thoughts on russia/georgia/kosovo
 

anyone?

here is what i think should happen as a sort of comprise:

Russian Federation, Serbia, et al recognize Kosovar independence...

in exchage NATO recocogizes South Oss..whatever it is, and the other one (they speak a different language than the rest of the country and therefore obviously [insert rhetoric])

which sets the stage for The Basque Repbulic of Catalia

The Catalian Nation is then fasttracked to NATO and EU membership, canceliing Spain's socialist ass vote.

See...we'd win in the long run.


I probably won't be on here for another couple of months or so again, so go nuts.

Setting aside nation-states with borders drawn based primarily upon ethnicity is not the best of ideas IMHO.

they'd both be in the eu though...

and ethnicity really isn't the main reason for Catalian indepence

My thought on the whole situation is that it's not good.

...Catalian?

I believe the proper term is Catalan, as they would have it at Camp Nou.

Furthermore, the Basques and the Catalans are separate peoples.

yeah

but spelling and details aside, as ethnicty is not the real reason for the seperation


and...........they both kick ass

good call

Yes and no. The problem that we still see in Africa is due to Europeans drawing borders not based on ethnicity, but based on their own preconceived power. The result, disaster to this day, esp. in the Great Lake region.

For the record, Belgium is the worst colonizing power. The silver goes to the Portuguese.

And in the Middle East.

I was in favor of the redrawing of Iraq on religious/ethnic lines, however the whole little possible genocide would worry me.

As big a land mass as Russia is, it sounds like they do not like having less power than they did.

The sleeping bear is awakening and in a bad mood!

We in America have more ethniticy than any other country and why there are minor problems compared to many we seem to get along.:cool:

It sounds like nobody on here, myself included, really knows whats going on. Can someone give a cliffsnotes of the history behind these countries and why they're at war currently?

If South Ossetia wants to separate, let 'em seperate (and Abkhazia as well). They didn't want to be a part of Georgia in the first place and have been trying since the Ossetian-Georgian War of '92 to sepaerate. Russian has had "peacekeeping" troops in SO for some time, and I think that the two breakaway regions will get absorbed into Russia. I also suspect SO asked Russia to help them get the Georgians out, which is why I'm not upset with Russia over the matter.

I also don't think this is the start to a second Cold War.

When the former Soviet blocs started declaring their independence, Georgia took South Ossetia with it, even though it didn't want to go. As I previously mentioned, there was a small war in 1992 started by an election held by SO to elect its own government. They lost the war and ever since then, there's been a lot of hostility in the region. Starting around 2006-2007 SO began holding more elections and getting more active in an attempt to seperate.
Georgia sent in troops, which basically led up to this conflict.

I think Russia has made a very bad move. In our lifetime, I fully expect China to take back Siberia for all its potential mineral resources- and who will stop them? Surely not the relative handful of Russians living there or a civilized world keen on self-preservation.

Russia isolating itself from the world just makes it all the easier to not bother when that day comes.

I am not sure what the near future brings, but I think the long term vision of Russia as we know it is bleaker than ever as a result of recent actions.

Even further more, Russia's demographics don't support it. They have something like .7 kids for every woman, whereas you need 2.1 to replace the population. In a country that has something like 110 million people and a country far bigger than America's, they can't keep all that land for so long. I see Russia being reduced to simply the area around St. Petersburg and Moscow.