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Luke_A_Somers comments on February 2015 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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The rationale for claiming the parts of Ukraine was much stronger than for Finland. Russians account for 17% of the population of Ukraine, while Russians account for 1.1% of residents of Finland. The Finns won independence from Russia via war and have not been in the same country as Russia for almost a century, while Ukraine's territory gained from Russia was by the stroke of Kruschev's pen as a bureacratic transfer of low significance as long as both Russia and Ukraine were parts of the Soviet Union. Also, Ukraine is culturally very close to Russia, even having a common language-base, which Finland does not. Russia has only been not in the same country as Crimea since the fall of the Soviet Union. So, the general causes are much weaker.
Ukraine was extremely unstable before Russia moved in, with a strong geographical split between areas with protests in favor of closer ties to the west and Russia. This seems unlikely to recur in FInland. Without the underlying weakness, the proximate excuse is gone.
You are right in terms of moral rationale, but what I think will matter to Putin are the costs and benefits to him of an invasion. Finding a proximate excuse will be easy, especially for a former KGB agent.
The costs will be higher and the benefits lower based on the (lack of) rationale. Forcing the Finns into Russia will be very bad for everyone involved even if successful, and failure is obviously worse for him.
???
Moved in with troops, yes. Russia had done political maneuvering so as to destabilize it, I grant.
They have much less traction to pull the same sorts of political maneuvers in Finland.
I am just trying to understand what timeline you had in mind. Did you mean before Yanukovich scuttled EU integration?
After. Before then, well, it wasn't rock solid, but it wasn't, so far as I know, abnormally unstable. Yes, Putin brought that about.
Before it was an ordinary (somewhat poor) country. 17% of an ethnicity does not a casus belli make. Similar culture does not a casus belli make. This is kind of crazy reasoning, imagine applying it to Western Europe.
Do any you have any evidence for your claim regarding a strong geographical split between areas and protests in favor in closer ties with Russia (that are independent of Russian special forces operating on Ukranian soil)? Where have you read this? There is an ongoing information war, please be very careful about sources.
This seems to be relevant evidence...
Also, the protests in favor of sticking with Europeanization were in the west and the counter-protests were in the east. Russia definitely had a political ground game going, but it's no accident that they could only get it going in certain provinces. If they could have gotten it going in the capital, they would have.
ALSO also, I wasn't saying that Russian actions were actually legitimate.
Agreeing with your main point, i'll just point out that there were incipient protests in favor of the EU in the East, but 1) it's really easy to quench a local action unsupported by the body of the protest, after which sane people would either shut up or join the main force, 2) the capital, built upon the Dnieper River, is hardly in the west, 3) there were anti-EU protests in Kyiv, which is partly why there was street-fighting (I mean, beside the Berkut).
And polarization had been present before December '14, but it skyrocketed after.