Stalin actually wanted a colony in North Africa following WW2.

So much for the USSR’s “principled anti-colonialism”. Getting better and better.

How has Putin’ Russia embraced Russia’s ‘hybridity’, and how does it deploy it to (try to) mobilise support, both domestically and internationally?

A thread. 🧵 Russia has tended towards hybridity in its self-positioning between ‘West’ and ‘East’ since its entry into Western modernity.

So, why was postcolonial scholarship so slow in waking up to Russia’s empire(s)?

The reasons are complex, and have to do with the nature of postcolonial scholarship itself, and Russia’s specific position in the modern global order.

A thread 🧵 To start with, postcolonial thought first aimed its arrows at its most obvious target:

the Western empires at the core of the global international order that emerged with modernity. /2

How about the United States, since we’re at it?

https://twitter.com/prosyn/status/1519738222791725056

It really is something to make such a sweeping claim, and leave out the one country built on a lasting legacy of genocidal conquest.

I’m not quite sure whether Liz Truss’ speech was based on electioneering or irrational exuberance (possibly both), but it is certainly steeped in an absolutist liberal messianism that most of the UK’s major allies likely won’t share, and rightly so. - A thread 🧵 The idea that there is a great era of peace and security on the other side of this, if only we go ‘all the way’ and ‘show resolve’ is one of the pathologies of post-Cold War liberal interventionism writ large./2

So, has NATO expansion ‘nothing to do’ with Russia’s fears? Is it ‘all about democracy’ or ‘all about Putin’?

A thread, also with a few ‘facts’ 🧵.

https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1496289085224550404

There is, actually, a well-established approach to gauging a state’s existential fears through discourse. And while it might not be prevalent in the United States, it is fairly well established on this side of the Atlantic.

I am, of course, referring to Securitisation Theory.

Why did state-building in #Afghanistan fail?

Perhaps it was because, when diagnosing ’failed states’, state-builders ignored traditional, cultural aspects of political organisation, in favour of deeply held Western, institutionalist, Weberian assumptions? (Thread 🧵) As I argue here, much of the state exists in its citizens’ minds - and resulting discourses and practices - its strength or weakness determined by the extent to which its presences or absences are securitised by its inhabitants /1

cup.org/3k8aeNI

Arguing the Democratic Peace is more antidote than virus ‘because Central and Eastern Europe’ is like basing your opinion regarding Covid-19 on its effects on the young and healthy.

https://twitter.com/duckofminerva/status/1432339037201764352

As I outline here, belief in a utopian, activist version of the Democratic Peace - and liberal ideologies more broadly - played quite a role in Saakashvili’s miscalculations leading up to the 2008 war. academic.oup.com/fpa/article-ab…

Pro-Baku voices making the case for Western pushback against Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, over and over again, not having realised that train left the station a long time ago.

Washington and the EU will have much bigger fish to fry in coming years. /1 Besides, chanting ‘pro-Western Azerbaijan’ on endless loop in spite of the Baku dictatorship’s professed strategic partnership with Moscow - not to mention its at times aggressive rejection of Western liberal values - is becoming a tired, and increasingly unconvincing mantra./2

Winners and losers in the Second #NagornoKarabakh War. A thread. 🧵 1/ Having largely recaptured NK, Azerbaijan has been able to resolve the one grievance that has been central to its politics - indeed, its national identity - since independence.

🚨 🚨 🚨

It’s time to point out why exactly an Azerbaijani military takeover of #NagornoKarabakh itself - i.e. not the territories surrounding it - would almost certainly result in the massacre and/or ethnic cleansing of the local population.

(Thread) First, a general observation: ethnic wars with this level of pent-up mutual hatred almost always end up in ethnic cleansing, regardless of the ethnicity involved. Even the most ‘normal’ people end up carrying out atrocities when intoxicated by ethnic hatred and violent conflict/2