Obama Refuses To Recognize A Russian Crimea. But Is
Secession Illegal?
By Mark Sappenfield Staff writer
The Christian Science Monitor – 9/3/2014
Crimea is set to hold a referendum on March 16 on whether to secede from
Ukraine and join Russia. President Obama says it is illegal according to
international law. Western scholars agree.
An Obama administration adviser said Sunday that the United States will not
recognize a March 16 referendum in Crimea if it leads to the region's
annexation into Russia. The comments further clarify statements made by
President Obama Thursday, which claimed that the vote would "violate
international law."
But would it?
Both sides, it would seem, have compelling arguments. Russians and Crimeans
can argue that the people of Crimea are overwhelmingly Russian and want to
be a part of Russia, and other ethnic enclaves such as Kosovo have broken
off to form independent nations in the recent past. Western nations
including the US argue that Russia has forced the issue by intervening
militarily in Ukrainian territory.
The debate boils down to a simple question: Does a region's right to selfdetermination include a fundamental right to secede?
Western legal scholars suggest that the answer is "no."
International law is necessarily flexible on this point. If parts of a
nation decide mutually to break apart, international law generally
recognizes this as a fait accompli. "Under international law, a secession
is neither a right nor necessarily illegal. It is treated as a fact: a
secession either was successful, it was not, or it is still being
contested," writes Chris Borgen on the "Opinio Juris" blog.
But international law recognizes a nation's right to exist without being
involuntarily dismembered from within. In other words, Texas can't just
decide to secede from the United States. If it wishes to secede, it must do
so through negotiations with the US and the international community.
"According to international precedent," writes University of Cambridge law
professor Marc Weller on the BBC website, Crimea "cannot simply secede
unilaterally, even if that wish is supported by the local population in a
referendum."
The preference is for regions within nations to work with their central
governments to gain more autonomy and greater rights without seceding.
"International practice generally seeks to accommodate separatist demands
within the existing territorial boundaries," writes Professor Weller.
In a case like Kosovo's, where the local ethnic population was subject to
significant repression from the Yugoslavian state, the path to independence
took years and remains disputed.
Though NATO intervened on humanitarian grounds, it "did not occupy the
territory in consequence of its humanitarian intervention," Weller adds.
"Instead, the UN administered Kosovo for some eight years, creating a
neutral environment in which its future could be addressed."
The fact is, nothing remotely approaching a humanitarian crisis has ever
been reported in Crimea, and Russia has repeatedly recognized Crimea to be
a part of Ukraine: in the 1991 Alma Ata Declaration that dissolved the
Soviet Union, in the 1994 Budapest nuclear weapons memorandum, and a 1997
agreement that allows Russia to station its Black Sea fleet in Crimean
ports.
Russia's current intervention appears to be something from its post-Soviet
playbook, pitting ethnic Russian enclaves against former Soviet states.
Russia sought to drive a wedge between the thin, Russian-majority strip of
Moldova called Transnistria, which Monitor contributor Dylan Robertson
referred to as "a Moscow-backed puppet state." The same narrative has
played out in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh (claimed by both Armenia and
Azerbaijan), as well as in the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South
Ossetia, which Russia invaded in 2008.
Crimea seems likely to be added to the list, with Crimea set to join Russia
in a move that the international community rejects.
That Russia should be arguing so strongly on behalf of Crimea's right to
secession is, in some ways, ironic.
Crimea enjoys a special status within Ukraine - one that offers it a wide
degree of autonomy. Such autonomous regions are a feature of post-Soviet
states including Russia - an acknowledgment of the tremendous diversity
within each nation. Yet independence movements within Russian autonomous
regions - such as Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia - have been put down,
at times brutally, by the Russian military.
This apparent double-standard has some former Soviet states worried.
When Estonian authorities moved a Soviet-era war monument, ethnic Russians
- who make up a quarter of the population - were outraged, and the country
was hit by devastating cyberattacks. Estonian officials blame Russia,
though Russian officials have denied involvement.
Estonia and its Baltic neighbors "are certainly very worried that what is
happening to Ukraine today could happen to them tomorrow," Erik Brattberg,
a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told The Atlantic.
Both Estonia and Latvia, he noted, have "significant Russian ethnic
minorities."