ooh way late response! That is actually the opposite. Friedman also addressed that point. The case you are presenting is essentially "we shouldn't rely on forei

ooh way late response! That is actually the opposite. Friedman also addressed that point. The case you are presenting is essentially "we shouldn't rely on foreign XYZ too much, we should have our own manufacturing". Well sure we should have our own if its able to compete freely. But its never been the case that if we go to war with China, the Japanese/India/whomever couldn't start producing more steel and selling it to us. Sure it might be slightly more expensive but it wouldn't paint the picture that you are proposing. If anything MORE producers of steel would pop up willing to sell at a higher price. Crazy theres this thing called supply/demand. As for the EU/Russian gas example, Russia isn't the biggest producer of gas in the world. According to wiki[0] its the U.S, there are other non-Russian actors in the top 10 list who I'm sure would be willing to provide gas at a higher price. As to why you mentioned EU/Russia is that Russia so happens to have a nice giant pipeline ready to provide gas into the EU. Well...last I checked there were millions of barrels of oil being shipped globally by ship. Would you have to pay a bit more for energy ? Sure. Is national security critically dependent on Russia ? No, because I guarantee you if Germany started paying $200/barrel of oil(or natural gas/whatever) all the oil ships around the world would reorient themselves to deliver to Germany. Crazy world called supply/demand. You now have near infinite suppliers. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g...