremely important and Sevastopol is the military and civilian door of the Russians to the Mediterranean. They can't give it up just like that, but the Ukraine never compromised and the sanctions didn't stop, while the water supply was blocked and this ruined the region.

The Ukraine need to, at least, compromise about Crimea and the West needs to aknowledge this. Of course, Russia might be forced to give this up and lose, but only by very brutal and very dangerous means. This is and always was insane. That the Ukraine could become a NATO member is bad enough, but with Crimea, that's just too much by any means. This cripples Russia for the future in a way which no Russian leader which cares for the future of his country could just accept without a fight.

Now Putin risked everything to force the Ukraine to a compromise, he is all-in. There needs to be a compromise with which Russia can live, or we don't know where the escalation might go. And I repeat that this would be a just thing, that the Ukraine in the current official borders, with the Crimean peninsula, could just join the NATO without Russian resistance is absurd.
Any Western state or leader which pushed the Ukraine in that direction must have known that this would escalate at some point, this was a wanted a conflict, nobody can be that stupid.

Very well said. I agree completely.

Anything else is just madness and every reasonable historian, military strategist and politician should know that. Crimea and Minks agreement, autonomy, possibly neutrality of the Ukraine.
That should have been the compromise from the start, but the Western powers pushed Ukraine to not move one inch in the Russian direction and even encourage them to continue with the conflict in Donbas being force. This was a blatant provocation and break of past promises to the Russians, this is not just an issue for Putin, but would have upset any Russian leader which tries to keep his country and people independent.

Totally true. But what the Russians really (and legitimately) want is a new security architecture for Europe.

 

[Malaparte]

And I don't think that Trump has left the building. Imo he is still the kingmaker in the Rep party, and if he wants to nominate in 2024 he is the one. And it's also obvious that the authoritarian -populist agenda of Trump near that of Putin. But enough said about him.

I definitely don't want to talk Trump, mean only to say that I don't think he will be Republican nominee in 2024. It will be a younger candidate who shares many of his "national populist" positions but without all the baggage. Maybe Ron DeSantis.

 

[Malaparte]

You know I thought you and Malaparte were the same person (as well as perhaps other people we know and love ), but perhaps not; perhaps you're a tag team.

None of the above is worthy of a response, so I'll leave it at that, except to state neither you or Malaparte have responded to my question.

"So, NATO should have refused the appeal of the former Eastern Bloc countries when they petitioned to join?

In order to "keep the peace" and "not provoke" Russia, the entire Eastern Bloc should have been told that no defensive treaties were possible and if Russia decided to move back in and reincorporate them it was just their bad luck?"

Just want to see how far modern appeasement goes.

NATO should have been dissolved as soon as the Soviet Union dissolved. A new security arrangement should have been constructed in its place, with Russia included as an equal partner.

Now it's your turn: If China is indeed the (far) greater security threat, how should this inform the strategic priorities of the US, including any necessary consequences for Europe arrangements? Please answer.

 

[Malaparte]

Seriously, we almost got a nuclear war over Kuba, for much less than that, and Kennedy being even praised for not started a nuclear war immediately and negotiating first. Actually, that's pretty insanse, especially if comparing with this situation, which is much worse than Kuba for the USA.

You forgot to mention the most relevant point. It was the US deployment of Jupiter missiles in Turkey that led the Soviets to respond in kind in Cuba.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/

 

[Northener]

NATO should have been dissolved as soon as the Soviet Union dissolved. A new security arrangement should have been constructed in its place, with Russia included as an equal partner.

Now it's your turn: If China is indeed the (far) greater security threat, how should this inform the strategic priorities of the US, including any necessary consequences for Europe arrangements? Please answer.

Isolationism of the US, wil lead to nothing, the least for US themselves.

NATO is more needed than ever. We have a new Cold War. It's now time to stand united, cool and firm against the (nuclear) trait.

