Assume for a sec that the US is in the midst of a constitutional crisis (it is). Notice how the stores are still open, your bus completed its usual route & the game still on? That’s what makes genuine crises terrifying, bc they (co)exist for so long within our normal exp of life.
They continue to do so all up until the point that they don’t. When the news is no longer something you can turn off, when it’s on your street, at your kid’s school, in your community, it’s too late for “resistance”. Then it’s largely a matter of individual survival.
That’s why both scholars of authoritarianism/sectarianism and/or survivors of such regimes have implored you to organize & inform yourself now, when it is/was still “normal”, when it’s still “someone else’s” child, when it’s a Q of archaic rules of order.
The last two days have brought credible allegations of major dysfunction & crisis w/in the USG. There are fundamental Qs re the integrity/legitimacy of the 2016 elxns. It’s unclear what, if any, steps have been taken to secure the mid-terms. Above all...
...the fact that it is unclear who is, genuinely, in charge, what the civilian/military chain of command is, what would happen in event of a major security crisis suggests the situation has already catastrophically deteriorated.
Until there is a concerted & consistent civil society & Congressional effort to restore accountability & leadership in the WH, it is difficult to see any of this ending w/o major instability of sort unlike anything Americans have seen in generations & possibly ever. /xxx
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Did a single pro-BiH politician bother to go to the Munich Security Conference? Or was there a pressing municipal budget issue to address in the midst of Dodik and Covic’s sustained assault on the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity?
Kosovo’s Prime Minister literally doing more for BiH’s European and Atlantic interests than the country’s own leaders this weekend. How are BiH leaders going to return the favor? And when will they start looking after their own citizens strategic concerns?
“Širom gotovo svakog dijela državne administracije – uključujući i ministarsku razinu – zatiče se osoblje koje je nesposobno, kriminalno ili suprotstavljeno osnovnim demokratskim vrijednostima ili pak postojanju države.” atlantskainicijativa.org/provincijaliza…
My view of international relations is absolutely shaped by the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the West's failure to react & my own exp as a child refugee. The "thread" of my analyses is that I'm of a generation & place where "1989" was not the God that failed. It just never happened.
Does this give my commentary a certain tilt? Totally, just like all those who folks who (mis)read the "The End of History" literally and thought the proliferation of shopping malls in China would somehow result in democracy. My view just has a bit more edge and soot.
I try to stay in my analytical lane re: BiH & the Balkans but when I comment on places like Ukraine, Taiwan, Syria, Xinjiang etc it's because I see similar patterns of appeasement & accommodation w/ despots & I feel a genuine, personal moral imperative to speak out.
No amount of equivocating can obscure the difference between aggression and self-defense. The just & rational policy for NATO to pursue at this hr is to provide Ukraine w/ maximum capabilities to exact the greatest cost possible from Putin if he takes one more cm of their soil.
If the Kremlin signals that it does not believe in NATO's temerity to do so, that policy should not only be pursued w/ respect to Ukraine but also Georgia, Moldova & all Eurasian states where Russia has initiated (hybrid) security ops. It's time get serious about containment.
NATO leaders have pursued every conceivable diplomatic course w/ Putin, well past the point of absurdity. It has produced near zero results. If we genuinely want a different relationship w/ the Kremlin - & I'm not sure all in NATO do, alas - it's time to impose actual costs.
I can now share that I have signed with @HurstPublishers to write my second monograph, provisionally titled "The Bosniaks: Nationhood after Genocide," on sale circa Fall 2023. I am extremely grateful to be working with @MikeDwyerMike & co. again.
So, what can you expect?🧵
This text won't be history of the Bosniak people, nor a history of BiH. I am concerned w/ the ideological and political foundations of 21st century Bosniak nationhood. That is, the ideological self-conceptions of the largest but also most misunderstood community in BiH.
This work treats the Bosniaks as primarily an ethno-national group, rather than a religious community. While Islam is a significant aspect of their self-conception, it's the idea of Bosniak indigeneity to BiH that is the constitutive element of Bosniak ethnic & national identity.
Vital thread from the always insightful @MaximEristavi about the sordid economic realities “Twitter influencers” from places like Ukraine, Syria, BiH etc deal with; working 18hr days, 365, providing “insight” & “analysis,” but pulling down peanuts w/ 0 institutional support.
The cruel irony in being a go-to source for analyses on societies like these is your views are seen as indispensable but the compensation is “negotiable” & usually absent entirely. So your analysis is extracted to service needs of those w/ both institutional & financial support.
And while this is especially acute for those still in-country - where ppl are risking even their own security to provide these goods - it’s true even for those in the diaspora bc almost all of us come from refugee/migrant backgrounds w/ no economic “padding” to fall back on.
The commander of @euforbih has chosen the moment of the worst security crisis in BiH since the war to observe that the formation of the BiH Armed Forces was not agreed to at Dayton. No, it was an act of the BiH Parliament, the country’s paramount law-making body.
Why did @euforbih commander chose to make this statement at this time? Let’s just say someone might want to look into his political affiliations in his native Austria, and how those synch up with the regime in Banja Luka.
Here’s the spin by Dodik’s criminally corrupt advisor, the great “gotcha”. Like every other state on Earth, BiH has a parliament that passes laws which are not explicitly stated in the constitution. Don’t like the law? Overturn it in parliament or go to the courts.