I’ve had several people tell me now that they can’t believe that ”in this day and age” an invasion like we now see in Ukraine, based on sieges, physical violence, and wagering human lives, could still happen.

This is the conflict where we find out if it can.

The evolution from physical to conceptual warfare was never going to be perfectly seamless, and right now we are discovering a seam along the eastern boarder of Ukraine.

The question, for Ukraine and for all conflict in the 21st century, is whether sanctions and ostracism and can defeat a 40 mile-long convoy of Russian tanks.

Can shifting public sentiment overpower shifting military units? Can a tee shirt-clad idealist defeat a KGB supervillain?

Has the world evolved or was that wishful thinking?

This last has been a common question for “the West” recently, and the answer has not always been comforting.

As we fight to evolve our species, and while the casualties are still counted in the dozens instead of the hundreds, it will be important for citizens of NATO countries to remember: sanctions cut on both sides, just like soldiers bleed on both sides of a battlefield.

Our gas prices, electricity bills, and general sense of uncertainty will almost certainly rise in the near term. What we are wagering is that “in this day and age,” these distributed, incremental costs can substitute for the irrecoverable losses of life inflicted more deeply, and more narrowly, on an unfortunate minority in traditional warfare. Should that wager pay off, maybe we will be able to call it obsolete warfare.