Putin is berserk by a pending war, economic sanctions (already the fall of the ruble), Germany and the EU turning away and massively arming themselves. Putin becomes a pariah. That makes him even more unpredictable. So don't blink now, there's a lot at stake.

For the more wider perspective:

https://www.politico.com/news/magaz...-wrong-pax-americana-worth-defending-00011448

 

[Vallicanus]

Putin is a germophobic deluded old man who could incinerate us all...an old man in a hurry obsessed with his historic legacy.

Hopefully some general or oligarch will remove him from power before he presses the nuclear button in his frustrated state.

 

[Northener]

Putin's Rasputin, Alexandr Dugin gives, a gepolitical difference between "the seaman's point of view", the Atlantic world, and the "landman's point of view", the Russian point of view. The connotations go bigger and broader than that. I guess you can see also the liberal-democratic point vs the authoritarian-populist point of view. Is this a real contradiction or also a kind of dichotomy trap? Because the landman's view comes with resentments, with revanchist thoughts.....

@Malaparte you want to make from the US a landman and authoritarian point of view?

 

[Northener]

@ Malaparte

First, I am not advocating that US become isolationist, even if I think this desirable over the (very) long term. What I believe must now happen, however, is that the US *pivot* to East Asia. Indeed, such a pivot is imperative because China is by far the greatest threat to the US.

I guess when Trump gets reelected in 2024, the torch of the free, liberal, democratic world has gone from the US to Germany in Europe. So from Pax Americana to Pax Germania!? Scholz has give a decisive push to it yesterday. And I guess with an isolationist US this will be the ultimate consequence.

But that's longer term, we are still facing a very severe crisis in which Nato needs to operate as a very close unit.

An older article, this got recently a push:

It is no small irony that the nation the U.S. transformed after 1945 may emerge as the primary standard bearer for universal values its mentor is in danger of leaving behind.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-...el-and-a-new-pax-germania-20170209-story.html

 

[Riverman]

It's not that easy. While Russian speakers might have a slight majority in some places, there is a substantial minority of Ukranians. I have a solution that you might not like but it's this. Those Russian speakers should go back to mother Russia. Since they are relatively recent arrivals there is not a historical right for them. Leave Ukraine to the Ukranians.

Now, not just Ukraine but pretty much all of Eastern Europe has a depopulation problem due to immigration and low birth rates.

The best solution to this conflict, but something probably both sides, but especially the Ukraine and West won't agree, would be a ceasefire and then a referendum of the disputed territories under strict international control. The people living there should decide to which state they want to belong and all conflict parties should accept that!
This would be the only humane and democratic solution, like so often in history, but so often being ignored by the "democratic powers", if it was in their interest to keep people in a state to which they don't want to belong for geopolitical reasons. On the other hand, if minorities are useful for being made use of politically, well, then its all about minorities and human rights.

But yes, that would be the best solution for this conflict, and both sides should have agreed to it long ago and they should have - both - made these areas free from their military and suppression, for the time of the referendum.

Unfortunately, such a peaceful and truly democratic solution in the name of the self-determination of a people won't be done, like so often in history before, leading to all this unnecessary bloodshed, with either Ukrainians in a state they don't want or minorities in a state they don't want to belong to.

Or probably all of them want to belong to a Western Ukrainian state! Well, they should vote for it, that would be only good way from my point of view, but unfortunately, it won't got that way.

 

[Vallicanus]

The best solution to this conflict, but something probably both sides, but especially the Ukraine and West won't agree, would be a ceasefire and then a referendum of the disputed territories under strict international control. The people living there should decide to which state they want to belong and all conflict parties should accept that!
This would be the only humane and democratic solution, like so often in history, but so often being ignored by the "democratic powers", if it was in their interest to keep people in a state to which they don't want to belong for geopolitical reasons. On the other hand, if minorities are useful for being made use of politically, well, then its all about minorities and human rights.

But yes, that would be the best solution for this conflict, and both sides should have agreed to it long ago and they should have - both - made these areas free from their military and suppression, for the time of the referendum.

