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Don't fall for retrospective bias. I agree, Europe should have acted when it became clear that Putin is no saint (to be euphemistic), but Russian gas was cheap.

Don't fall for retrospective bias. I agree, Europe should have acted when it became clear that Putin is no saint (to be euphemistic), but Russian gas was cheap. It was a trade, give us your energy cheap and we shut up. Europe profited, households and industry had real savings, and Russia profited, invaluable money and power (especially the latter should have made Europe think, but again, retrospective bias). In other words, Europe and Russia both had gains for a long time. Now the dreams have crashed.

europeanguy 4y ago
> Europe profited, households and industry had real savings (...) But you see, this is part of my disappointment with European decision makers. Yeah, great, Europe "profited" in a financial and standards of living sense. But what these people seem to miss (but the Americans and Russians know very well) is that there's a harder tier of power above finance, which is military power. Sure, it's great having good GDP, but if your neighbor has more tanks and resents you because 50% of their population wants to be you[1] then your savings and finance don't matter much. Unless big brother America comes to the rescue, as they're doing, at which point parent's comment has a lot of truth in it... [1] 50% is made up, but it's a lot.