Russia claims to have annexed four oblasts Luhansk,
Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson of Ukraine after holding referendums despite
Ukraine not giving it permission to do so. Naturally neither Ukraine nor anyone
else in the West has recognised this annexation, but it is nevertheless
significant. Russia can now say as with Crimea that it is defending the
territory of the Russian Federation, with lurid threats of using nuclear
weapons if its rule is threatened just as if Moscow were threatened.
There is clearly something absurd about this method of
gaining territory. It is the equivalent of Germany holding a referendum in
France in 1940 as to whether France should become part of Germany. Such a
referendum would be obviously unfair under those circumstances with the French
people under threat of violence if they voted the wrong way.
But there is something even more deeply wrong with the
Russian referendums. Elon Musk has put forward a so-called peace plan which
would allow UN supervised legal referendums in the four regions of Ukraine
under dispute and one assumes also in Crimea. Volodymyr Zelensky reacted with
fury.
Why indeed should Ukraine reward Russian aggression by
giving it the legal chance to annex parts of Ukraine?
Well one reason might be if Ukraine were to follow the
example of Ireland with regard to Northern Ireland and Scottish nationalists
with regard to Scotland.
The reason is that if legal plebiscites were to be
held in Ukraine and indeed many other European countries there is little doubt
that there would be border changes.
If we believe in the self-determination of people like
the Irish Government does and the SNP too then we need to point out that there
are areas of Kazakhstan with Russian majorities. There are areas of Latvia and
Estonia too where Russia could expect to win referendums on annexation.
But the problem is not merely with Russians.
Hungarians form a majority in parts of Ukraine and Slovakia. German speakers
form a majority in South Tyrol in Italy and Swedes form majorities in parts of
Finland. Are we to give all of these groups and others the rights to
self-determination?
If legal referendums were to be held in all of these
places, then there is little doubt that Russians would win majorities in some
of them especially Crimea and most likely in northern Kazakhstan too.
But this would not merely encourage places like Russia
to grab territory from its neighbours it would most likely also encourage war
and ethnic cleansing.
When Germany lost much of its territory after the
Second World War the countries that gained Poland, Russia and Czechoslovakia
drove out their German populations at the point of a bayonet. They did so
partly because of their previous experience with German minorities e.g., in the
Sudetenland, but also because they realised that Germany would have a claim on
the territory it lost if a significant proportion of Germans continued to live
there. The Croats did the same to much of its Serbian population during the war
in Yugoslavia.
If Russia began seriously to claim parts of Estonia
and Latvia because of Russian majorities living there the Estonians and
Latvians would naturally do their best to discourage the Russians from
continuing to live there.
The only way that there can be peaceful relations
between Russian and Hungarian speakers in Ukraine is if they are not seen as
being threats to the territorial integrity of Ukraine. This goes for everywhere
else where there are mixed populations.
But while this argument applies to Ukraine and while
everyone accepts that Ukraine has the right to maintain its territorial
integrity even if there are linguistic or ethnic majorities in parts of its
territory, strangely the logic of this applies to the whole of Europe except
the UK.
If the Russian Republican Army had for thirty years
bombed and murdered the population of Ukraine in order to reunite Crimea with
Russia, it might have been the case that Ukraine and Russia on Good Friday
proclaimed a peace Treaty in Kyiv. Such a peace treaty might have put forward
the idea that there could be a border poll if it ever appeared likely that a
majority of Crimeans wanted to reunite with Russia. At the latest census the
people of Russia might have celebrated because Russian speakers in Crimea
outnumbered Ukrainian speakers. But it would still be tasteless in the extreme
to base your hopes on annexation a peace treaty that followed a terrorist
campaign, which you claimed to disavow. It would look rather as if you were
taking advantage of terrorism.
But of course, Ukraine would never sign such a peace
treaty. Ukrainians are fighting against secession because they believe they
have the right to maintain the territorial integrity of their country even if
parts of it want to leave. It doesn’t matter if the majority in Crimea want to
leave and become either independent or join Russia, they cannot do so because
Ukraine is a sovereign nation state.
But the United Kingdom is equally a sovereign nation
state with a history rather longer than Ukraine. Every other state in Europe
would go to war to prevent the loss of territory even if a majority wanted to
leave. Italy would not allow South Tyrol a referendum on rejoining Austria.
Slovakia would not allow its southern part to rejoin Hungary. But the UK allows
its territorial integrity to be continually threatened both by Ireland and the
SNP. Oddly we even treat Ireland as friendly ally while it does this.
It no more matters that there is a majority of
Catholics in Northern Ireland than it matters that there is a majority of
Russian speakers in Crimea. Ireland can no more morally base its claims to
annexation on this than can Putin base his claims to annexation on majorities
in Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. The UK has exactly the same
right to defend its territory as Ukraine does and should respond to Ireland in
the way that Zelensky has responded to Elon Musk and indeed Putin. If Ireland
threatens a bombing campaign, then that would make still clearer the nature of
the argument on which it relies.
The UK is no different from any other nation state,
but we have allowed ourselves to be manoeuvred into thinking that arguments
about self-determination apply to places like Scotland and Northern Ireland in
a way that they don’t apply to Crimea and the Donbas. It matters not one little
bit that a place that is not a sovereign nation state is called a country.
There are endless formerly independent countries in the world that no longer
have the rights that go with sovereignty. There is nothing unusual about
Scotland.
The UK must assert and then promise to defend its
territorial integrity in just the same way Ukraine has been doing so bravely.
We must give no more legitimacy to those who wish to annex parts of the UK than
Zelensky gives to his enemies.
