Professor David Gibbs sees Kosovo as a precursor for Ukraine

I recommend this wonderful talk.


"So much of what, if you look back at Yugoslavia both the tone and the substance, so much of this evokes what's happening now in in Ukraine. Again the disparaging of negotiations - okay you don't negotiate with evil men you pulverize them through military force. There's also a personalisation. In the cold war it was never personalised. It was communism we were fighting even under Stalin, it was never we're fighting Joseph Stalin that wasn't said at all, right, but with the end of the cold war you had incredible simplification of analysis. Why do we have problems in the world? There are evil men out there with names like Milosevic or Gaddafi or Putin, all right? And so because you have these evil men who come just out of nowhere, out of pure evil, no social context, no depth of analysis, nothing, evil men. It's amazing people, educated people, would talk this way but of course they did and do on a regular basis today."

This evil men or homicidal maniac theory of history goes back before Kosovo. It is the reason why Hamas, for one example, is seen as a demonic force. 

Demonic and evil are words that do not throw light on politics but extinguish it.