Ukraine Thread

[Gilrandir]

Do you really expect governments to react to each graffiti? I can assure you there are much worse.

What if there was doctor Mengele or Mussolini depicted on a wall? No one would give a damn? Local authorities SHOULD be interested in people depicted publicly. Otherwise you may soon see other as unsavory people looking at you from walls and fences.

Do you really think that population of Serbia have:
1) seen the graffiti?

I have, and they haven't?

2) understood the graffiti?
3) care about it?
4) have a deeper understanding of this particular conflict?

Read above on what indifference may lead to.

But the whole point I am making is that laws and treaties are the "CHILD" of morality and ethics. Absent some appeal to a higher morality/ethical standard, the laws or treaties are meaningless. Without some higher standard against which all behaviors are measured, you are left with nothing more than G. J. Caesar's dictum about the victors doing whatever they want and the defeated enduring whatever the victor wishes (a.k.a. might makes right).

Moral rules are not always embodied into laws. For instance, adultery is immoral, but it is not illegal (well, not in the "civilised societies"). Moreover, some laws which were based on obsolete moral norms have been repealed (like sodomy was a crime in the USSR - and perhaps in other countries). So there is no direct correlation between moral and law. In view of this I would put more emphasis on law than on morality, especially in international issues, since moral codes of different societies may vary. Mind you, I say "MORE emphasis", which means I don't reject morality as a factor altogehter.

What I have been arguing is that applying the old classic "all have been immoral in the past" standard to undercut the "morality score" of any international actor, implicitly undercuts the spirit of the entirety of international law. Without some appeal to a higher, generally accepted ethical standard, you devolve to old fashioned might-makes-right sensibilities.

Again, emphasis should be made on legality/illegality, morality is too fuzzy a notion.

I do note however, that the West's collective response has been pretty anemic. It should have been handled in much the same manner as was the annexation of Kuwait in 1991. And yes, that does mean facing down a nation armed with nuclear weapons by asserting that any resort to those weapons will bring about a collective response in kind by the coalition opposing the annexation. You cannot bluff with this kind of stuff, it must be credible. The West's unwillingness to take this step has allowed Russian to use Caesar's approach.

There is one more factor (besides morality and law) to count with when such situations arise: money. In case of Kuwait all you say about morality and law was coupled with financial considerations which promised a profit after the jusitice has been restored. In case of Russia such consideration promised only financial losses. And this seemed to have outweighed in the West's collective mind.

I very much think it was inertia. Nobody seriously consulted the will of the Crimeans prior to 1997. I was simply asserting that sovereignty by treaty and agreement absent conquest was not "by conquest." I was not attempting to suggest that the wishes of the Crimeans themselves had been considered -- I actually suspect that they were not, which aided Russia's efforts to take over.

Before Anshcluss, Austria had a referendum which brought a positive result (for Hitler). So people WERE asked what they wanted. Yet somehow it didn't make the Anschluss legal.

So, attacking a sovereign country that didn't attack or even threaten to attack a NATO member was obviously an illegal action, but the spin was that NATO wasn't really attacking - it was proactively defending Kosovo Albanians. The moral need for intervention was so great, that it superseded any and all laws.

The same can be said of attacking Iraq in Kuwait in 1991. Yet this war is considered to be a righteous one.