International law does not support annexations no matter how you read it. Self-determination is not in and of itself sufficient to see the borders of a sovereign state undermined. Good grief, what the hell do you think the UN was formed for, to prevent precisely what has happened.

So Russia should immediately let Chechnya go, right?

The only reason the UN don't recognise it is because China has sufficient influence to make the member states maintain a rather silly fiction.

Well that, and the fact that Chiang Kai Shek insisted upon the pointless ruse that the Kuomintang was still the lawful government of mainland China, and was permitted to keep this delusion by US foreign policy for nearly a quarter century.

The USSR was a Western ally for precisely as long as it took to beat Nazi Germany. It wasn't a friend to the West before WWII (although I do concede Stalin had approached the Allies with concerns about Nazi Germany in 1938, though at the same time he had absolutely no problem exporting steel to Germany during the whole period), and it wasn't a friend after WWII. While Cold War propaganda may have exaggerated the economic and political ills of the Soviet Union somewhat, at the end of the day, it was no friend of the West.

The South was not just fighting for the right of states to have slaves. The whole issue of the status of slavery in the states that would be formed out of the territories was probably the largest single factor. The slave states were not just interested in maintaining slavery within their borders, they wanted to have slavery perpetuated as much as possible throughout the Continent United States.

Newsclips of people dancing around does not evidence of unimpeded electoral intent make. In an election such as this, where the borders of a sovereign state are to be redrawn and some of its territory annexed by a much more powerful neighbor, the standards of what constitutes a legitimate election are all the higher, and justifying it under the grounds that you watched a television program where a bunch of people were happy simply does not suffice.

Napoleon I and the III were famous for holding referendums, but I doubt anyone would confuse them with champions of democracy.

Whatever the level of support (and we will really never know with any certainty, considering the referendum was backed by the very state that has now annexed Crimea), the point is the same. The sovereign territory of nation states are supposed to be nearly-inviolable against annexation. Special cases exist where the population of a region has been heavily persecuted (ie. Kosovo, South Sudan, East Timor), or where the situation between the governing power and the political entity had been as a client state (ie. Marshall Islands, Namibia). In a few other cases there has been mutually agreed upon terms for separation, as with the splitting of Czechoslovaki into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Merely having a large number of people of an ethnicity in a specific region is not in and of itself an argument for secession, and most certainly not an argument for a seceding polity to be annexed by another power. Now maybe the end run of a properly handled transition in Ukrainian politics may have been the departure of Crimea and other southern and eastern areas of the country, but the idea that there is any legitimacy to a referendum on allowing a polity to be annexed when the country that is to gain the region is the occupying power is absurd.

Was there actually any threat against ethnic Russians anywhere in Ukraine? There seems a long distance to be traveled from angry protesters to the kind of ethnic cleansing that one would expect would be necessary for an external power to walk in and force a separation referendum, even more dubious when the power doing that puts on the ballot "Do you want to join us..."

Which is rather like claiming the residents of South Tyrol are Austrian, and perhaps more apropos to the Crimean situation, stating Austria is German.

How precisely Russia threatening to swallow up any of its neighbors' territory because ethnic Russians live there differs from Anschluss escapes.me.

And I got downmodded into oblivion. You are exactly the kind of person I was talking about. The whack job Libertarian with some sort of social disorder who goes around declaring that any successful woman is an uppety attention whore, and proper women like nice feminine jobs.

I'm waiting to blame Obama's successor for the lack of a 1999 moonbase.

You're posting on a site where Libertarian aspies make up a significant minority, so you'd best get used to these sorts of comments.

Yes Microsoft has done many nasty things, but shutting down support of a 13 year old OS isn't really one of them.

If you buy a product, find out the EOL date. If it is too soon for your liking, don't buy it.

"Out of date" is meaningess marketing blather. "End of life/support" is what counts, and for that, Windows 7 falls out of extended support in January 2020, nearly six years from now.