Paying attention to the role big industries — mining, weapons manufacturing, surveillance tech, even public relations sometimes — can shed a lot of light on the dynamics of international conflicts, even when those conflicts appear to be purely ethno-nationalist in nature.

Nationalism obviously influences and shapes how and why people participate in otherwise costly events (like conflicts). But those choices are made in a socioeconomic context controlled by international capital, who may have an incentive to escalate conflicts for certain outcomes.

There are countless examples of this at work, but canadian foreign policy is very illustrative. https://this.org/2019/10/07/10-things-every-voter-should-care-about-this-election-1-5/

This thread touches on it as well, but there’s actually so much more than what I’ve included here — western mining companies have had their eyes on Armenia and Artsakh for some time, and have incentive to support Azerbaijani and Turkish aggression https://twitter.com/degendering/status/1326935608510599174