[otto2]

I don't know where are you from, but imagine your country being under devastating economic sanctions, then bombarded by enormously more powerful armies, then annexing a part of the country, all of that against international law. Make that process displace hundreds of thousands of people. Now when you imagine that, be honest with yourself and see if you would keep conversations at weather and sport.

[nezirus]

You coveniently ignore the events leading to and the reasons for sanctions and bombardment:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

This was actually the second time NATO has bombarded serbian forces, the first time was in Bosnia, which eventually led to Dayton peace agreement later that year:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Deliberate_Force

[zigman1]

Sounds like talk in the kafanas

[blago]

Have you been to Vietnam? There is no comparison between what was done to them and Serbia, yet Vietnam has moved on. Victimhood is strong in the Balkans, it's a way of life. I know because I was born there.

[racketcon2089]

Vietnam won decisively and Serbia lost decisively; measured in destruction it was incomparably worse for Vietnam, but they have no outstanding border conflicts while experiencing peaceful economic development and national sovereignty since the last war in 1979. When your story has a happy ending (and your government needs the US to counterbalance China) it's a lot easier to move on.

This is essentially the reverse of former Yugoslavia where things were fairly placid from 1945-1980 then fell apart.

There's a tendency to equate the grievances of a generation with immutable national character because it makes analysis easy and change impossible. But this gets used for purposes of denigration of peoples or excuses for policy failures, if not by race and culture, then by economic class and individual good fortune.

I'm guessing you were born to educated professionals who immigrated or helped you do so, rather than say, grew up in a refugee camp with a non-citizen passport.

[blago]

It sounds like you are from the West. Thank you for explaining the psychology of my people so clearly to me. I think I understand it better now but it looks like I can use some book reading. Any recommendations?

[racketcon2089]

[flagged]

[blago]

> Sorry your genetic ancestral memory of the Balkans doesn’t stack up to...

Ah, we have a serial West-splainer. I emigrated when I was 24 and I speak for pretty much everybody I've known in those years. I've studied and wrote essays on the literature and the history of the region daily through high school and college. I speak the language and the customs.

You on the other hand seem completely oblivious to the cultural significance of Kafana, or its different incarnations throughout the region, to recognize that arguing about politics, whining about history, the Great Powers, life, and the Universe, has and still is pretty much the purpose of their existence.

> PS. Was I right about the educated professionals part, or were you a displaced person whose village was razed?

I'm having a hard time comprehending the relevance. Did the displaced people in Yugoslavia 30 years ago define the pathos of the region, which BTW is more than just former Yugoslavia, in the last 600+ years?

[racketcon2089]

You sound like you’re from Belgrade and have never been to Kosova or Bosnia or even to the countryside. Would you prefer to say “western Balkans” or do you presume to also speak for Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians, etc.

I would engage with your sources rather than once again retreat into claims of irreducible essence of identity that can never be understood by outsiders. If the Balkans has a curse, it’s that dishonest rhetoric being peddled by corrupt westernizers and corrupt nationalists.

[golergka]

> Vietnam won decisively

Northern, communist Vietnam won. It wasn't a war between a Vietnam and USA, but rather between a communist and pro-western regimes.

[racketcon2089]

At no point did it exist as an independent entity with popular support, it was first created by the French and propped up by the US. It’s about as credible as saying the Soviet war in Afghanistan was between two competing regimes or that the liberation of France in WW2 was a conflict between pro-German and pro-American regimes.

Formally true, but not a meaningful distinction given the massive disparity in capabilities and supporters.

[charlysl]

You are very articulate but you don't have a clue of what you are talking about, no matter how many books you have read. The southern vietnamese have a very distinct identity, and they haven't moved on at all, if they had a chance they would declare independence from the north in a split second.

Source: I have lived in Saigon for a decade, which beats hands down the many books I had read about the subject before that

[racketcon2089]

I could say the same as an American southerner! The existence of distinct regional identity preexists the state and continues after reunification. The North dominates in their politics just as in ours and there’s resentment about it in both countries, but it does not follow that there is no national identity or that a regional dictatorship created and funded foreign powers which could not survive without their indefinite aid is true expression of regional identity.

[blago]

For much of history (i.e. millennia) the north and the south of Vietnam have experienced different degrees of voluntary and involuntary separation. For hundreds and hundreds of years they existed as different countries and even tried to conquer each other. The vast majority of south Vietnamese people today have more sympathy for the US than for Hanoi.

Source: half my family is Vietnamese and I lived there for 3 years.

[thsksbd]

Vietnam didn't move on! That's the one thing they most certainly did not do. For decades the Viet refused to move on until they won. After they won, they then fought a war with China and another proxy war with America.

The Viet do not move on. They stick to their guns. Or feces covered bamboo sticks, or any weaponizable itsm they have on hand.

Nor did the Afghanis. They just kept at it until they won.

In fact, giving up and moving on is what just about only the peace loving Serbs did.

[golergka]

> your country being under devastating economic sanctions, then bombarded by enormously more powerful armies, then annexing a part of the country

All of that just out of a sudden, without anything else occurring to trigger these events, right? No genocides, no invasions, no massive civilian casualties? No war criminals walking around free doing DJ gigs 30 years later?

