As for Putin’s longevity, consider that any successor would inherit his current dilemma. The invasion of Ukraine lacked Russian popular support — but a humiliating exit would also be unpopular and devastating to both Russian power and military morale. Awareness of those facts should dampen any prospective coup-plotters’ enthusiasm for taking the reins themselves.

No one can know what will come next in a highly fluid and volatile situation. But it’s worth considering the possibility that what has happened so far is less like the start of World War I or World War II and more like a cross between the beginning of the Cold War and its end. As at the start of the Cold War, the West has been galvanized into unity, and prospective battle lines are being drawn. As at its end, a European country — then Yugoslavia, now Ukraine — is being torn apart by a revanchist dictator. West and East may be dividing again into hostile camps, but with no buffer between them, only a suppurating wound.

That’s a future without an off-ramp, but also without an end-game. If that future transpires, then the financial, military, and political decisions we are making now — in an atmosphere of crisis, aimed at pressuring Russia to withdraw from Ukraine — will instead become the foundations of the new world aborning.