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Russian diplomats often bring attention to the "West" often using double standards in the political evaluation of conflict.

As an example Crimea:

  • The 1974 Comorian independence referendum where held in the Comoros on 22 December 1974.
  • Even though the overall result was a strong "yes" vote (for independence from France), with 94.57% of voters voting for independence, following the referendum, the country declared independence on 6 July 1975
  • However France retained the island of Mayotte under French control (arguing that local population voted to remain in France).

So, mainly, if Paris didn't respect the sovereignty of the Comoros state as a whole, why should it give lessons to Moscow on the Crimea versus Kiev.

Similarly, they argue the US armed interventions:

  • (far away from the US territory) in the Middle East / Asia countries intervention brought poverty, death and destruction
  • Then they call out Russia as doing the same
  • This time its happening at the Russian border only 600 km (or 400 miles) away from the Russian capital.

Can we find examples of those standards being enforced on other nations, or is this unique to russia and the middle east?

TardisGuy
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serge
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    Double standards are morally irrelevant, though. They can only establish that other people are bad, not that anyone is good. Putin could establish that every other government in history literally worked for Satan, and it still wouldn't serve to justify his invasion of Ukraine. – Obie 2.0 Nov 16 '22 at 18:33
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    Your first example would be a better fit if there was the suggestion that the vote (with distinct regional differences in the outcome) was held against democratic principles (e.g. under the guns of little green men). The Crimean vote is widely considered a sham. – o.m. Nov 16 '22 at 18:41
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    @Obie2.0 Justify before whom? – alamar Nov 16 '22 at 18:45
  • @alamar Justify morally. Or legally, for that matter—international law does not recognize an "everyone is doing it" defense. – Obie 2.0 Nov 16 '22 at 18:48
  • @Obie2.0 International law is a voluntary thing. If everybody is doing it and you are told to not do it, you just walk away. – alamar Nov 16 '22 at 19:00
  • related https://politics.stackexchange.com/q/72641 – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Nov 16 '22 at 19:02
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    USA in alliance with Nazi Germany invaded Europe in 1939 and later USA claimed it liberated Europe from Nazis? uhm wait... that wasn't the USA... never mind. – Shadow1024 Nov 16 '22 at 19:46
  • @Obie2.0 Not that Russia is not trying to claim just that. LOL. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Nov 16 '22 at 20:49
  • Well the USA has invaded Iraq in much more recent history. – alamar Nov 16 '22 at 21:15
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    @ItalianPhilosophers4Monica - Putin is not a paragon of logic or morality. He may claim that other people's actions justify his own, and perhaps even believe it, but no one should take such arguments seriously. – Obie 2.0 Nov 16 '22 at 23:03
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    @alamar - All law is voluntary. But that doesn't mean that when you decide that you are too good for the rules and "walk away," there may not be consequences, which Putin seems to be learning. – Obie 2.0 Nov 16 '22 at 23:05
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    Please the moderator that closed the question to give me who exactly I try to discredit. If the try to discredit would be really a law on this site, all questions about "bad Russia" should be closed (because is factually a try to discredit Russia). Not enough research? I provided multiple examples – serge Nov 17 '22 at 00:07
  • BTW, to talk of "double standards" one would have to decide what the standards should otherwise be, which in such matters (secession) were never quite resolved, or are moving target, see e.g. https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/70925/legal-basis-for-self-determination-vs-territorial-integrity I'm not sure why my previous comments were deleted, but your Q is basically asking for "all the shit that the West hypocritically done wrong [according to Russia]" which may a be a bit too broad. FYI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes – the gods from engineering Oct 15 '23 at 14:50
  • Also regarding your previous comment, this Q was not closed by a moderator, but by the votes of 5 different users (I was not among them.) If you're still unsure "who exactly [you] try to discredit", it's probably best to ask on https://politics.meta.stackexchange.com/ at this point. – the gods from engineering Oct 15 '23 at 16:05
  • @Fizz is not "all the shit" is about West treated one question by some standards, and another question by other standards, or bypassed thei own standards. Not necessarly shit, and finally, is not so broad, there should be a bunch of concrete examples, it's all. – serge Oct 15 '23 at 18:26
  • FWTW, I asked a [much] more narrow version of your Q, based on some quotes from Lavrov, and comparisons he made. – the gods from engineering Oct 15 '23 at 19:44

2 Answers2

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Oh, yes. For example the US and UK hang on to the Chagos to host Diego Garcia base.

