Today brought the alarming news of Vladimir Putin's moves towards Ukraine. He is recognizing and occupying the two breakaway republics essentially established by Russian invasion. He justified this aggression with a speech laying out a historical narrative essentially claiming that Russia has a right to reconstitute its empire no matter what the people in former Soviet republics think about it. Hopefully, anyone stupid enough to think this was merely about NATO has been thoroughly disabused of that notion. Putin in so many words said that Ukraine has no right to exist.
The older I get the more I stress the continuities of history over the changes. The Tsars, General Secretaries and now Putin might wild diverge in ideology but all of them sought to preserve a sprawling Russian empire.
I am feeling similar in regards to other continuities. When I was in grad school back in the oughts many people -especially in British Empire studies- found it fashionable to say that nations did not matter anymore. This conceit coincided with the so-called "end of history" and growth of globalization in the 1990s. While global capitalism has been drawing the world together, the result has been to bolster rather than eat away at nationalism. It is the continuous thread that refuses to go away.
Putin's nationalism has been particularly imperialistic, but it is but one manifestation of a larger phenomenon. From "make American great again" to Xi's appeals to Chinese nationalism to Modi's attacks on Muslims to Boris Johnson and Brexit we are living in the new dawn of nationalism.
While Putin is not alone, his brand of nationalism points to that ideology's most dangerous manifestations: expansionism and war. For the first time since World War II Europe is under threat of general conflict. Lives hang in the balance. Ukranians are being threatened both with death and with imperial subjugation. The international systems built to keep this at bay are faltering in the face of nationalist strongmen. I fear a new age not only of nationalism, but of wars fought over borders and refugees trapped when no one offers them asylum.
History did not end thirty years ago, and what history is to come certainly looks grim.
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