The Italian city-states as a distant mirror

Modern Europe has two-ish major (EU and NATO-ish) supra-national systems that are notionally designed specifically to bind European states together to help resist and compete against these external pressures (though obviously NATO comes at the cost of binding together along with one of the large external forces to buffer against others).

I guess the message might be that the EU is important for Europe? I dunno. Like it's not exactly wrong, but I don't think it's a particularly interesting point... I guess it's probably interesting to consider that the title (and article ending) is referencing a Tuchman book from 1978.

I do point out that NATO and the EU are two key differences between then and now.

I also compare the signorie with "elected autocrats", in that they take real power while preserving the façade of democratic or republican institutions. Does that make more sense?

Which means we can't expect what follows to be exactly a balanced view either.

And yet any time people want to enforce antitrust we get astroturfing about too much regulation.

One interesting artefact of growing up in the European … what word do you use for a nation ruled by a foreign upper-class from 800 AD to 1991 (Slovenia)? … is that you get a strongly ingrained cultural instinct that ”The government or ruling class is not for you, they are for themselves”. Until very recently, and some would argue even now, our rulers never had our best interests at heart.

For most of our history we were peasants to be exploited. Our great history lessons aren’t about conquest, they are about peasant revolts seeking basic human rights. We weren’t even allowed school in our native language until the 1800’s.

And you learn that governments change, the name of your province and the country it belongs to comes and goes, but the people stay.

edit: Since 1800 my city has been part of - Austrian Empire, Illyrian Provinces (Napoleon), Austro-Hungary, State of Slovenes Croats and Serbs, Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes, Yugoslavia 1, Italy, Germany, Yugoslavia 2, Slovenia. That’s 10 countries in 223 years.

This has proved true countless times along with the age of an empire spanning roughly 250 years. Other signs also include glorification of entertainers (lack of heroes who actually improve the culture), political infighting, and desecration of the empires history/heroes.

> For example, America was only a symbol of freedom for those fled Europe, not much for those who were here before or shipped from Africa.

America’s 250th birthday is fast approaching.

And happened to be male, and own land

None of this makes sense; the oligarchs stored as much wealth as possible outside Russia, where it was less likely to be seized (until the war flipped that!). The Saudi situation is a proxy war with Iran, who are arming the Houthi factions. That undoubtedly _is_ about maintaining easy flow of oil.

The simpler solution to Ukraine would indeed have been to look the other way, as we did to the airliner shootdown and the use of chemical weapons in the UK. It's kind of remarkable how effective the Ukranian "propaganda" has been at rallying support for them.

Sort of, but primary motivation may not matter in the long run. Institutions still spread, even as an accident, when people settle elsewhere. Portuguese and Spanish colonies are mostly Catholic now. Former Arab / Turkish territories are Islamic. Former British colonies are usually at least acquainted with the notion of a Parliament, even though suffrage back in the times of the Empire was far from universal. Europe still uses Roman law and Roman alphabet, though the main interest of the Roman empire wasn't to spread its legal norms and its way of writing.

Democracy, for all its flaws, is kinda contagious. The idea of having a word in political topics may be weird for peasants, but is attractive for the educated middle class. If Helmut from BRD gets to vote for his representatives, Zbigniew from Poland would like to, as well.

This is an interesting statement in how many historical inaccuracies it can engender in such a short amount of text.

First off, the great Middle Eastern oil fields were not discovered until the interwar period, and were not seriously exploited until after WWII. Imperial ambitions for natural resources in the region prior to WWI make no sense because no one knows they exist.

Secondly, if we're looking in the run-up to WWI, oil is not a critical strategic resource yet. Some navies are beginning to transition from coal- to oil-powered ships, but Germany is not on the vanguard of this transition for obvious reasons. No, Germany is more worried about coal, especially because it's largely stuck with shitty lignite coal as opposed to the Welsh anthracite the British can rely on.

Thirdly, the Middle East pre-WWI can be divided into the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and small polities on the Arabian peninsula. The latter's sole relevance to geopolitics is an interest from major mercantile powers that piracy not be seen as a lucrative career opportunity. Persia is basically the grand prize of the Anglo-Russian Great Game (and has the sole major oil field in the region to be discovered before WWI, near the Ottoman border, in 1909), and as a result of Anglo-Russian Entente, was effectively partitioned between the two countries.

Fourthly, as you'll notice, the French had no territorial holdings here before the partition of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI. The closest it had were some economic advantages in certain ports, and an official kind of suzerainty over some minorities in the empire... along with every power in Europe (the lack of the modifier "major" is intentional).

Fifthly, the British were largely aligned with the Germans on Ottoman policy. They both wanted a strong, modernized Ottoman Empire. Especially one that would buy their weapons (the British exported naval armaments to the Ottomans, while the Germans exported land armaments). In particular, all three were also pretty adamant that the Ottomans, and not the Russians, control the straits between the Black and Mediterranean seas.

So while enmity between Britain is largely driven by German imperial ambitions, this has less to do with any specific German imperial designs, and more to do with Britain's overriding foreign policy aim being to avoid having any European power capable of marshaling the entire continent (à la Napoleon). After the unification of Germany, Germany becomes the power on the continent most capable of doing that (and thus Britain's natural enemy), but Bismarck is able to use skillful diplomacy to settle itself as a nonexpansionist power, which can mollify Britain. It's after Bismarck's dismissal, and Kaiser Wilhelm's seemingly natural status as a walking diplomatic disaster area, that Britain starts seeking entente with other major European powers to act as a check on German expansionism. The events of WWI do indicate that Britain's fears of German control of the continent were probably correct.

In this case I will guess that the upvotes / time were more positive than anything else; there being few people reading through /newest early this morning.