The root cause of the Russo-Ukrainian war (and the long term solution)

post by Long try · 2022-02-24T06:56:50.364Z · LW · GW · 4 comments

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It's language. 

Language goes with culture. In the past, it has been used with devastating effects on many people's lives. The infamous Sykes-Picot agreement led to instability and so many bloody conflicts between different languages and cultures in the Middle East and surrounding regions.

The same is going on in Ukraine right now. No matter how strong a military power is, it can't conquest a land where no one is supporting it. The reason Putin was so confident when he declared war on Ukraine is that there actually are people advocating for Russia right there.

According to Wikipedia, 29.6% of Ukrainians list Russian as their native tongue. It's part of their identity and culture. What Ukraine has been doing for a while now is to force the use of Ukrainian as the first language down the throats of these people. Crimean and Donbass & Luhansk folks have a right to be angry. Russia took advantage of the situation and what follows is we have quite some developments in the last two decades. According to a Reuters language map (near the end of that article) alone, I'm going to predict that Putin's true target is to occupy a swathe of land running from full Luhansk to Odessa region, along with a bit in the north to boost. He may want to capture Kyiv, but it's just for propaganda and optics purpose. In any case, even the original goal is still a bit too big of a meal, but we can only watch what will happen this winter.

So what is the solution? Right now, there are few things the Ukranian government can do, and they can't go back in time to address the problem anymore. But this is a valuable lesson for all of us if we want to avoid similar future conflicts and loss of life. In an alternative world, Ukraine would adopt a great International Auxiliary Language [LW · GW], and respect its own citizens' preference to speak what they want. Those in the western part can talk in Ukrainian, those in the east are free to converse in Russian. When those people meet each other and there's no one knowing both tongues in the group, they'd take the IAL out to use. When people feel that their rights are recognized, dissent can't find the seeds to grow. Putin would have nothing to go for.

And that's why I think the world needs a great IAL, pronto.

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