Sovereignty vs Self-Determination: Crimea Reignites Battle

choi

Peter Baker, Sovereignty vs Self-Rule: Crimea Reignites Battle. New York Times, Mar 9, 2014 (front page).
www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/world ... ons-legitimacy.html

three consecutive paragraphs:

"Consider the different American views of recent bids for independence.
Chechnya? No.
East Timor? Yes.
Abkhazia? No.
South Sudan? Yes.
Palestine? It’s complicated.

"It is an acutely delicate subject in the West, where Britain wants to keep Scotland and Spain wants to keep Catalonia. The United States, after all, was born in revolution, breaking away from London without consent of the national government — something that the Obama administration insists Crimea must have. The young American union later fought a civil war to keep the South from breaking away. Even today, there is occasional fringe talk of secession in Texas.

"'No state has been consistent in its application of this,' said Samuel Charap, a Russia specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.


Note:

(a) International Institute for Strategic Studies
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Institute_for_Strategic_Studies
(Formation 1958; Headquarters London)

(b) "While the concept of state sovereignty can be traced to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the issue has been especially tricky for American presidents in the quarter century since the end of the Cold War. Ukraine itself is the product of a breakup, that of the Soviet Union, when 15 separate nations emerged from the wreckage. Several of those new nations then confronted their own separatist movements, notably Chechnya in Russia; Transnistria in Moldova; Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia; and Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan."
(i) Peace of Westphalia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia
(1648; ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) between Spain and the Dutch Republic, with Spain formally recognizing the independence of the Dutch Republic; Westphalian sovereignty)
(ii) Transnistria
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria
(a strip of land between the River Dniester [on its west] and the eastern Moldovan border with Ukraine [on its east]; After the dissolution of the USSR,  Transnistria, part of Moldova SSR but unlike Moldova, did not want to separate from the Soviet Union, with help of Russian military (which continues stationing in Transnistria] fought a war with Moldova May-July, 1992; unrecognised by any United Nations member state; section 1 Name)
(iii) Nagorno-Karabakh
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagorno-Karabakh
(a de facto independent but unrecognized state; section 1 Etymology; in 1988 Armenians within the region (76% Armenian and 23% Azerbaijanis) requested to join Armenia, which was denied; On Dec 10, 1991 Armenians in the region declared independence, war erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan, cease fire in 1994)

(c) "During the first Russian war in Chechnya, Bill Clinton even likened Boris N Yeltsin to Abraham Lincoln, a comparison many in Washington came to regret amid the carpet bombing of Grozny, the Chechen capital."
(i) First Chechen War, 1994–1996; Second Chechen War, 1999–2009   Wikipedia
(ii) Grozny
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny
(section 2.4 First Chechen War: Intense fighting and carpet bombing carried out by the Russian Air Force destroyed much of the city)

(d) "'Self-determination has been a controversial doctrine since Wilson, and hell to apply,' said Stephen Sestanovich, a former ambassador at large to the Soviet states and the author of a new book, 'Maximalist,' on American foreign policy."
(i) Stephen Sestanovich
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Sestanovich
(1950- ; a professor at Columbia University)
is American.
(ii) Stephen Sestanovich, Maximalist; America in the world from Truman to Obama. Knopf, 2014.

(e) "'Kosovo is very much a legitimate precedent,' said Dimitri K Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest, a Washington research organization, agreeing with Moscow’s argument."

Dimitri Simes
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitri_Simes
("born [in 1947; now age 67] in Moscow to secular Jewish parents and graduated with an MA in history from Moscow State University. He immigrated to the United States in 1973")