Unfortunately, such a peaceful and truly democratic solution in the name of the self-determination of a people won't be done, like so often in history before, leading to all this unnecessary bloodshed, with either Ukrainians in a state they don't want or minorities in a state they don't want to belong to.

Or probably all of them want to belong to a Western Ukrainian state! Well, they should vote for it, that would be only good way from my point of view, but unfortunately, it won't got that way.

This is an excellent post. If only.

We can still hope.

 

[Tomenable]

This current Russian propaganda reminds me a lot of Nazi propaganda from 1939 that Western Poland was allegedly predominantly German-inhabited. That was of course not confirmed by Polish official censuses (in 1921 and 1931) and it was also not confirmed by data coming from the community of Polish Germans itself. The German minority in Poland carried out self-censues (they counted themselves) and the results were similar as in official Polish census - Germans were about 10% of inhabitants in Western Poland, not a huge minority or a majority as Hitler claimed.

For example in Pomeranian Voivodeship (the so called disputed "Polish Corridor" to the Baltic Sea):

1926 German self-census - ethnic Germans were 12.5% of inhabitants (117.251 people)
1934 German self-census - ethnic Germans were 9.9% of inhabitants


1931 Polish official census - ethnic Germans were 10.1% of inhabitants (109.696 people)


And some less official Polish estimates for Pomeranian Voivodeship:


1920 Kazimierz Kierski estimate - 11.3% Germans (109.196 people)
1927 Zygmunt Stolinski estimate - 9.37% Germans (95.460 people)
1938 "Statystyka Polska" - 9.7% Germans (105.400 people)


As you can see German self-census numbers and Polish census numbers & estimates are similar.

Here is a detailed ethnic map of the "Polish Corridor" in the 1930s - https://i.imgur.com/FmY0QP8.jpg

While this is how Nazi maps showed the "Polish Corridor" in the 1930s - https://www.bpb.de/cache/images/0/298990_galerie_lightbox_box_1000x666.jpg?50DB4

And here a Non-Nazi map, based on real data - this map was used to draw the borders at Versailles in 1919 - https://i.imgur.com/vnNaPVH.png

=====

And in Poznan Voivodeship (also part of Western Poland, to the south of Pomeranian):

1931 Polish official census - 193.080 ethnic Germans (ca. 10% of the total population)
1934 German self-census - 208.986 ethnic Germans

=====

So as you can see Germans were about 10% in Western Poland - both according to Polish counts and their own self-counts.

But if you look at Nazi-made maps of ethnic distribution in Europe, they "painted" this area as at least 1/2 German-inhabited.

And Nazi maps also showed huge areas as German "Kulturboden" (inhabited by clear Polish majority, but culturally German).

 

[Tomenable]

^^^
And, frankly, I don't know what is a 1930s Nazi propaganda map doing on bpb.de (Bundeszentrale f?r politische Bildung) website in year 2022:

BPB - https://de-m-wikipedia-org.translat...e_Bildung?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=pl

 

[Tomenable]

Germans pay extreme attention to detail when they are not doing propaganda work.


That's how I distinguish German propaganda from German objective statistical work.


A lot of German statistics even from early 1800s is very detailed. But Nazi-made maps and statistics are never detailed, always vague.


These "ethnic maps of Ukraine" made by Russian trollls are also vague. They should be showing EXACT situation county-by-county.


Everyone can open MS Paint and do some "creative work" with colours on a map of Ukraine.

=====

Jakob Spett in his map did a very detailed work because in his map it can be seen which village/town was majority German & which majority Polish.

That's why his map was used during the Versailles Conference in 1919 to draw the borders of the "Polish Corridor".

While in Nazi-made maps, there is never such level of detail. So it can't be fact-checked if a map is correct or not.

If some map shows village XYZ as majority Russian, we can go to this village and confront the data from the map with reality, to verify if it is true.

