With a reported turnout of nearly 80% of voters and a 97% majority in favour of rejoining Russia, the Crimean referendum has proved pretty decisive. There is not a single western democracy which can match these figures in any election about anything, yet they declare it illegal. Oh?
So what is democracy if it is not the right of groups of people to determine their destiny, who governs them and who they join up with? Ah, but Crimea is under Russian occupation! Really? So one and a half million people went to the polls in a carnival atmosphere, because a few thousand troops who appear very friendly to them and have been welcomed by the population at large, told them to go and vote or else? Or else what? And why did these people celebrate all night long?
What is being described on the media by academic commentators, who should know better, as an election not free because of the presence of foreign forces, renders illegal in one half witted argument, the setting up of the post Nazi modern German state, the attachment to the UK of the Falklands, Gibraltar and Northern Ireland and the dysfunctional governments of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
If we are going to continue on this quicksand of legality, why not ask how Ukraine acquired Crimea from Russia in the first place? It was given to Ukraine on a whim by Khrushchev in 1952, a process no more legal in international law than if Scotland woke up one morning and found Cameron had given it to America.
There will be no solution to this crisis until the West gets real. This does not mean that Russia is without fault but it does have a case and the Russian people of Crimea have a right to be heard. As for the occupation, they see it as a rescue from the self inflicted chaos in Kiev, topping over twenty years of bad government from whichever side was in power. The idea of democracy is that the people and the people alone are sovereign. In Crimea they have spoken and the West will get nowhere until it listens.