But is this not irrelevant? It seems to me that you believe that North Ossetia should be independent, despite the fact that Ossetians do not want independence from Russia, and South Ossetia should not be independent, despite the fact that South Ossetians would rather not be a part of Georgia.
I believe in self determination, so I don’t have a problem with any group deciding they want to be Russian in a free and fair election. That said, I find that Russia’s involvement in the Caucuses has been wholly self serving.
I cannot prove or disprove a negative, so I’m not going to touch your second point.
Georgian nationalism was so fervent at the fall of the USSR because of Russian oppression. They haven’t done anything to clean up the mess they created because frozen conflict on their borders is beneficial to Russia.
The logical conclusion to your point is that Russia should be allowed to conquer the world to end all wars. The problem with that is that no one wants to live under Russian rule, and Russia fights wars to take control over those countries and then genocides them afterwards. This is not better.
My hope is for Russia to get small and weak enough that they can no longer wage wars on their neighbors.
And this is why a lot of peoples did not, in fact, fight a war of independence against Russia.
And the Chechens, for instance, wanted independence because they were subjected to a genocide by the USSR when it was ruled by a Georgian, so this is hardly a usual case for the ethnic minorities, since most of them were not genocided.
But is this not irrelevant? It seems to me that you believe that North Ossetia should be independent, despite the fact that Ossetians do not want independence from Russia, and South Ossetia should not be independent, despite the fact that South Ossetians would rather not be a part of Georgia.
I believe in self determination, so I don’t have a problem with any group deciding they want to be Russian in a free and fair election. That said, I find that Russia’s involvement in the Caucuses has been wholly self serving.
Well, I believe that without Russia, Russian Caucasus will be a worse place overall, and will also have a few wars.
South Ossetia and Abkhazia are also worse off than they would be had they remained in Georgia.
It seems to me that this sort of nationalism is counterproductive.
There are already wars in the Russian caucuses.
I cannot prove or disprove a negative, so I’m not going to touch your second point.
Georgian nationalism was so fervent at the fall of the USSR because of Russian oppression. They haven’t done anything to clean up the mess they created because frozen conflict on their borders is beneficial to Russia.
There are no wars now.
The wars happened when the central government was too weak to deal with them, which supports my point somewhat.
The logical conclusion to your point is that Russia should be allowed to conquer the world to end all wars. The problem with that is that no one wants to live under Russian rule, and Russia fights wars to take control over those countries and then genocides them afterwards. This is not better.
My hope is for Russia to get small and weak enough that they can no longer wage wars on their neighbors.
This is simply not correct. Quite a lot of people would prefer not to separate from Russia.
Then they wouldn’t fight a war for independence would they?
Precisely.
And this is why a lot of peoples did not, in fact, fight a war of independence against Russia.
And the Chechens, for instance, wanted independence because they were subjected to a genocide by the USSR when it was ruled by a Georgian, so this is hardly a usual case for the ethnic minorities, since most of them were not genocided.