I actually like the point you tried to develop in this thread, because I feel most people don't question their assumptions often enough. However, you are clearl

I actually like the point you tried to develop in this thread, because I feel most people don't question their assumptions often enough. However, you are clearly reducing complex phenomena to a single cause, incorrectly so in my opinion. Greek city-states fought each other all the time. They definitely had a concept of "Nation", even though they would have a different name for it. All patterns you associate with Nationalism were there, including xenophobia - that's where the goddamn word was created. The rise of what we call Nationalism in modernity has its own peculiarities, including the rise of military-industrial complexes that have every incentive to weaponize it as well. But it is simply wrong to think that, for example, the issue between Ukraine and Russia can be meaningfully reduced to one or the other side "adopting nationalism". Also, it is factually incorrect to say 20 years ago Ukrainians (or inhabitants of that region) would have wanted to be ruled by Putin or Russia in general.