However, international relations and behavior are not just black and white, but follow all shades of grey.

The questionable behavior by the US and the UK in this instance comes nowhere near the war of aggression and deliberate war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine.

It's like the difference between bullying in a spousal abuse case. And one where one spouse beat the other half to death.

Both are legally actionable, one will land the perpetrator a long jail term.

FWIW, France has also cleaned up its act quite a bit in how it conducted independence referendums in New Caledonia.

And countries in general behave "better" in 2022 than they did back in 1974.

Under Putin, Russia is really heading back into the dark ages. No "double standards" about it.

p.s. Crimea is also a softball way to pitch this question in 2022. The current outrage is not about the 2014 bogus referendum. The current outrage is about places like Bucha and the unprovoked war of aggression Russia in engaging in.

p.p.s. Much as poor Russia feels put upon, it sometimes gets quite a free pass on other activities. For example, "the West" did not really object all that much to how it carried out Chechnya War #1 in 1994 and #2 in 2000. No Western electorate would have tolerated its own military to engage in the sort of wide scale, deliberate, targeting of civilians that Russia pursued intentionally. If you doubt that, just look at Western press coverage of things like the accidental bombing of weddings in Afghanistan.

Speaking of double standards: contrast Russian popular sentiment wrt Chechnya wars with Russian outrage at Ukrainian attempts to recover its Donetsk territories 2014-2021...

