I still remember the pictures of Merkel and Putin, when Merkel was negotiating for this stuff. Putin brought a big dog because he knew Merkel had a fear of them

I still remember the pictures of Merkel and Putin, when Merkel was negotiating for this stuff. Putin brought a big dog because he knew Merkel had a fear of them. Hindsight is 20/20 perhaps. It's really hard to understate the guilt that has existed in Germany over WWII. Also, in Western Europe, there's much more of an understanding that it was Russia that took the brunt of the fighting, not the U.S., and when the Berlin Wall fell, there were many who hoped for a new start. But Russia, with its geography and its legacy, was notoriously difficult to switch over to capitalism. The 1998 crash of the ruble left deep scars on the country. It may have almost been inevitable that a figure like Putin would arise, in part because we (in the West) were naive about how capitalism would take hold there. Regardless, there's the reality that there is now. Germany needs to be able to act in its own self-defense, and Europe needs to wean off of Russian fossil fuels, if only because the lines have been drawn. It's not clear that that arrangement was ever good for the rise of a friendly and economically healthy Russia.