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"After the War, we hoped for a peace dividend, to move on geopolitically, but clearly that's not something Russia wants to do. And now my eldest son is banging on the door to join the air force, wanting to make a difference too... It does feel a little circular."

In reality, Europe will struggle to come up with even a third of that number, such is the effect of decades of running down its militaries, years after the post-Cold War peace dividend should have ended.

A wider critique along these lines has been crystallising for some time: the sense that the 1990s were a holiday from history, as Jonathan Freedland called it, and that the end of the Cold War had created a peace dividend where defence budgets could atrophy and the money could be spent on hospitals and schools, for instance.

If Donald Trump wants a quick peace dividend, he should look elsewhere.

In the era of "liberal peace", an agreement to end a civil war was the drafting of a democratic constitution, along with measures for disarming and demobilising rival armies, transitional justice and reconciliation, and aid-funded programmes to deliver a peace dividend for the afflicted populace.