I mentioned earlier that several countries seemed to be tearing themselves apart because large blocks of voters can't agree. Since then, we've seen Ukraine get even more polarized, eventually leading to a new government and Russian military intervention.
I thought it was interesting that during the Ukraine crisis, there seemed to be a real case for splitting the country, since the Ukrainian west and Russian east seemed to differ on culture, politics and economics. But all politicians shrank away from the idea, saying that such a young country (~23 years) didn't want to open that can of worms.
Well, Putin's troops seem to have imposed the separation idea. And at the risk of sounding Chamberlain-y, I'm optimistic that it won't escalate. Some sort of autonomy for the country's two sides was probably the only way out of the impasse, but too scary to choose voluntarily. Of course, that's assuming Putin isn't crazy enough to grab more or all of the country than the Russian-dominated areas just to spite/embarrass the west. And I don't know too much about make-up of the country; if there are large Russian/Ukrainian minorities on the other sides, it could lead to Balkan-style retribution, which is the country argument to my give-separation-a-chance philosophy.
No comments:
Post a Comment