These states are (self-)trained ideologically to encounter the perceived existential "threat from the East" which comes always in the form of a supposedly constantly aggressive and "imperialist" state (Russia, Turkey, Syria, respectively).

These frontier states, on the other hand, are condemned to the status of economic lackeys of Western capital and the local comprador elites, deprived of any economic sovereignty and social development.

These are societies states with intense inequalities and gigantic brain drain. Their educational institutions are in fact increasingly modelled as brain drain machines. Their diasporas are educated at home and employed abroad, sending back remittances, which is often the main bloodline of the economy.

Their intellectual elites (even those on the left spectrum) are also buying in the perception of the "eastern threat", albeit dressed in a pseudomarxist, western leftist or secular guise. Their critique of the West stops short from understanding deeper traits of economic, political, ideological warfare whose themselves are often products.

In terms of historical self-perception, these states understand themselves as liberated border zones that pushed back against the advancement of the forces of evil which often appear in the shape of armies, while recently come as migrants and refugees.

In any case, the ideological insecurity of these states vis-a-vis supposed organized plans of civilisational takeover by the mighty eastern Other is always the root of their foreign policy and the rallying and recruitment cry for the far right.

In terms of geopolitics, the frontier state pattern equips these states with a constant obsession with the eastern threat, which obstructs the ability to see the rest of the world in a sober light. These states are both euro-centric and east-phobic, despite the fact that they still share immense cultural traits with the people on the other side of the border! In most cases, they share a millennia-long history of coexistence as part of wider pre-capitalist empires.

Today, however, every major geopolitical move for these states is commonly read, decided and framed within the framework of the threat of the east. Even far fetched history becomes impossible to rethink since every such effort constitutes a form of epistemological treason to the nation.

At some point, especially during crises and (often imported) tensions, the obsession with the threat from the east takes the form of moral panic and outright paranoia, while the enemy and its local collaborators are perceived to have infiltrated everything in the buffer state and its periphery: media, politics, education as well as neighboring governments and international organizations.

There is always thus a recurrent need to "cleanse" such evil traces, which often takes the shape of pogroms by proto-fascist forces whose declared aim is to eradicate political, linguistic, cultural or ideological influences of the threatening east.

These campaigns might at some critical juncture reach levels of ethnic cleansing and massive population transfers. In any case, racial/cultural purity is often the guiding principle of fascist forces in these states. These forces are traditionally supported - militarily, politically, ideologically - by the West: Greek fascists, Lebanese falangists, Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and to the West they swear allegiance.

It is important to note that these historical states do not share similar trajectories or even positionalities in the global division of imperial domination. Some are more successful examples than others. Greece for example is a successful case of frontier state; Lebanon is not. Ukraine is currently been sacrificed.

These states might be useful for one period while fall into irrelevance in the next. They might be used as pons of imperial plans to divide and rule regions of strategic importance to the imperium: Middle East, Balkans, East Europe.

Today however these frontier states seem to have fallen further below in the priority list of their patrons. The financial colonization of Greece, the abandonment of Lebanon, the sacrifice of Ukraine underlines the fate of the states that are thrown to the dogs by their own protectors if the time is ripe.

Today, these states have very different positions in the strategic consideration of the imperial rulers but they all have one thing in common: they are subordinate and dictated to submit to the new imperial order, at the top of which sits the frontier state par excellence, the garrison state of "Western supremacy", the ideal type of the genocidal state: the state of Israel.

These are preliminary thoughts which need further clarification and differentiation. Hence a book, not a fb post.

kosmatopoulos/fb