That we live in a world of rapid change has been confirmed by the way recent developments over Ukraine have transformed international geopolitics in just a few weeks. The looming cold war triggered by the U.S.-supported putsch in Kiev that deposed Ukraine's constitutional order and by Russia's muscular riposte, including annexing Crimea, portends the advent of a new era.

U.S. President Barack Obama's new sanctions approach toward Russia indeed sets the stage for a potential clash between Western democracy and what American ideologues call "Putinism."

The geopolitical tensions, military deployments and strident rhetoric point to the risk of preemptive moves and miscalculations sparking an accidental confrontation. We need only to recall how a spiral of actions and counter-actions led to World War I a hundred years ago.