Comment by dmurray | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmurray | Hacker News Reader

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It seems like Transnistrians would generally prefer independence to the status quo. (Whether they would prefer joining Russia even more is a different question). Moldova would prefer to integrate it into Moldova. Everyone in the international community - including those aligned with Russia, such as Belarus, Serbia, and Russia itself - officially opposes independence, and in practice approves of the current situation even if they occasionally speak in favour of Moldova's position.

Why is this? It doesn't seem that the EU benefits from keeping the status quo of heavy Russian influence but de jure Moldovan ownership: if anything, an independent Transnistria might one day prefer to court the European sphere. Conversely, Russia should be happy to have an official ally in the region. The international-law disputes over who signed what treaty, 3 states ago, seem moot and trivial compared with the principle of self-determination. So why not give them what they seem to want?

Because Russia actually prefers status quo! It’s a way for them to have a hand in actual country’s (in this case Moldova) inner politics. They are pushing “you’re not hearing us” agenda and are trying to convert the region to autonomous republic inside a parent country with a veto-like rights to have even more influence.

It’s a way to prevent parent country aligning with the Western world.

Also, it’s a known enormous money-laundering hole for Russia’s government schemas.

> The international-law disputes over who signed what treaty, 3 states ago, seem moot and trivial compared with the principle of self-determination.

Here lies the flaw in your thinking. An obvious issue is that Transnistrian secession would impinge on Moldovan sovereignty. This is similar to how Catalonia is not allowed to secede from Spain. Some counterexamples are Kosovo seceding from Serbia (supported by USA and UN because of Serbia's terrible international standing at that moment, specifically because of the ethnic cleansing employed by the Serbian government and army in the war) and Algeria seceding from France (which the French agreed to to end the Algerian War). So I think the reason for Transnistria not being recognized is that Moldova is in relatively good international standing (at least compared to Serbia around the time of the Kosovo War), thus no internationally recognized country wants to attack Moldova's sovereignty, for kind of the same reasons that most people try not to break any laws. (And those that would be willing to "break the law" presumably have nothing to gain from it.)

Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination

> The principle does not state how the decision is to be made, nor what the outcome should be, whether it be independence, federation, protection, some form of autonomy or full assimilation. Neither does it state what the delimitation between peoples should be—nor what constitutes a people. There are conflicting definitions and legal criteria for determining which groups may legitimately claim the right to self-determination.

The other difference between Moldova and Serbia is that there's specific precedent pertaining to the matter.

Transnistria was not Moldova's only ethnic separatism conflict; there was also Gagauzia, which similarly declared independence, but that conflict was resolved without shooting. Moldova promised significant autonomy, and, for the most part, did deliver on those promises.

And then you contrast that with how Serbia treated Albanians in Kosovo when it was a part of their country...

The principal of self-determination gets tricky when you try to figure out how it applies in a given situation. The key sticking point - how do you group up the people for determining who the 'self' is for self determination.

We can all probably agree that a single person can't decide to secede and form their own one person nation. What about a 200 person village? A 100,000 person city? What about a 35 million population province?

Even if Transnistrians want to be an independent state, having the rest of Moldova overrule them does not mean they aren't having self-determination automatically.

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