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Comment by ceilingcorner | Hacker News Reader

Very different situation. Just analyze them from a realpolitik perspective and not the “international law” one:

- Crimeans are predominately Russian speakers and so the annexation was somewhat popular. Very little bloodshed or ongoing resistance. An invasion of Taiwan would not be popular among the Taiwanese.

- Crimea and Ukraine are geopolitically not very useful. Taiwan is extremely useful, especially if it allows defense access to e.g. American warships.

- Crimea is mostly a resort economy. Taiwan is the center of chip production.

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>Crimea and Ukraine are geopolitically not very useful. Taiwan is extremely useful, especially if it allows defense access to e.g. American warships.

A large reason for the annexation of Ukraine was the question of control of Russia's only warm-water seaport at Sevastopol. I doubt Russia would have bothered (given the international consequences, i.e. sanctions and potential military intervention) if their access to the Black Sea wasn't threatened by Ukraine's increasing ties with the West.

But Russia was already leasing it from Ukraine.

Ultimately Crimea is of limited strategic value for anyone other than Russia. The same cannot be said for Taiwan.

Yes but if you were Russia and Ukraine was signaling that it wishes to join the EU and NATO at that point how long would you be able to rely on that lease?

This is the same reason why Russia got involved in Syria, it has only a handful of warm water ports and essentially all of them are at a precarious position where they ship need to traverse potentially hostile choke points.

Yes I’m just saying that from a realpolitik perspective, nothing really changed for the rest of the world when Russia annexed Crimea. Russia leased the port before, now they own it. Hence the lack of real response other than some sanctions.

It’s more that no one will go to war over Ukraine but they might go over T(aiwan)SMC.

Also US political ties to Taiwan are far stronger than to Ukraine these date back to WW2 and even earlier technically.

I think the point is that Taiwan being free of Beijing has a lot of strategic importance to other countries (basically all of the West). Crimea is really only important to Russia and Ukraine.

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