[mydriasis]

No, none of that is forgotten either. It's hell as far back as anyone alive can remember, from the 90s to the 40s to WWI and the Balkan wars, and all of the fighting with the Ottoman empire throughout the 19th century.

But you knew all of that.

[yakshaving_jgt]

Are you suggesting that because other genocides have happened, the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats is just business as usual?

Perhaps NATO should have just left them to it. Sure, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, but I suppose that pales in comparison to the millions killed in WW2.

[thriftwy]

> the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats

We've just seen a massive, 150k people ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and nobody in the whole world went so far as lifting a finger to stop it. Except Russia, which did lift one of its fingers but that was it.

It happened this autumn.

But yeah, let's pretend that NATO is in business of preventing ethnic cleansings around the world, as opposed to ruining countries it doesn't like for profit. And BTW, what happened to Krajina Srpska?

[yakshaving_jgt]

Sorry, how many died? Where are you getting your figures?

The implied defence of russia is particularly inappropriate, given the russians have raped, tortured, and massacred tens of thousands of Ukrainians just in the past couple of years. If you're taking ethnic cleansing to simply mean displaced, then russia is guilty of ethnic cleansing to the tune of millions of civilians.

[thriftwy]

Not many has died, but they have all left and have no hope to ever return to their homes. Contrast that to Balkans where a lot of people already returned to their homes, and way more could return if the hatred could be held in check, to which "humanitarian bombardments" history is a huge deterrent.

I'm not talking about defence of Russia, or Serbia, because they needn't one. The USA/NATO need to defend their involvement in civil wars to help one of the sides which make these civil wars worse every single time, as well as making at least one side even more bitter and preventing normalization of affairs for longer.

I, for one, do not want to ever hear any more moral judgements from you. You have no moral basis to have them.

Right now, the US is backing up an ethnic cleansing agent that is IDF, while placing high hopes on ethnic cleansing as a way to resolve the conflict.

I would be very glad to remove my comments if you remove the whole branch of your accusations, which are wildly out of place.

[mydriasis]

"How many died" and "Where are you getting your figures" are disturbing questions when speaking about ethnic cleansing. These people have had their homes and lives taken away from them.

Like the Ukrainians. Like the Ugandans. Like the Armenians of the early 20th century. Like the Jews. Like the Cambodians. Like the Bosnians. Like the Croats. Like the Serbs.

All of this is history, all of this damages a people and their culture. Let's not put a yardstick next to it to prove how bad things are. Let's remember why these things happened so we don't do them again.

[foverzar]

> given the russians have raped, tortured, and massacred tens of thousands of Ukrainians just in the past couple of years

Sorry, how many died? Where are you getting your figures? (C)

P.S. How does that rape trope in western propaganda manages not to get old? It's basically copypasta.

[boffinAudio]

See also Yemen, the willfull murder of 5% of Iraqs population, etc....

[stickfigure]

I don't think you're arguing in good faith, but for anyone else that takes this kind of commentary serious:

Take a look at a map. Even if there was political will, "The West" has extremely limited options for military intervention in a landlocked country surrounded by non-aligned states. It's not like the US is going to fly sorties through Iran or Russia. Armenia is in a tough spot.

[mydriasis]

No, and don't put words in my mouth. There's nothing business as usual about genocide. Neither are the people of the Balkans so flippant, none of this is forgotten. There's an awful lot of talk about "moving on" here, though, which is radically unsympathetic to the people who live across the Balkans who, for the last century, have had their lives and livelihood threatened seemingly every 30 years or so, one way or another.

[golergka]

Not really. Yugoslavia, especially after the end of 50s was pretty decent by standards of socialist countries.

[foverzar]

> All of that just out of a sudden, without anything else occurring to trigger these events, right? No genocides, no invasions, no massive civilian casualties?

Do you also support Russia's invasion in Ukraine?

Because you are clearly rationalizing involving a larger military power whose brutality ends up hurting orders of magnitudes more innocent people than the actual bad actors. Thus, bringing ever more people into the cycle of hatered.

Do you really imagine that some random person whose house was bombed and family was killed saying "yeah, that is totally just, thank you, good guys!"

Obviously, they won't.

[golergka]

> Do you also support Russia's invasion in Ukraine?

No, because any Russian claims about civilians attacked in Ukraine are lies. If we lived in an alternative reality where those claims were true, I would support it — but in a much limited capacity. Like an aerial campaign.

> whose brutality ends up hurting orders of magnitudes more innocent people than the actual bad actors

That's patently false. US military involvement in Serbia was limited and hurt much less innocents that would be slaughtered otherwise.

> Do you really imagine that some random person whose house was bombed and family was killed saying "yeah, that is totally just, thank you, good guys!"

That's a tragedy. Why was his family living in a military installation? Whoever settled them there, or set up a military installation under his house is to blame — that's what he should be angry against.

It's like criticising Israel for bombing Hamas installations in civilian areas — that's not the actor who's responsible for breaking the rules or war and resulting casualties.

[brnt]

Welcome to understanding small countries.

We're not all stuck in our pasts.