After all, the Protestant Ulstermen are "chauvinists" if anyone is, surely to Gawd, and they are strongly (and justifiably) of the opinion that their historical claim to the northern part of the island of Ireland is as good as or better than anyone else's. However, it's an equally undeniable historical fact that the presence of people with Scottish surnames, Presbyterian religion and speaking Lowland Scots dialect, in a corner of Ireland, is a result of an imperialist expansion. Similarly, when Franco's Spain wanted Gibralter back, we did the right thing by the Gibraltarians by telling him where to get off - but that doesn't change the fact that Gib is also an outpost of empire.
I'd hate to find out what you think about the Malvinas.
None of which is meant as a substantive contribution to the Chechen debate (for what it's worth, I have a lot of sympathy with Chris' position here, as I've just come back from Macedonia where I was at the wedding of a mate who is one of the main partisans of the Kosovar Serb cause in the Western media). But I do think that proper understanding of this or any other post-imperialist conflict has to start with the recognition that it *is* a post-imperialist conflict.
There is no comparison between Kosovo and Chechnya. When the two fat losers Yeltsin and Clinton got together during the first Chechen war, Clinton compared the drunk to Abe Lincoln preserving the union. Meanwhile he was to bomb Belgrade for 74 days straight. Why the disparity? Simple. Yeltsin was building capitalism, while Milosevic was trying to preserve the tattered remnants of Titoist socialism.
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