Border Disputes (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

Always keep a-hold of nurse (concluded)

It is the nineteen-fifties and Nikita Khrushchev, a relatively amiable communist dictator, is in charge. Russia is currently a federal state made up of soviet republics reflecting the various people that have, over the years, been incorporated into Russia (though ‘federal’ has a limited meaning in communist dictatorships).

Khrushchev had a Ukrainian background and decided, for one reason or another, to shift the industrial Donets basin out of the Russian Socialist Soviet Republic and place it in the Ukraine Socialist Soviet Republic. Since it was a communist dictatorship not a federal state, nobody much cared at the time. Or even noticed. Until the Soviet Union broke up into its constituent republics and Ukraine found itself with a bunch of Russians on its eastern border with Russia. They could have done it the easy way…

On Ukraine’s western border there is Moldova. This goes back to Tsarist times so I won’t bother you with the history but one half is Romanian-speaking and one half is Russian-speaking. They could do it the easy way…

Also on Ukraine’s western border is Slovakia. I will have to bother you with a little history this time because something miraculous happened here. Long, long ago there was a country called Bohemia which was a very successful state — mainly Czech but incorporating some Germans and a lot of Slovaks. Until it was itself incorporated into the even more successful state, the Habsburg Empire.

In 1919 the Empire was broken up into its constituent parts and the Czechs were awarded the Slovaks and the consequent Czecho-Slovakia found itself with a German minority along its German border. They could have done it the easy way but preferred the Second World War and fifty years as part of the Russian empire. Then the miracle...

In 1991 the Czechs found themselves independent once more and had to decide what to do with the Slovaks. Finally someone chose the easy way and both Czechs and Slovaks lived happily ever after.

We turn now to Nagorno-Karabakh…

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Teschen Caused the War Dec 12, 2023
Or at any rate, it was on the road to war

In 1919 France was determined to prevent another war. The best way to do this, she decided, was to be at the centre of a system of Great Powers supportive of this noble ambition. As a nice corollary, France would be the Hegemon Power of Europe for the first time since the Napoleons, oncle et neveu.

[Mick Harper]

Teschen Caused the War (cont)

The County of Teschen had technically been part of the Bohemian province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Bohemia had been awarded to Czechoslovakia. But in all other respects Teschen was part of Galicia and Galicia had been awarded to Poland. Both were in with a shout, no question about it.

The Poles began negotiations in their preferred style by sending in troops and announcing Teschen had been annexed to Poland. The Czechs reacted in their preferred style by asking the French to demand the Poles withdraw and start talking. The Poles did not withdraw their troops but they did start talking.

“We are only applying this new principle of self-determination,” they explained. “The population of Teschen is majority Polish and we have the last Habsburg census to prove it.”
“Except they don’t speak Polish, do they?” pointed out the Czechs.
“It’s Old Polish,” said the Poles. The French sighed and swiftly produced a rational plan that would satisfy both parties:

1. The southern half of Teschen was where most of the Czechs lived
2. The south had coal, abundant in Poland but lacking in Czechoslovakia
3. The south had a railway vital to the Czechs because it was the only link between two parts of Czechoslovakia and useless to the Poles for the same reason
4. The northern half was where most of the Poles lived
5. The north had industry, abundant in Czechoslovakia, lacking in Poland
6. The north had the capital city, agreeable to Polish pan-nationalism (the Czech/Slovaks were not so keen on pan-nationalism)
7. “The north shall go to Poland, the south to Czechoslovakia,” said the French and told the Poles to withdraw to their half, or else.
8. Teschen was partitioned and both sides got satisfaction.

Nothing upsets people like knowing the other side got satisfaction. The Poles said to one another, “We could have had the whole of Teschen were it not for those meddling French. It’s on the backburner for now but we’ll get back our Teschen one day. As long as we’re in the Little Entente, that isn’t going to happen.”

The Czechs said to one another, “Are we going to form an alliance with people who want to dismember us?” So it was the Little Entente that got put on the backburner while Polish-Czech relations remained firmly in the freezer cabinet. No matter, the Little Entente wasn’t needed after all. Weimar Germany turned out to be a pussy-cat and Stalin opted for socialism in one country.

