Even if Putin pulls out of Ukraine in a few weeks, and Western nations lift the current sanctions, American and European firms and investors are likely to remain wary of Russia, given the risks inherent to doing business with a rogue state.

Thus, Putin’s war of conquest is poised to inaugurate not only a new geopolitical era — one in which the European Union spends much more on defense and NATO enjoys a new sense of purpose — but also a new economic one, in which global commerce is increasingly divided between adversarial blocs. These two developments could interact in dangerous ways. As Russia and the West become less economically interconnected, relations between the world’s two largest nuclear powers could become even more tense and tenuous than they were before the present crisis.

In the immediate future, the costs of adjusting to a less globalized economy could be steep. Already stricken with high inflation before Putin’s invasion, the West will now see its energy costs explode. In Russia, the scale of devastation and disruption that awaits is difficult to comprehend. For some of the world’s poorest people, meanwhile, a sudden drop in wheat exports from Russia and Ukraine could very well mean starvation.