What strikes me is how much of these current geopolitical events are driven by singular individuals whose current inclinations were shaped by their very arbitrary past encounters. For example, if you take the current US administration's hostility towards Europe. That might just be the result of the Vice President being at Yale and encountering a few snobby children of European old money, and they might have been a bit too mean to him, and that might be the sole reason he has so much antipathy towards the whole of Europe.