Then in 1933 Hitler came to power and all was changed... /cont

[Mick Harper]

Teschen Caused the War (cont)

Then in 1933 Hitler came to power and all was changed. But how? We know what did happen but can we at least speculate what might have happened if Teschen hadn’t happened? Here’s what actually happened:

1933: Hitler comes to power
1934: Poland signs a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany
1938: Germany removes the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia
1939: Germany dismembers the rest of Czechoslovakia
1939: Hitler tells Poland she can help herself to the rest of Teschen
1939: Poland helps herself to the rest of Teschen
1939: Germany and Russia help themselves to Poland

How would events have played out if the Little Entente had become a reality, if Poland and Czechoslovakia had decided to be good neighbours, willing partners with one another and with France? You will have to hold on to your sceptical hats as with all alternative histories but, assuming everything is the same with the Little Entente added, it will surely go something like this:

1. Hitler comes to power in 1933
2. Poland as a member of the Little Entente does not make an alliance with Germany
3. Britain unilaterally destroys the Versailles System with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 to protect her own position
4. Germany has been given the amber light by Britain to displace France as the Hegemon Power if they can
5. Hitler remilitarises the Rhineland in 1936 to see whether they can
6. Lacking British support, France has to acquiesce — she is no longer the Hegemon Power
7. Germany tests out whether they are the new Hegemon Power by invading Austria in 1938
8. None of the Powers contest this so Germany is now the Hegemon Power
9. Germany’s next move must be against either Poland or Czechoslovakia
10 But because of the Little Entente, finds it is a combined Poland and Czechoslovakia

Remember, everything stays the same... /cont

[Mick Harper]

Teschen Caused the War (concluded)

Remember, everything stays the same. If the French and the British were unwilling or unable to control Germany over the Rhineland or Austria, there was not much Poles and Czechs could do about German demands on them, either separately or together.

[Mick Harper]

Border disputes are not confined to the land. The most brazen claim to 'foreign territory' currently is China's demand that the whole of the South China Sea is theirs by right. (Taiwan is not a border dispute--both sides agree there is no border to dispute.)

China's claim to the South China Sea has no legal merit (even they would agree with that among themselves) and has been rejected whenever it has been given over to any kind of arbitration. Instead, China has used force--military, economic and diplomatic--to pursue its goal, and has done so very successfully thus far.

What has assisted the Chinese is that there are virtually no people affected. It's all down to lines on maps. A very similar situation has arisen over Greenland. The Americans are not much interested in Greenland itself, only the territorial waters that surround it.

The USA does not dispute that Greenland 'belongs' to Denmark and the Greenlanders but assumes it can square the latter (there being so few of them) and frighten off the former by the threat of military, economic and diplomatic force.

It should be noted that, if America gets its way over Greenland, they will be in a very poor position to centest China using similar methods to acquire the South China Sea.

[Mick Harper]

Look Out, El Presidente, The British Are Coming! Jan 2, 2024
The goings-on between Venezuela and Guyana look promising.

Venezuela has always claimed a big chunk of western Guyana but the matter was settled, sort of, by agreement, sort of, as far back as the early nineteenth century. Everyone thought this was one of those dormant disputes that nobody was ever likely to revive. More equatorial rainforest, who needs it? If nothing else, after a couple of hundred years, Guyana has surely acquired squatters’ rights.

Dormant disputes wake up when one of two conditions is satisfied:

1. An unpopular regime needs a foreign policy boost
2. Oil has been discovered.

1. President Maduro is very unpopular
2. Oil was discovered off Essequibo in 2015.

Case closed? Not necessarily

1. The Conservative government in Britain is very unpopular
2. The Conservative government has just sent a gunboat to Guyana
3. The last time a Conservative government was unpopular, they sent a Task Force to the Falklands and won re-election.

So has Prime Minister Rishi Sunak entered into a secret agreement with President Maduro for a brief skirmish to their mutual benefit? Looks like it:

1. Venezuela doesn’t need the oil. It has the largest proven reserves in the world and is currently importing oil from Iran because it has run its own oil industry into the ground
2. Britain does need the oil because it’s getting flak for opening oilfields off Britain.

More when I get clearance.

