Ukraine Thread

[Seamus Fermanagh]

It is not about moral or ethics. It is about abiding by laws and the treaties signed.

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).

It doesn't matter who established the borders. What matters is the international recognition of them. After it had happened the borders drawn by any dictator are as good as those established by democratic negotiations. In case of Crimea, its belonging to Ukraine (to be precise, the sovereignty of Ukraine within its current borders) was promulgated in the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Ukraine and Russia signed in 1997. After this all attempts to weasel out are against the law.

While it does matter how/by whom the borders were established in terms of levels of practical support etc., you are absolutely correct as to the illegality of Russia's annexation of Crimea. Russia broke the treaty signed with Ukraine, with the "plebiscite" for an Crimean 'anschluss' with Russia being blatantly inappropriate by all accepted international standards and an abrogation of the treaty signed with Crimea.

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. By that old bronze-age standard, the Russians have a RIGHT to the Crimea because Ukraine isn't powerful enough to do shit to stop it.


With a higher standard of accepted practices in place, then other nations MUST work to redress the issue, and not acknowledge it and support it, because that kind of annexation despite treaty and under questionable plebiscite support is not condoned by UN era standards of ethical behavior among nations.


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.

[Montmorency]

Seamus, how would you address Brenus' interpretation of Yugoslavian intervention and Kosovar independence for this issue?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If you already said something about it, please link me to the post. This thread is a repetitious blur to me.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Seamus, how would you address Brenus' interpretation of Yugoslavian intervention and Kosovar independence for this issue?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If you already said something about it, please link me to the post. This thread is a repetitious blur to me.

I haven't taken on that theme directly. It would require more research than I have time for at the moment. How much right did we have to intervene in the Balkans...I would need to think through the premises of all parties a bit to evaluate that myself.

[Sarmatian]

Without going into history too much (who had moral right to a territory, who was where first and so on...), from the legal aspect the parallel is evident. Yugoslavia was recognized as a single country after ww2, and the internal borders were created later, as borders of administrative divisions. When tensions started to brew, ultimately the international community (represented by the West at the time, as Russia was impotent and China shied away from international crisis) that those administrative borders were sancrosanct. Those administrative lines would become state borders. One might say the legal principle was set.

After less than a decade, the principle was broken with Kosovo independence. But there was a caveat, namely that by committing various atrocities against the population of Kosovo, Serbia has lost the right to that part of its territory. So, the spin was that the principle wasn't really broken because there was a more important principle to be upheld, namely stopping an ongoing genocide.

From the legal point of view, the entire intervention in 1999 was illegal. There was no consensus in the UN, it was a unilateral decision by NATO. Even NATO statute was ignored, which states that NATO can not be used in an offensive manner. 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.

I would have liked to have seen what legal hoops the judges of ICJ would have had to jump through to absolve NATO from blame if Serbia hadn't withdrawn the lawsuit against 8 NATO members.

Russia is doing the same thing now, maintaining that they haven't really broken any laws or treaties because Crimeans decided to secede from Ukraine in a plebiscite. Again, there's a facade of legality, but even if somebody were to question the legality, the moral imperative was so strong that it superseded everything else - people of Crimea simply couldn't have been left to Nazis in Kiev.

As there isn't an international court that can enforce its decisions in the entire world, the bottom line is the we're still in the "might makes right" territory, regardless of how civilized we like to present ourselves, although no one is willing to admit it.

[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.

[Brenus]

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

I think the 1991 war was a UN war. Saddam had invaded a sovereign country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...Resolution_687

[Gilrandir]

I think the 1991 war was a UN war. Saddam had invaded a sovereign country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...Resolution_687

It became a UN war because Iraq couldn't veto those resolutions you refer to. Plus the finacial considerations which I have mentioned. In other cases, when the principle world players are involved invasions of sovereign countries pass unnoticed. Or, for a change, UN can throw philippics but no one cares.