Border Disputes (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

Since these loom so large in both domestic and international politics, it may be worth having a separate section dealing with them. I'll get the ball rolling by posting up relevant Medium pieces, one a day -- some of which originally appeared in the AEL and others that were re-posted in other sections here, but what the hell. Use your loaf about what goes in here and what doesn't.

[Mick Harper]

Always keep a-hold of nurse
For fear of finding something better May 4, 2023

One of the banes of international relations is the principle ‘what you have, you hold’. Nobody knows quite why it exists. It doesn’t apply in other spheres of life. Take my clapped out exercise bike. Please!

But sovereign states always keep hold of things they have no need of as if their lives depended on it. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, but either way their determination to cling on to clapped out exercise bikes spells trouble for everyone. Take this example of the syndrome going on right now.

[Mick Harper]

Meanwhile, here is my list of 'live' border disputes (not necessarily active ones), drawn randomly from my consciousness to demonstrate their importance (not the power of my consciousness, they will be familiar from the MSM):

Russia/Ukraine
Venezuela/Guyana
Israel/Gaza, West Bank, Syria, Lebanon
Rwanda/Democratic Republic of Congo
India/Pakistan
India/China
China/Bhutan
Armenia/Azerbaijan
Russia/Georgia
Ethiopia/Somalia
Serbia/Kosovo

There must be more (sing out). I have not included cases of 'separatism', e.g. Kurds/Everyone, though this would involve border disputes if push ever came to international shove. Nor disputes that are more quiescent than 'live' or 'active', e.g. just in our own backyard: Argentina/UK (Falklands), Spain/UK (Gibraltar), Ireland/UK (Ulster).

[Wile E. Coyote]

The Pakistan Afghanistan border disputes flared again at the start of this month.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan%E2%80%93Pakistan_border_skirmishes

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Always keep a-hold of nurse (cont)

When Yugoslavia was being (re-)organised into a federal system under Tito in the mid-twentieth century — though ‘federal’ has a limited meaning under Communist dictators — it was obvious to Tito that the Albanians of southern Serbia were ‘a special case’:

* not small and Serb like Montenegro
* not big and non-Serb like Macedonia
* not historic and non-Serb like Croatia
* not highly developed and non-Serb like Slovenia
* not a mess and part-Serb like Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Tito was more of a Croat than a Serb, more of a communist than a Yugoslav, and didn’t give a fig for any of that. The Albanians were a special case, Tito decided, because there was an actual Albania just across the way. No matter how much of a socialist paradise one is building, it never pays to have people with somewhere else to go.

So Yugoslav Albanians weren’t a people! Just a bunch of random folk living in southern Serbia. The whole area was given the memorably Serb name of Kosovo and a slice of Serb land was added in case anyone noticed it wasn’t Serb at all.

When Tito died, when communism died, Yugoslavia died. Most people went their separate ways (see above) but not the Albanians who weren’t ‘a people’ and had nowhere to go. They sure as hell weren’t going to Albania, the Serbs insisted, they were going to remain precisely where they had always been, in Serbia.

Naturally the Albanians revolted, naturally the Serbs were having none of it. /cont

[Mick Harper]

Let's Talk Exclaves!

[Boreades]

Transnistria.

Might be a border dispute, an enclavc, exclavc, a separatist. Or all four all at once. Depends who you ask.

[Mick Harper]

If Russia has its way at the peace talks and persuades the 'international community' to recognise Transnistria as Russian territory, it would be a full exclave with no access to the sea. Apart from it being surrounded by two different countries, Ukraine and Moldova.

Even the grasping Putin wouldn't do this, recognising it would be a potential hostage situation. Though oddly, if Transnistria became independent it might end up with an exclave of its own, Gagauzia.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Empires expand when they are strong/contract when they are weak.

Moldovia is very sensibly playing a waiting game.

She could take Transnistria now as Transnistria is bankrupt. It was in effect bankrolled by Gazprom, which is Vladdy's wallet.

If Russia wins the SMO/war in Ukraine, the Bear will be strong and a SMO in Moldova will then likely follow, on the basis of retaking/saving Transnistria.

If Russia loses, and Putin goes, then Transnistria will simply fall into Moldovan hands.

If it's a frozen conflict then Moldova will keep waiting.

[Mick Harper]

Always keep a-hold of nurse (cont)

The Serbs could have done it the easy way, by recognising Kosovo as an independent state, but ‘what you have, you hold’ required Serbia doing it the hard way. In this case by

* massacring Albanians on a scale that
* persuaded the rest of them to flee into Albania resulting in
* Serbia getting bombed into oblivion by NATO so
* having to put up with an independent Kosovo anyway while
* being treated as a pariah by the whole world.

Except by Russia, who come into the story later. And not in a good way.

When the Albanians finally got their NATO-supplied independence from Serbia, they found themselves living in a country called Kosovo with a slice of Tito-supplied Serbs on their side of the border rather than where the Serbs wanted to be, on the Serb side of the border. Naturally the Serbs revolted, naturally Kosovo was having none of it.

The Kosovars could have done it the easy way... /cont

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Always keep a-hold of nurse (cont)

The Kosovars could have done it the easy way and just passed this strip of territory back to Serbia whereupon Serbia and Kosovo might have lived happily ever after (by Balkan standards). But Kosovo, being now a sovereign nation, was held in the vice of ‘what you have, you hold’, so they had to do it the hard way.

They kept their Serbs but if, for instance, they were not allowed to attend Serbo-Croat-speaking schools, they would soon be Albanian-speaking Kosovars, right? Possibly, though they still haven’t mastered Albanian ballot forms so we may be looking at the long haul.

Right now, the urgent question is whether Kosovan Serbs should be able to keep their Serbian car number plates. No, absolutely not. In the Balkans, this means riot and insurrection and if the rioters and insurrectionists have a Big Brother just over the border, it could mean war. Either way, Kosovo (though not Serbia, they absolutely love this sort of thing) will be massively dislocated for the indefinite future.

If you want a rough picture — and it will be — of what the future holds for Kosovo, it will be a sort of mini-Bosnia-Herzegovina where the Bosnian Muslims won’t countenance the Bosnians Serbs going to Serbia or the Bosnian Croats going to Croatia.

But everyone admires the Muslim Bosnians so maybe the Muslim Kosovars will settle for that. Cherished abroad, miserable at home. Very Balkan. But enough of them, let’s move on to Russia. /cont

[Boreades]

Another one (again)

Saudi-Yemeni border.