Queue Putin working operations to get the fundies worked up to stoke drama in the EU
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https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211213-thousands-of-salvadorans-protest-against-corruption
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/389100-bukele-acuso-a-ee-uu-de-financiar-movimientos-comunistas-en-
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OTOH - maybe they just don’t want to buy lemons?
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Some of these days I must take a little time and read up on how Germany avoided being part of the F-35 programme.
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If anyone hasn’t read it, Putin lays out his reasoning well in his article on Ukrainian history:
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Doesn’t mean he’s correct. Nationalism is a terrible lens to read historical events through, because it distorts everything through a modern construct.
Nation-states are just a bad idea. We need to figure out something better.
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His reasoning is correct in one sense, and also facile and self-serving sophistry in all the other senses.
Yes, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine were once all Rus, and they all spoke Old Russian.
I will lay you a bet that Putin can’t speak Old Russian, or even Old Church Slavonic. His argument is that because they were once all of the same origin, that they must be reunited again under one government as one people.
OK, sure. Cool. Coolcoolcoolcoolcool cool. I invite you to explain the same thing to the Serbs and Croats. Or to Scandinavia: in which case who gets to be the country they unite under? Does Sweden become the new Scandinavia? Or Denmark? Or does Norway take the honour, because that would be fun to watch. (Given that Norway spent almost a thousand years being bounced between being a territory of Sweden and of Denmark.)
By the same argument, England, inhabited by people who speak a Germanic language should, by rights, be rejoined under a new German Empire. And this Empire, or if we’re being German about it, this Reich, should include all German-speakers and former parts of various German nations. They could start with Austria, reclaim the Rhineland and Alsace-Lorraine, then, oh, I don’t know, they could reclaim the Sudetenland and Bohemia (never mind that new-fangled “Czechia” nonsense), and … hang on, this is sounding a bit familiar.
Oh, am I accidentally making Putin sound like a wannabe German corporal and failed watercolorist? I’m sure that’s all just a massive coincidence.
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It’s not FAIR … that Russia … is so SMALL?
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I mean, the post-Cold War order hasn’t been fair. It was supposed to be a case where instead of rival superpowers glaring at each other, they got together at the UN and compromised on what to do, or more often on what not to do.
Instead America decided that it was sole superpower and could do whatever the hell it wants. Bush and the PNAC set didn’t need to consult anyone to declare that Kosovo would become independent from Serbia, a question that was evidently very important to Russia. Or that they were going to do illegal invasions and regime changes in Iraq and Afghanistan, countries a heck of a lot closer to Russia than America. They just did them, explicitly sidelining the international community, the way Putin is trying to do things now.
It really sucks that they’ve decided that means the “fair” thing is that they should catch up on being belligerent warmongers too, but it isn’t something that’s come entirely out of nowhere. The understanding that ended the Cold War was already broken. 
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To give an idea of how stupid it is imagine Britain, whose ruling class spoke French (it’s still there in the language and in legal terms e.g. mortgage) should now be ruled from France? But wait! There’s more! Those french were descended from Norwegians who integrated and spoke French so really a chunk of France should be ruled from Norway and they should also run England, Wales, and Ireland.
But really England and Wales were run by the Romans before the pesky French/Norse ran them.
It’s fucking nonsense. Just because some self serving history/national myth/ religious book from ye olde tymes says something means fuck all. Nationalism is just the acceptable face of racism.
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Especially for people who have not fully benefited from the neo-liberal new world order…
Well… yes. That is what the majority of Kosovars wanted. Serb nationalists believed that Kosovar Albanians aren’t really Kosovars (and in some cases, not really Albanians) and needed to be ethnically cleansed from what they considered their “heartland” because they (or really Prince Lazar leading a ethnically diverse Christian coalition who probably did not view himself in the same way as modern Serbis) lost a war to the Ottomans in the 14th century. In that case Bush did the right thing, because they did not want another ethnic cleansing or another set of genocides to deal with. The Russians backed the Serbs, because they want dominance of the region (which they’ve never had because Tito was able to keep the Soviets at arm’s length).
I’m no fan of American imperialism, but our actions in the Balkans was more correct than not, I’d argue. It was not perfect, Dayton did nothing to actually address the problems facing Bosnia for example and now things look to be escalating, but overall, ending those genocidal war was the right thing to do. Pushing back the tide of Serbian nationalism (and Croatian nationalism), which was bad for both Serbs and everyone else in the region was the right thing to do. I have little doubt that Putin has his fingers in that region as well trying to end the peace accord on behalf of his “Slavic little brothers” the Serb nationalists.
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To be clear, I’m not faulting that outcome, just noting it was done really undiplomatically. Arrangements were ongoing and could still have ended with the same answer without justifying it with “we know this is for the best and it’s all up to us”. You can see how furious Russia is at that in their excuses for everything since.
Independence for Kosovo was good but telling Russia nobody cares what they think…well, here they are making people care again, and it’s not good at all.
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The Serbian government was not going to budge on holding onto a land full of people that they wanted to ehtnically cleanse at best… I had a professor literally traveling back and forth between Europe and GA working on those negotiations, so saw some of his frustrations first hand… And the Russians were backing would-be ethnic cleansers, so I don’t know what else you can do with that.
This was the right call, I’d still argue.
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That must have been an amazing class. That same semester I had signed up for a class on Balkan history (before all hell broke loose) and each week the professor would come to class and say “OK, we were going to talk about this week, but we’re going to have to change things up again.” It was one of the better history classes I’ve taken. We’d look at the current events for the week, and walk backwards in history to discuss the origins. He was a great teacher–I don’t know if I woul dhave been up to that challenge.
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Nationalism is the gateway drug to a couple of unacceptable -isms.
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It really just meant he wasn’t there half the time, and was usually grumpy and distracted. Also, he hated Atlanta and kind of looked down on the student body… The class was fine, but honestly, the professor was not a great professor for teaching. Does good work, though.
See, that would have made the class much better, but he really didn’t connect a lot of the stuff to current events that he was working with in Europe. 
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Get ready for a Pirates of the Caribbean reboot in which cryprobros buy whole islands.
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