As I was listening to the next stage of the U.S. House's impeachment inquiry it struck me there is something fundamental Americans, even well meaning ones, misunderstand about post-Cold War global politics, especially in context of Eastern Europe & Eurasia. [Thread]
What the impeachment inquiry is bringing into view, much as the Mueller probe did, is the widespread criminalization of global politics after 1989. That is, while one of the things that happened after '89 is "democratization" in much of the post-communist world...
...the other major strand of this prismatic moment is how former regime elements in much of the ex-communist world went into business for themselves, survived regime collapse. And in this process, they also made their security and political expertise available to Western clients.
Folks form East Europe, Balkans have known this for long time bc these ppl have been plundering our polities, in various (in)direct ways, for 30 yrs. And while ties w/ Western elites have been developing for just as long, they've only recently broken thru to Western public attn.
For that reason, interesting to contrast some of the coverage in U.S. media viz. assorted "Trump World" figures & goons vs. how they've been covered in East Europe press. In U.S. it's shock & awe - what rogues! In EE media: oh, right, them - they've previously done X, Y, Z.
My pt is much of what's scandalous to Americans about Trump as a phenomenon is the fashion in which he's revealing the dark face of post-1989 politics, a face that Americans have largely ignored or been convinced to ignore for various (good & bad) reasons. It's a genuine shock.
And much as w Giuliani's *ongoing* efforts in Ukraine, it's now clear there is no going back. Above all, bc "back" does not & did not ever exist. The "criminal-political nexus" - per my @DPC_global colleagues - at heart of much of current Western politics has just been revealed.
Undoing it this - that is a generational task, one that will require an entirely new conception of the links btw democracies, dangers of org crime (& what is is), & persistence of authoritarianism as a set of practices not just institutions. We're just getting started. /xxx
