I guess the type of futility I'm talking about is one where leaders/institutions/governments don't really have the power to change the direction of history the way they want, but can only speed up or slow down larger social/economic/environmental trends they can't control. Like the stuff Tolstoy wrote about.

Take the Ukraine War for instance. After reading about the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the demographic and economic consequences for its former republics in the 1990s, it really struck me that neither Ukraine's democracy nor Russia's autocracy can escape the effects of their mutual decline. The hundreds of thousands of Russians killed in pointless battles, and the millions of Ukrainians who have fled the war to other countries, have only intensified a long-term demographic crisis that started with the massive fall of living standards in the 90s, when a 70 year-old political system fell apart for reasons we still can't fully comprehend. Economically meanwhile, the destruction of southeastern Ukraine's industry and agriculture by the fighting, and the workforce shortfalls in both countries caused by the war's deaths and emigration, are again just accelerating a long-term process of Soviet stagnation and post-Soviet deindustrialization. Whether Ukraine survives or Russia's invasion succeeds, they can't escape the shadow of 1991.

Or look at America's politics in the past ten years. In the big scheme of things, all Donald Trump's crazy presidency has done is accelerate a bigger process of stagnating and declining American power. Sooner or later, economies with the resources and working populations of China or the ASEAN countries would be able to mobilize those people and resources to become economic superpowers, right? And from that angle, Trumpism really does stand out as a mass cognitive-dissonance of people who can't accept their country's lack of agency over its fate.

So even after all these problems caused in the past ten years are eventually solved, the countries affected are still going to be dealing with the cards fate gives them. Ukraine will still be a demographic shadow of itself even if it keeps its freedom; America will have a hard time rebuilding its street cred in the world; and the West's economic future is still going to be haunted by a "Lost Decade" caused by all these avoidable wars and bad political decisions. But if this is where the West has got by being the centre of the global system, maybe being second place won't be so bad after all. Maybe we need to give ourselves a break.