 

[Tomenable]

a ceasefire and then a referendum of the disputed territories under strict international control

But... are we going to include also the areas in Russia inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians in this referendum?:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Ukrainians_in_Russian_regions_1926.jpg

Maybe even the Far East will go to Ukraine in such case?:

http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages\F\A\FarEast.htm

"Large-scale settlement of the Far East expanded after the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railroad between Moscow and Vladivostok (1891?1905) and the construction of the additional Ussuri and Amur lines. New lands were opened up to the settlers. In 1901?3, 14,000 settlers on the average arrived in the Far East per year. During the Russo-Japanese War colonization ceased almost completely. It reached a peak of 70,600 people per year in 1907 and fell to 36,000 per year in 1908?10, to 21,000 in 1911?12, and to 12,000 in 1913?14. Altogether, in 1907?13 about 250,000 peasants came to the Far East. Most of them (85 percent in 1907) settled in the Primore oblast, but a small number settled in the Amur oblast. The majority of the settlers were Ukrainians; for example, in 1907, 74 percent of the settlers came from Ukraine. Ukrainians made up 75?80 percent of the settlers in the Primore oblast and 60?65 percent of the settlers in the Amur oblast. Hence, on the eve of the First World War Ukrainians constituted the nucleus of the Far East?s population. They settled primarily on the fertile lands of the Zeia-Bureia Lowland and Ussuri-Khanka Lowland."

 

[Riverman]

... Western Poland was allegedly predominantly German-inhabited.

That's long gone and all over, but just two issues:
- people tend to vote in mixed or unclear areas for the then dominant socio-political power more often. So with the change of a regime, such numbers can change in the course of months. This is why I wrote, to learn from history, that any such area should be free from any military and police pressure, under international control, for the time before the referendum. If one side occupies that territory and can exert pressure, it can manipulate the outcome, even if the votes themselves might be technically legitimate.
- secondly, and this is true in this case as it was in the past, a conquest and suppression often leads to refugees. Many Germans fled from Poland during the interwar period from later disputed territories, we're talking about miliions which already fled after WWI. Same here: Pro-Ukrainian people fled from Donbas and Crimea, pro-Russians being refugees in Russia for years after the conflict got violent.

But of course, we know, to not make this a debate about the WWII past, that most areas taken from Germany were majority wise Polish. The main issues were Danzig, a corridor for East Prussia and Upper Silesia. All such conflicts, after World War I, II, Yugoslavia and now should have been resolved like in Upper Silesia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Silesia_plebiscite

Even there violence broke out and the Polish side tried to conquer the territory before the official plebiscite. That's the problem, a territory which undergoes a referendum must be pacified and come under international jurisdiction by neutral 3rd parties. Otherwise nothing works and escalation being pre-programmed.
Another such case would have been ?denburg, now Hungarian Sopron, because Hungarian forces took the city by force before a neutral referendum could take place:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopron_plebiscite

Obviously, the Western powers need to have an interest for a fair and legitimate plebiscite. They had no such interest when it was about the German minorities, or the Serbian ones after the break-up of Yugoslavia, they have now none for the pro-Russian separatists in the Ukraine.
That's the point. If it suits them, they are there and talking all day long about minorities and human rights, but if its about people they don't care for and which rights might just undermine their geopolitical games (like Germans in Czechoslovakia and Poland after WWI, Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia, Kurds in Turkey, Shia muslims in Bahrain etc.), then they can wait forever to get their rights and self-determination without using force.
I don't say Putin cares that much for the people on the ground, even those which are pro-Russian, he's playing his own geostrategical game on the back of common people, but the West shouldn't play the "morally shocked" in all those cases, because there are hundreds of other, much worse or as bad cases around the world in which they didn't care.

People which really want a humane, fair and democratic solution must always accept the self-determination of a people and a referendum for disputed regions. Not people being stuck in a state structure which is just some years old, because these are the borders which fit into the chess game the Western powers play. That's as inhumane and provocative, a certain path to conflict as is the "greater imperial" ambition of some other powers in the past and presence.
A lot of bloodshed and wars could have been prevented if that principle introduced by the USA and promised by Woodrow Wilson during WWI would have been held up all the time since then.

