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Forthcoming article: Ukraine and the Hinge of History

Like many of you I have been horrified and transfixed by Putin's unprovoked military aggression against Ukraine, which is rapidly evolving into a massive atrocity as the Russian military's expectations of a quick and decisive victory are frustrated and they pivot to the methods of wholesale and indiscriminate destruction they used in Grozny and Aleppo.

Leon Trotsky observed after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution that wars are the "locomotives of history", creating and accelerating trends that reshape the world, as World War I did by creating the conditions for the rise of the international communist movement.

I am working on what I expect to be a major article that puts this unfolding series of events in a longer historical context, taking up a question already being debated by a group of intellectuals in the UK—are we living in a period of exceptional and disproportionate influence on the future of humanity, are we in a hinge of history. 

It will address questions like (this is a pretty tall order so I will probably not get to them all, so let me know if you would like to address specific aspects):

1. What impact will Ukraine have on the emerging challenge to the West (defined in terms of values not geography—Taiwan and South Korea are part of the West) posed by the autocratic alliance centred on Russia and China. Already it has served as a colossal wake-up call for the European democracies with formerly  stictly neutral and pacifist states (Sweden, Finland, Switzerland) joining efforts to arm Ukraine. The turnaround in Germany is nothing less than astonishing.
2. Will this be the death of the concept of globalization that has prevailed for the past forty years that saw large international trade flows and dependencies as both economically rational and essentially benign, even if they confer huge leverage to the autocracies, as with Europe's dependence on Russian gas, oil and coal.
3. What are we to make of the ideological debates and fissures on both Left and Right  that have emerged In Ukraine's wake, especially in the United States where we see commentators, formerly closely allied, on Fox News stridently attacking positions taken by each other, with a strongly pro-Ukraine Republican mainstream criticized by neo-isolationists like Tucker Carlson as well as an arch-reactionary fringe (e.g. Marjorie Taylor Green) drawn to Putin's "conservative values".
4. How have different theories of international relations fared, with some pointing to Ukraine as a decisive refutation of the "realist" school led by the "conservative realist" George A. Mearsheimer that holds that, whatever their ideological pretensions, great powers rationally seek to maximize their interests, and the world is a better place that they do. After the annexation of Crimea in 2014 Mearsheimer predicted with great confidence that the Russians would not annex the whole of Ukraine. How realistic are the realists?
5. If Putin is not a rational actor, contrary to widely held pre-Ukraine views, what are we to make of him? What makes him tick? Various theories have been put forward, from assertions that he is a "high performing psychopath", to an authoritarian committed to a rebirth of Christendom, to a nationalist ideologue committed to reuniting the traditional Russian lands and peoples, to someone who (according to one Russian commentator, safely out of Russia) operates according to the norms of a 1990s era St Petersburg gangster, ever ready to raise the ante in confrontations.
6. How durable will the reawakening of the West be? Will relations and dependencies revert to normal after a "decent interval"? Will this force a re-balancing between the preoccupation with climate change and geostrategic issues when it comes to energy policy (Germany, again amazingly, has led the way here). How to secure the democracies' supply chains?
7. How durable will the Russian/Chinese alliance of convenience be? Will proud Russians be happy, in the long term, with their status as very much a junior partner as the power disparity between them grows ever greater with time to their point where according to Nina Kruschevina (Nikita's great granddaughter) Russia could become a vassal of China? What about the deep historical antipathies between the two powers that, decades ago,  led the famous New York Times correspondent Harrison E. Salisbury to predict an inevitable war between them?

If anyone with specific expertise would like to collaborate on this, or if you have any comments,  please let me know via the contact form.

PS I have not forgotten about the final part in the three-article set about the Left that I promised a couple of weeks ago. It has been deferred, in the light of events, but not canceled.