Calling back to my scathing post about the Ukrainian carve-up from last week, here’s Adam Gordon’s conclusion from a brief review of Ed Conway’s Material World:

The point made here about autarky economics is not that it is economically damaging (obviously so) but it is actually, functionally impossible. No country or geographical block has all the pieces of any of the supply and production chains. Stripping back the veneer of national showmanship shows countries all integrally connected at the material level. To take an almost comic example: even US shale oil, it turns out, is of a type that cannot be processed at local refineries. It is sent to Europe.

Nevertheless, the more the world is politically carved up, the more matters of materials availability and supply chain localization and-or control will shape geopolitical actions.

Where does this all take us? It feels like there are broadly two scenarios. Either, despite tariff saber-rattling, the global materials-production lattice stays quietly open with a nod-and-a wink. Or we’re heading back to the 19th century where the scramble for materials and processing ownership, and control over the pinch points in supply, is the bully’s playbook and devil take the hindmost.

This is much the same point I was making, approached from a different angle: the question of which nation or bloc ends up with their boot on Ukraine’s neck is secondary to the underlying truth that the foot in the boot belongs to the market. One bloc’s sole may be more or less hobnailed than another, but the foot will apply the same pressure over the long run, and to the same ends.

Would it not still be preferable that the softer-soled boot gets there first? Certainly. But the other boots at the ends of the market’s many other legs will find some other neck to crush or shin to kick, because that is what they are made for.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that the battle be given up on for the sake of the war—but I am suggesting that the battle is fundamentally about whose map gets draped over the territory.

The war, meanwhile, is between territory and maps. The maps are winning.