> whether this is a historical re-emergence or "convenient chaos" is orthogonal to my assertion.

Agreed. I wasn't really responding to your thesis. More like: Your post raised questions for me, which I then sought to answer. Basically, my post was a tangent.

But ok. What was your thesis? Let me play back the thread:

Jeff_Brown said something like (paraphrasing), "China and Russia are now being aggressive in pursuit of their narrow national interests. The West used to use force more to 'keep the peace'. That was better."

You responded with something like, "'Keeping the peace' isn't always so great, actually. When the West went into Bosnia they spun optimistic narratives about how they were getting the different ethnic groups to cooperate, but really they were presiding over an open-air slave market. They looked the other way precisely in order to 'keep the peace'".

(I hope that's a fair summary.)

Now you reinforce your point, using "being politically correct" roughly as a synonym for what I called "keeping the peace" above, with an example of failing to prosecute Albanian "nightclub owners", i.e., pimps. This does feel like it connects, though exactly how is fuzzy.

What I'm missing is -- are you advocating an alternative (and what is it?), or are you saying something like, "they're all bad" (both aggressive nationalists and peacekeepers)? (I'm not trying to get all "state your position" here; I hope it's clear I'm not here for debate/argument, so much as understanding.)

Like -- one possible alternative might be "pursuing narrow national interests", the other side of the dichotomy Jeff_Brown set up at the start of this thread. In the case of Bosnia, this might have meant the West just staying out and letting the ethnic groups fight? This then would have surely permitted all manner of human rights abuses, but it wouldn't have created the "peaceful" conditions under which Arizona Market flourished. Pick your poison? This option might be, "intervene less".

Another alternative might have been -- maybe the West could have been less "PC/realpolitik" and more "righteous" somehow, recognizing the Arizona Market for what it was and shutting it down instead of pretending that it vindicated their ideology of "free markets and interethnic harmony". This option might be, "intervene better".

Maybe your last line tells me:

> There's a realpolitik component to this softpower approach that's a real meatgrinder arguably worse than "war".

Maybe -- and it's possible I'm projecting a lot here -- you're saying it's better for competing nationalisms to exist and outright fight, than it is for a vaguely "imperial" power to maintain a "rules based order", keeping enough peace that the "spice can flow"?

That would then connect to (and be in direct contradiction of) some recent thoughts I'd been having about imperialism vs. nationalism (namely that empires aren't necessarily so bad, that "self determination" is often just the first step toward ethnic cleansing). But you have probably not been mulling exactly the same things I have, so probably not.

So maybe it's more about "hard power" vs. "soft power"? An argument like, "With soft power, you have to be manipulative, and sometimes you have to permit things that are bad, because you don't have capacity to do otherwise. But hard power simply lets you impose your (correct) will on the other parties. So, it is better to pursue hard power." That would be an unusual argument, but interesting.

Anyway, before I wrap up, there was one other phrase in your original post that stuck out. You spoke of "using ethnicity as a wedge". I didn't see that in the Arizona Market report you cited. If anything, it seemed like the West was trying really hard to sell "all the ethnicities are getting along (because of liberal capitalism)". So what did you mean there?