Completely agree. But I think something lost in this is how much violence the "end of history" state of affairs increasingly relied on to keep that "peaceful" c

Completely agree. But I think something lost in this is how much violence the "end of history" state of affairs increasingly relied on to keep that "peaceful" context in place - among the reasons Russia walked into the Ukraine was that Russia considered the Ukraine to be its buffer against NATO, which it viewed as genuinely an existential threat. The Middle East has been in a state of war for 20 years now, the US drug wars in Central and South America have had absolutely disastrous consequences, and the level of environmental destruction we've outsourced to other parts of the world would preclude a lot of our current economic practices if we tried to do them at home. Even in the US, the Mangione killing highlighted this - UHC was the absolute top in denying health care claims, an activity with actual deaths associated with it. Just because the power centers aren't threatened doesn't mean there's not violence present in the system. In the west, we've relied a lot on the fact that the majority of the people with guns have typically been further out in the periphery than us, and all those guns have been pointed at other people on our behalf - our peace is not everyone's peace.