History redux in the Ukraine war

THERE was World War II. It was succeeded by Cold War I. The end of that war produced the Cold Peace. Now, that peace is giving way to Cold War II on the shattered streets of Ukraine. Along with armies, history is on the march again.

To see why this is happening, we could turn to the thoughts of the celebrated historian John Lewis Gaddis of Yale University. He encapsulated the origins of the original Cold War in the ironic observation that World War II had been won by "a coalition whose principal members were already at war - ideologically and geopolitically if not militarily - with one another".

The triumph of the Grand Alliance of the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union in 1945 had depended on "the pursuit of compatible objectives by incompatible systems".