So…
The bloodless annexation of Crimea by Russia after an overwhelmingly favorable plebiscite by the Crimeans themselves was illegal.
But..
Our overthrow of the legitimately elected government of the Ukraine, AKA “Regime Change” (as revealed by Victoria Nuland’s “Yats is the one” public phone call) was a legitimate humanitarian endeavor.
Do I have that right?
Forgive me if I don’t understand.
Can anybody help me?
BTW, did Putin do anything to influence our election?
He would be remiss if he didn’t.
Hillary loves war and hates Russia.
‘Nuff said!
“A spoke in the wheel of the U.S. little red wagon”
What I like about this iBrattleboro post is that it helps illustrate how uninterested and illiterate most people everywhere are when it comes to the complexities and vagaries of the unending conflicts of a multitude of nationalities and the eternal battles for national borders.
Nevertheless, without answering you directly, I did find this link for Quora.com most interesting, and certainly somewhat related.
Read full page, including the following comments: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-American-government-so-upset-about-Crimea
Be sure to read the comments following Gregory Stroud’s answer. It’ll give you the illusion human nature makes sense.
The Question: Why is the American government so upset about Crimea?
Answered Oct 3, 2016: Gregory Stroud, I have a PhD in the history of Russia and significant expertise in the region. [Stroud works at Bennington College, Studied at Oberlin College, Lives in Rochester, NY:
United States foreign policy is largely grounded in the lessons of the First and Second World Wars; in particular, an understanding that there are innumerable potential nationalities in Europe, and that national borders cannot possibly conform with every possible permutation of nationality or national historic borders. As the leading guarantor, and likely beneficiary, of the status quo – in Europe in particular – the US will almost always oppose changes in national borders and territorial sovereignty.
No doubt, the cautionary tale here is the German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938, which helped spark WWII, but it’s easy to find troublesome examples in Belgium, France, Moldavia, Romania, Hungary, etc.
This American view of nationalism is grounded in the academic work of Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, and others, which understands national identity as “imagined.”
On a more practical level, from the standpoint of the United States, the annexation of Crimea is simply the latest and most extravagant of recent Russian efforts to undermine national integrity, and unsettle national borders in the larger region. Other borders include Transnistria, Georgia/Ossetia.
Perhaps the best counterexample is Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia, where the United States sided – against Russian interests – with separatist movements, sparking claims of American hypocrisy on the issue.
4 Comments following…
Hypocrisy?
It’s always good for business to have an enemy.
The business of America is business
Pres. Calvin Coolidge in an address to the Society of American Newspaper Editors in 1925.
Perennial benchmarks of hypocrisy
In terms of all human behaviors, hypocrisy is one of the pillars of “civilization.” Without hypocrisy and all of its synonymic definitions, societies could not exist as we know them, historically, and today.
Definition: the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense.
synonyms: dissimulation, false virtue, cant, posturing, affectation, speciousness, empty talk, insincerity,falseness, deceit, dishonesty, mendacity, pretense, duplicity, sanctimonious, pietism, piousness; informal: phoniness, fraud
“…must politics and religion be the perennial benchmarks of hypocrisy?”