Italian Philosophers 4 Monica
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    "No Western electorate would have tolerated its own military to engage in the sort of wide scale, deliberate, targeting of civilians" - does losing Mosul to ISIS with subsequent destruction of the city during its retake count? – alamar Nov 16 '22 at 20:52
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    Yes, it most certainly counts in my answer. Mosul was covered extensively in the press and civilian casualties heavily criticized. Contrary to Ukraine - cough, Mariupol, cough - ISIS deliberately tried to keep civs in as human shields, while the coalition tried their best to facilitate them out. What would have been your brilliant idea, leaving ISIS in charge? Because Russia of course treated ISIS with kid gloves in Syria? Meanwhile Mariupol and Bucha are false flags by Ukraine on itself, according to Russia. Any more questions? – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Nov 16 '22 at 20:55
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    point me to something similar to this in Russian press: https://www.rand.org/blog/rand-review/2022/07/civilian-casualties-lessons-from-the-battle-for-raqqa.html Oh, wait, that'll land the journalist in jail nowadays, no? – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Nov 16 '22 at 21:01
  • From the top of my head https://m.lenta.ru/articles/2022/03/24/batalion_vostok/ has the brutal honesty about city warfare and the fate of civilians in it. I wonder what's the number of journalists are in jail for the reasons that you imply. – alamar Nov 16 '22 at 21:09
  • It certainly wasn't well received: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenta.ru#Incident_during_the_2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine though it's unclear who went to jail or not. Takes guts to do that there - respect. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Nov 16 '22 at 21:44
  • I'm not sure if you're trolling me now, what's the connection between an editorial piece of March 24th and the defacement incident of May 9th? – alamar Nov 16 '22 at 21:46
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    Not particularly trolling, no. I can't read your original link, but I did look up what lentu has been up to. The May 9th says Lenta.ru journalists Egor Polyakov and Alexandra Miroshnikova have stated that they were the authors of these articles, and reported that they now need new jobs, lawyers, and political asylum. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Nov 16 '22 at 21:55
  • I'm happy for them but it's entirely unrelated. I wonder if the following will work for you: https://translated.turbopages.org/proxy_u/ru-en.ru.426d3907-63755dfd-549fe53b-74722d776562/https/lenta.ru/articles/2022/03/24/batalion_vostok/ – alamar Nov 16 '22 at 22:03
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    @ItalianPhilosophers4Monica the question was not about how dark are ages in Russia, but about western duplicate behavior. your entire answer but the first phrase is off topic – serge Nov 17 '22 at 00:01
  • As about Bucha Russian government asked multiple times to have the list of victims, never get an answer from Kiev or UN – serge Nov 17 '22 at 00:03
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    @serge Trop drole, mon gars. The UN has its own report and is withholding it from the Russians??? Try harder. Or get news from elsewhere than Tass: https://tass.com/politics/1436063 FYI, no mod closed this question, these were all unimpressed regular users. You have 12.7k rep on Stackoverflow, you are hardly a "new user" on Stack Exchange, so you know different SEs have different rules, 1 of which is promote/discredit They perceived that in your post. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Nov 17 '22 at 16:56
  • ... and before you go on about how the UN is a US stooge, this is the same UN the stable genius and Bolton always want to ditch because they don't do what the US wants, right? – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Nov 17 '22 at 17:39
  • @ItalianPhilosophers4Monica are we always talking about Butcha ? Where is the UN report on Butcha ? Who exactly are the supposed victims ? Be concrete. – serge Nov 18 '22 at 16:05
  • "Under Putin, Russia is really heading back" so, "really heading back" is not a discreditation, and "double standards" is a discreditation of the "West". – serge Oct 13 '23 at 17:18
  • The OP is not about Russia, but about the Western standards. Transforming the answer to be related only to attitude towards Russia is a manipulation. – serge Nov 06 '23 at 16:16
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I believe (don't think I would be able to extract it from official Russian sources) that the point here is not that the West just does dishonorable things, such as meddling in other countries' politics or invading them, but that the West does dishonorable things to gain comparative advantage over other countries, including Russia.

In this paradigm, either Russia does bad things when needed, or it falls behind the West (further than it was previously).

As you can see, this would make Russia not honor any international rules until they are honored by other parties, including the trigger-happy USA.

As to the examples of double standards. The invasion of Iraq and the destruction of Libya are the prime examples where the countries participating in those should no longer have any say ("We are such experts in war crimes because we did a lot of those").

Other than that, the USA accusing Russia with interference in American politics, while after February 2022, USA hosts multiple "radio psy ops" sort of institutions and gatherings, which are constantly talking about how they are actively trying to bring the Russian government down, break down Russian Federation by tearing parts off of it - all of that while there is no kind of war between Russia and the USA.

alamar
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    Ah, so Putin's "argument" (I use the term loosely because who knows if he believes it) is that ethics are for losers. If Russia doesn't invade Ukraine, it will "fall behind" other countries (the horror!). I am surprised that there are still people, like you, apparently, who continue to give him credence. – Obie 2.0 Nov 16 '22 at 23:09
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    If ethics were for winners USA would have them all over the map. They clearly don't. So Russia sees ethics as something you impose on less lucky ones. – alamar Nov 17 '22 at 06:06
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    Like I said, Putin's argument, which appears to be yours, is self-evidently morally bankrupt. If you think that morality is useless because it does not help one get ahead, there is not much that I can say. – Obie 2.0 Nov 17 '22 at 06:06
  • Putin is FSB, that's special services. For those people, morality flat out does not exist, since their line of job is doing things outside of law and morality. He genuinely does not care about appearing moral even to his allies. – alamar Nov 17 '22 at 07:23
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    I am glad that you admit that Putin is immoral. – Obie 2.0 Nov 17 '22 at 20:11