Crimea, annexed from Ukraine by Putin

The forces of the Russian federation have annexed the Crimean peninsula.

Always something of a Russian enclave in Ukraine, the region retained the naval base for the Russian Black Sea fleet after the break up of the Soviet Union. Such international arrangements, where sovereignty over a city is ambiguous, or when the citizens of a region are ethnically, culturally or linguistically closely associated with a neighbouring state, are rarely stable.

The internal republics of the Soviet Union were riddled with these ambiguities. Quite a few were deliberately manufactured on the old imperial tradition of 'divide and rule'. Populations and regions were shifted from one administrative region to another as punishment for an official or the collective.

And so we have Transnistria, a Slavic bit of Moldova; Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russian bits of Georgia; Nagorno Karabakh, an Armenian region of Azerbaijan; Samarkand, in Uzbekistan but closely associated with Tajikistan and the Fergana valley which crosses Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan; all potential flashpoints.

The Russian claim to Crimea could be seen as having a similar basis to the British claim to Northern Ireland. Sure, it might geographically belong to someone else, but the people there are of the Motherland. In the old, declining imperial power the elite must act to retain credibility in front of its own populace.

However there are differences, in that Britain did not so much invade Northern Ireland, as cling to it when  the rest of Ireland broke away. It would have been a better parallel if Russia retained Crimea at the break up of the Soviet Union.

So, Crimea really has been annexed. Unilaterally taken from one state by another. I'm not sure when this last happened in Europe, but it reminds me of the German reoccupation of the Rhineland. The Russian claim is good, but what they should have done is demand a referendum. Assertion of their claim via military might establishes a very worrying precedent.

The West will do nothing (outside of a few economic sanctions) because the West can do nothing. The last time Britain fought a war in Crimea they were close to the height of their imperial power, allied with France and the Ottomans and still it didn't turn out too well. There is no chance of a reversal here.

There was much speculation that Putin would let Ukraine go, waiting for inevitable financial troubles to bring them back into line. I conclude this failed to recognise the importance of these events to Putin's regime. Putin's pitch to his people is that he has halted the decline of Russia. The departure of Ukraine from the fold with a second revolution in a decade would have fatally undermined his narrative. Decline would have been on-going. However much of a gamble this looks, post Syria, Putin's confidence is high. For him, too much was at stake. The risk of inaction seemed small compared to the risk of action.

The rouble can fall, Russia is only too happy to default on its debt. Can the West cope with that? Stocks can fall, that is a buying opportunity. But Sevastopol and the Black Sea fleet? If that falls, it is over the dead body of the Putin regime.