Peace rarely follows in the immediate wake of great wars. More often, what ensues is what the German writer Ernst Jünger termed ‘Mobilmachung’—a total mobilisation of society in which war continues by other, more insidious means. After 1918, Europe was not pacified; rather, the war dissolved its frontlines and seeped into every aspect of political and social life. Soldiers did not return home—they came back, traumatised and uprooted, rifles still in their packs. In Kyiv, Reds, Whites, anarchists, Cossacks and demobilised veterans clashed in a chaotic melee, even as Mikhail Bulgakov recorded the collapse of the old world in literary agony. In Germany, the Freikorps stormed against workers' uprisings and spilled into Poland amid spiralling ethnic conflict. In Italy, the groundwork of fascism was laid.
A century on, all signs suggest a repetition in eerie silhouette: post-war Ukraine will not become the Europe of Brussels, nor of Davos—or even Sochi—but something far more reminiscent of postwar Upper Silesia or Crimea in 1920.
The present war will end—that much is certain. But its end may offer no true political beginning. No peace-making order, no stable equilibrium, no juridical catharsis. Ukraine may have irrevocably turned from Russia, but that does not mean it will be embraced by, or embrace, a liberal, cosmopolitan West. It may emerge not as a grateful ward of Euro-Atlantic integration, but as a nation that sees itself as bled and bartered away—sacrificed, not in solidarity, but by a self-serving, materialist, post-heroic West.
That wound will fester into politics.
Already, disappointment is palpable: with Western dithering, German hesitation, American calculation. The illusion that the West is a safe haven has shattered. The Ukrainian nation, tempered in fire, is unlikely to greet post-war life with reconciliation. It will be harder, less trusting. Its democratic institutions will be weakened, its society militarised, its political centre defined by veterans. Liberal discourses, inclusive nationhood, civic idealism—these are unlikely to gain traction. Instead, a self-image forged in struggle and strength will emerge, one that resembles, at least formally, the ethos of Russian propaganda more than the visions of Brussels.
