Crimean Precedents: George W. Bush, Georgia and the South's Secession

Yesterday Crimea held a vote to secede from Ukraine. It was approved by more than 95%, though most non-Russians boycotted the referendum. The Republican response was to blame President Obama for being weak:

“Our administration is creating an air of permissiveness,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said on Fox News Sunday. “We do need to show long-term resolve. The comment that Secretary Kerry made is not helpful and again it shows a wishy washiness.”

But many of the Republicans who are criticizing the president are Southern conservatives from states  that have endlessly advocated secession from the United States in the last few years, particularly Texas. They are from states that actually did secede from the Union 154 years ago, starting a bloody civil war pitting slave-holding states against the more industrial north. Surely they must believe the people of Crimea have the right of self-determination, including secession from Ukraine.

To this day, Southern Republicans display the Confederate flag, proudly honoring ancestors who defected from the United States to perpetuate slavery. Slavery apologists like Andrew Napolitano still complain bitterly about the "illegal" acts Lincoln committed to hold the nation together. They still talk about states' rights and nullifying federal law with state legislation.

What happened in Crimea yesterday is nearly identical to what happened in the American South in 1860. A majority of Crimeans voted to secede from Ukraine, against the wishes the majority of the country, and ignoring the rights of a minority population (Tatars, Ukrainians and others) who have historically fared quite poorly under direct Russian rule in the past. Ethnic Russian Crimeans have decided to ally themselves with a tyrant who denies basic human rights to significant segments of the population (gays, Muslims and all political opponents).

It was the same in the Antebellum South. A majority of whites voted to secede from the Union in order to continue denying basic human rights to millions of slaves -- people who were bought and sold and whipped like cattle, who had no right to vote, but who were nonetheless included in population counts to give the South more power in the House of Representatives.

Republicans are up in arms about the terrible message of weakness the president is sending by "doing nothing" about Russia's takeover of Crimea. But this is just a replay of what happened in 2008, when George Bush was president and Russia took Southern Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia in a brief war that coincided with the Summer Olympics. Russia sent tanks into Georgia and attacked the city of Gori. More than 70 people died, most of them civilians.

In contrast, the Crimean secession has been completely bloodless (so far).

Some believe the Georgia conflict as directly leading to the Crimean secession. But Republicans -- except for John McCain, who seems to live only to demand we bomb one country after the next, including Syria, Egypt, Libya, Georgia, Crimea and on and on -- at that time had no interest in invading yet another country right in the middle of a presidential campaign and a severe recession, with a military that was exhausted from fighting a ginned-up war in Iraq and an endless guerilla war in Afghanistan, the country where the Soviet Union's back was broken in the 1980's.

Thus it was George Bush who set the precedent that the United States will do nothing when former Russian republics splinter in ethnic conflicts. The situation in Crimea is far more orderly and peaceful than what happened in Georgia under Bush's watch, and if it ends here the United States has no interest whatsoever in starting an armed conflict.

According to Republicans, states like Texas and Bob Corker's Tennessee have the right to secede from the Union whenever they want to, and the president and Congress can't say boo about it. But they also think that the citizens of Crimea don't have the right to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, the country they had already been part of just 60 years ago. Republicans have called Obama's economic sanctions inadequate, and if that's true, then they must believe the situation calls for American military action against the Russia in Crimea.

This is tantamount to claiming that when the South seceded from the Union, the North should have invited Mexico to help the Union regain control of the rebels.

Of course Republicans don't really believe this. They don't really believe that Southern states have the right to secede from the Union. They don't believe we should intervene military in Crimea. They know it would be politically fooldhardy and suicidal. But that doesn't stop them from throwing verbal hand grenades and red meat to racists in their ranks to whip them up and get them to turn out at election time.

These are the depths to which the Republican Party has sunk. Their entire political strategy is to foam at the mouth about anything the president does, even when his Republican predecessors have set reasonable precedents that guide Obama's actions. They don't care about a coherent foreign or domestic policy. Everything is about the game of politics; nothing matters except winning the next election, showdowns on the Senate floor, incessant votes on the ACA that will never go anywhere, even if the strategy involves torching the Constitution, the Union, and the economy.

The Republican strategy now consists of goading the president into taking some kind of military action in Crimea in order to avoid appearing weak, in the hopes that the situation will blow up in his face and give them the 2014 midterms. And if he does nothing, then they will call him weak and spineless and bitch about his mom jeans, and hope that gives them the 2014 midterms.

They don't seem to care how broken and divided they leave the country, as long as they wind up sitting atop the pile of smoking rubble in the end.

Republics of Russia Itching to Secede?

But back to Russia: Republicans are saying Putin has "won," but this victory may be short-lived. The Crimea vote sets a precedent that many autonomous republics in the Russian Federation would like to emulate. Dagestan and Chechnya have ethnic Muslim populations who want to escape from Putin's oppression.

There are 21 autonomous republics in Russia.  If Crimea can simply hold a vote and leave Ukraine, why not Chechnya? Why not Tatarstan? Why not Khakassia? Why not Chuvashia, or Karelia, or Udmurtia?

In the end, this may incite the separatists in Russia to further action. Instead of heralding a Greater Russia, Putin may well be initiating a complete breakup of the Russian Federation, wracked by terrorism and civil war.