The war in Ukraine and the return of history

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came as a surprise. The West believed for a long time that Great Power conflict was a thing of the past, that war itself was no longer a central feature of international relations. It was not a view shared by the rest of the world, and certainly not by Russia. The Ukraine war is in part a product of the misreading of history. It is also threatening to become for the Russians an existential struggle that they cannot afford to lose. What if the European peace we have come to celebrate is just a 30-year experiment sandwiched between much longer phases of conflict?