Russian invasion of Ukraine

“Interesting idea. The English Civil War finished in 1651, which means we are due another go in 2151”
For Britain: Jacobite rebellion 1745-6. Not a Scottish revolt.
Irish independence War. 1922 (May still be continuing????)

Looking at what Russia has been doing in Ukraine (today’s photos and videos) it will take another 77 years for their reputation (as a civilised country) to recover, and that assumes an immediate regime change.

I’ve just done a 3 digit donation to https://smartmedicalaid.org (my money, not EuroGA).

Has Russia ever had a reputation as a civilized country to lose? I think not, except perhaps among the most naive. It might be necessary to deal with Russian government via power politics and the threat of force, but it’s not ever been civilized.

I’m just sorry for anybody who has to live under authoritarian rule, in any country, or subject to the whims of an unrestrained governmental ruling class. No good comes of it.

I think most of the endless government sponsored violence in Europe has been and is inter-tribal and irrational, which mostly translates to international wars and genocide. Civil wars within a single nation are more the exception than the rule, although there have been some of those too. 1930s Spain comes to mind, as well as Yugoslavia (if you consider that a country), within the last 100 years.

Silvaire wrote:

as well as Yugoslavia (if you consider that a country)

It used to be one country for some time (72 years) but definitely not a single nation. It was six nations (Serbs, Coats, Bosniaks, Slovenians, Macedonians and Montenegrins) plus huge Albanian minority (almost 2 million, mainly on Kosovo) plus several other minorities (Hungarian, Slovak, Czech etc.) with total population of 22 million.

@Emir, thanks for that. Once upon a time I was involved with a woman who is today a senior Slovenian diplomat, and was for a period the Slovenian national ambassador to a turbulent Middle East country. I learned a bit about Slovenia in particular, and travelled with her to Croatia and Bosnia. It was a very educational time for me, although the relationship did not work out. I’ve also been back several times since, most recently in 2019.

LeSving wrote:

Let’s say each country “erupts” (for some reason or another) every 500 years on average. 500 years is a very long time, twice as long as the USA has existed, and it has already had a civil war. For Europe that means on average one country “erupts” every 11 years, which probably isn’t that far off.

Well, we can get a check on this. The last real “eruption” was the Yugoslav war and now the Ukraine conflict, which means a 20 year gap more or less before people start shooting at each other.

I would think that the EU and the fact that most non-EU countries now with a history of violence are trying hard to get into the EU has prevented armed conflict pretty well and will probably continue to do so within the membership and associated countries. There is simply too little to gain and too much to loose.

If Russia succeeds in keeping Crimea and the Donbass, I would suggest that Serbia has to be watched very carefully for not making an attempt on it’s disputed areas in Bosnia and Kosovo. Otherwise I guess quite a lot of other potentially violent countries may well have learnt the lesson from this conflict that armed invasion will kill your economy thoroughly and this is something nukes don’t protect you from. Unfortunately, some other countries will see themselves reconfirmed that only countries with nukes or within a nuclear military organisation such as NATO are really safe from military aggression.

As for the US, it remains to be seen if their record of now over 150 years of internal peace will last. After the Jan 6th insurrection and the mounting open hatred between the two major parties and a possible re-emergence of a president who openly admires Putin’s way of running his country, my predictions for the US are pretty bleak.

Peter wrote:

Looking at what Russia has been doing in Ukraine (today’s photos and videos) it will take another 77 years for their reputation (as a civilised country) to recover, and that assumes an immediate regime change.

That depends hugely on who will run it in the future and how. Look how fast even Germany came back up after WW2. Apart, Russia is far to attractive economically to exploit the moment a regime is in place who will at least in name and deeds behave itself sufficiently, the should for sanctions to be lifted will become quite loud.

If Putin or his system stay in power, the question is how long the West will keep up the sanctions and economic seregation. I would not be surprised that if they eventually back down and put a peace treaty backed by the UN in force, which pretty much excludes further similar “adventures” also internally, there will be enough less morally driven countries rushing to make their pile in Russia. It should not be forgotten that quite a few countries and their leaders don’t see the Russian actions the way we do. Unfortunately this does include some European countries too who are pretty much pro-Russian. Some admit it, others don’t. The moment they can, they will be the first to try to get their foot in the door there.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

I would think that the EU and the fact that most non-EU countries now with a history of violence are trying hard to get into the EU has prevented armed conflict pretty well and will probably continue to do so within the membership and associated countries. There is simply too little to gain and too much to loose.

It has been said that the real purpose of the EU is to prevent wars between France and Germany. That has succeeded eminently. It is now 75 years since last time – 20 years more than the second longest period of peace since 1700 and almost twice the third longest period.

That is like saying that the Enigma decrypts shortened WW2 by 2 years. They undoubtedly saved lives, and an endless number of historians argued about this and that for decades, many probably getting PhDs out of it, but the simple fact is that WW2 was always going to end no later than the summer of 1945 – due to the atomic bomb coming along.

That France and Germany didn’t go to war again is purely a correlation. Britain and France didn’t either Why? Because they all had better things to do. Germany was also prevented from substantially re-militarising, got a good economic start with the Marshall Plan, etc, following a realisation that the post-Versailles humiliation laid the roots for the rise of Hitler etc.

And mutually assured destruction has prevented wars between atomic powers, since the 1950s. Stalin was definitely going to have another go, in the 1950s.

One of many presents left by the retreating “army” in peoples’ houses