 

[Tomenable]

The Upper Silesian plebiscite was never intended to award the whole region to one side.

It was clear since the beginning that the area was going to be divided based on the results in each community.

And that was done, Poland got the part where it won, and Germany got the part where it won, as this data shows:
(although in some cities in the Polish part Germany won, and in some counties in the German part Poland won)

Results in area awarded to Poland:


For Poland - 56%
For Germany - 44%


Results in area awarded to Germany:


For Germany - 71%
For Poland - 29%

But let's remind that the proportion of votes was not the same as that of the general population, for few reasons, including: 1) votes of "plebiscite emigrants" and 2) the fact that the median age of Polish-speaking population was lower than that of the German-speaking population (a higher percent among the Polish-speaking population were children) - while only persons over the age of 21 were eligible to vote. Among "plebiscite emigrants" (who did not live in the plebiscite area, but mostly in other parts of Germany) the vast majority voted for Germany. So generally the percentage of votes for Germany was in the whole area higher than the percentage of pro-German population.

 

[Tomenable]

Even there violence broke out and the Polish side tried to conquer the territory before the official plebiscite.

Poles did not start it. It all started when Grenzschutz opened fired to Polish Silesian civilian workers / labourers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesian_Uprisings#Uprisings

"On 15 August 1919, German border guards (Grenzschutz) massacred ten Silesian civilians in a labour dispute at the Mysłowice mine (Myslowitzer Grube). The massacre sparked protests from the Silesian Polish miners, including a general strike of about 140,000 workers,[10] and caused the First Silesian uprising against German control of Upper Silesia. The miners demanded the local government and police become ethnically mixed to include both Germans and Poles [instead of exclusively German].[2]"

 

[Riverman]

But let's remind that the proportion of votes was not the same as that of the general population, for few reasons, including: 1) votes of "plebiscite emigrants" and 2) the fact that the median age of Polish-speaking population was lower than that of the German-speaking population (a higher percent among the Polish-speaking population were children) - while only persons over the age of 21 were eligible to vote. Among "plebiscite emigrants" (who did not live in the plebiscite area, but mostly in other parts of Germany) the vast majority voted for Germany. So generally the percentage of votes for Germany was in the whole area higher than the percentage of pro-German population.

I think the 71 % were high enough, so we should close that case. It was one of the few rather fair ones in all of history, in all the history of such conflicts. Probably not ideal, still, but better than most other such cases.

 

[Tomenable]

Look at the map of how votes were distributed by area, not just raw numbers of voters.

Many rural areas which voted majority for Poland were left on the German side of the border.

And as I said, it was agreed before the plebiscite, that the region was going to be divided based on how each community / village / town voted. Of course it was not exactly possible to divide it like that because there were pro-German enclaves deep inside the pro-Polish territory, and vice versa.

 

[Silesian]

.....My view is that Germany's economic integration with Russia is natural and inevitable. A wise US policy would accommodate this reality, and try to turn in a direction that harmonizes with our interests. Of course, nobody in charge seems to consider what our true interests might be......


I expect China will make some kind of move soon, whether against Taiwan or elsewhere in the region, I don't know.



Russia is a geopolitical threat because that is what we have forced it to become. That's the tragedy of the entire situation.




So long as the Europeans imagine they can rely on the US security umbrella, it is frankly in their interest to "free ride" on American largesse. This is why NATO must be dissolved and Europe must take responsibility for their own fate. This means, first and foremost, forging a responsible relationship with Russia, founded on mutual respect.

Also, I don't find the term "rogue state" to be at all helpful.

It looks like the Dragon is awakening. Is it beginning?

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/stocks-tied-chinas-swift-alternative-are-soaring

it’s a turning point in monetary history: the end of USD hegemony

The only question is how long before the financial hub- torch is transferred from New York to Beijing. 120 months? give or take+/-