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Yes, I think so. Mutual admiration, mutual support and mutual cooperation are completely possible, provided there's a foundation of shared values. I like England and Japan, I want them to continue and to prosper. We've been allies with England for well over a century at this point; we've been allies with Japan since the end of World War II. There's no reason in principle that we shouldn't continue to be close allies with these nations for centuries to come. I'm not sure where this argument that "nationalists can only have temporary allies of convenience" actually is supposed to come from. Numerous western countries engaged in both nationalism and durable alliances spanning decades or even centuries; numerous Communist countries fought wars with fraternal socialist allies even in the short span of formal Communism.
Many communist countries were not actually particularly globalist (North Korea in particular, but also e.g. Albania; North Vietnam came out of a nationalist movement of colonial liberation that was just desperate for backers after the US sacrificed them for the sake of their European postwar order political project; I think Laos might even still forbid its citizens from marrying foreigners). On the other hand, what are actually your Western examples? I won't take mere decades as evidence of durability here, on historical clocks it should at least be 100 years to transcend the realm of suspected expedience. England and the US are, well, the same nation; I wouldn't consider German-Austrian alignment to be evidence that nationalists can trust other nations either. Proper nationalism has not even been around for that long (it is commonly taught as really taking off with the revolutions of 1848, though arguably the English and French both woke up to national consciousness earlier than that), and the whole story of Europe is that up until the Pax Americana the alliances were constantly shifting.
Not sure where you're trying to get with these examples, he was not invoking the famous Soviet - North Korean war to prove his point.
It's not like he gave any examples of wars between Communist countries. The most obvious examples I am aware of all involved the China-Vietnam-Cambodia triangle, which I did cover with examples; I then added some more obviously nationalist communist countries because otherwise there would not be enough content.
Soviets sending their army to Czechoslovakia, or Stalin trying to off Tito multiple times, is what immediately comes to my mind.
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