[Mick Harper]

Despite me having posted a version of this only yesterday, and despite this version having been only read by one person on Medium, I am satisfied it is the best summation of foreign relations through the ages there has ever been. So there. So, here:
----------------

Ten Reasons Why Trump’s Foreign Policy Is Not As Bad As You Think Jan 8th 2026

I am slowly beginning to appreciate the underlying strategy of Trump’s foreign policy. I’m not saying he’s doing it deliberately. I am saying he’s fallen into a rich vein of opportunity.

If you accept ‘the rules-based world order’ is a contrivance of the rich and powerful, and if you accept the USA is no longer unquestionably rich and powerful, then Donald Trump adopting the the Russo-Chinese model is understandable. What is the Russo-Chinese model?

1. Ignore the rules of the ‘rules-based world order’
2. Just ‘do your thing’
3. Accept a period of unpopularity from the rules-based world order
4. When everything is back to normal
5. Do ‘your thing’ again.

Trump has discovered, what Russia and China (and Israel) discovered long ago

6. The rules-based world order is a paper tiger
7. The unpopularity period is quite short
8. It is not universal, you’ll find plenty of admirers out there
9. Your ‘thing’ will eventually come under the umbrella of the rules-based world order
10 When you have achieved all your ‘things’, you can sit at the top table of the rules-based world order.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

I may have been too quick to sweepingly criticise.

[Mick Harper]

It may or may not become a border dispute but the current situation in Syria is highly fraught. This is the way it is/was/will be

* Sunni Muslim ex-fundamentalists in north-east Syria just across from the Turkish border, and supported by Turkey, burst out of their enclave, took Aleppo in north-east Syria, then went south to Damascus, and set up an apparently stable non-denominational government.

* They had trouble with, but appear to have successfully dealt with, Alawites (deviant Muslim Arabs supported by Iran who had formed the previous government) and the Druze (deviant Muslim Arabs supported by Israel) in their bid to reunify Syria.

* All that is left is the Kurds (orthodox Sunni non-Arab Muslims supported by the Americans) who have set up a virtually separatist state in northern Syria, adjacent to the Turkish border, with whom they are daggers drawn. The Kurdish 'state' covers maybe a quarter of Syria and extends from the Euphrates to Iraq. Kurds occupy perhaps a third of Aleppo on the west bank of the Euphrates.

* Syrian government forces have just fought a brief but successful war with the Aleppo Kurds and forced them to redeploy to their state on the east bank. The question now is What Comes Next?

/later

[Mick Harper]

The Kurds want a state of their own but understand they will not be allowed to use their Syrian mini-state as the 'Prussia of a United Germany'. They will settle for functional self-government within Syria.

The Syrian government want to blank out the Kurdish mini-state because it is a standing threat to Syrian homogeneity--and understand the danger of not doing so because they themselves used their own permanent anti-state enclave to take over Syria.

The problem facing both sides is that neither knows who would prevail if it came to an all-out war between Syrian armed forces and Kurdish ones. The Syrian government has the added worry that even a successful war might spell their own doom because it will invite intervention from a number of outside actors--Turkey, USA, Israel, Iran, Russia--they don't control.

The one thing everyone is agreed on -- apart from the Kurds and to a small extent the Israelis -- is that the borders of Syria must remain sacrosanct. As usual, it is the wretched rules of the rules-based international order that is at the heart of the matter.

[Mick Harper]

The Kurds have always had a good press. Not having a state of their own cast them as perennial underdogs in a region full of ravening beasts who did have a state of their own.

They were, too, good at projecting a western image. For instance, women soldiers took the edge off a 100% Muslim population. And they were democratic to a fault, emphasising the value of popular town assemblies and that kind of thing.

Much of the shine has come off in the last few days when we have heard the truth about the SDF. They were the Syrian Democratic Forces because half of them were Arabs, prepared to join the Kurds fighting either ISIS or Assad. But it turned out this was more a case of Kurds ruling the roost and the Arabs being ruled, even in their own roosts.

This has accounted for why the SDF has collapsed so spectacularly. An army that had routed ISIS was in turn routed by the Syrian national army because half of them--the Arab half--welcomed their confreres in, and drove their Kurdish overlords out.

But now comes the acid test. The new Syrian regime has promised a Syria that respects the rights of people that don't happen to share the religion or the ethnicity of the people ruling in Damascus.

There have already been (recoverable) false steps against the Druze, the Christians and the Alawites, we await the treatment meted out to the Kurds to decide whether there is a new broom in the Middle East or just another old one.