"But even if Putin dies, I think there's only a miniscule chance that Russia would back off from the war, because it has already invested so much of its national image in winning." There was, for example, a thread of continuity between the first and second world wars. To be sure, a lot happened in the intervening years that could have changed the direction of what followed. But, said Macmillan, the first world war laid the groundwork that made the second possible. The danger lay in a humiliating peace treaty imposed on defeated Germany.
