Germany followed a mutual cooperation approach to Russia. It was foreign policy doctrine for years, Ostpolitik. It didn't stop Russia invading a sovereign neighbour and it prevented Germany from reacting due to the dependence.

We did partner with China on mutually beneficial agreements, from ~1972 to to ~2015. But that increasingly seems like a mistake.

Not sure either-or is the best way to frame things. Economic ties are clearly having a moderating effect both between the U.S.-China and even, at this very moment, Europe-Russia. Seems the problem is better framed as one of timing, calibration, and optimization.

All of this conflict doesn't disprove the thesis that economic ties moderate conflict. It might disprove the thesis that economic ties prevent conflict, but that's a straw man. The only actual thesis of that sort was that democracies don't go to war, and one of the proposed, non-exclusive mechanisms was their tendency toward deep economic interdependencies. AFAIK nobody, not even Bill Clinton, presumed that economic ties were alone sufficient to guarantee peace with China and Russia, nor sufficient to induce comprehensive political democratization. Here's Clinton recently recounting in his own words his reasoning wrt Russia: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/bill-clint...

What? We have been working with China on mutually beneficial agreements for 60 years, which is the direct cause of their rise.

Agree--Humanity loses because of this posturing, well before the bombs are flying.

Mutually beneficial agreements with China exists. But, cooperation is not the same as peace or humanity. When mutually beneficial agreement with China empowers genocide going on in there or provides China surveillance to crack on human right activists, then it is enablement rather then something positive.

And vice versa in cases where west does something bad.

Beneficial for whom? Not American workers, just the business class. It's it's also iteresting that these accusations against China start popping up right about the time we've chosen to take an adversarial stance against them and they're overtaking us in GDP/PPP and influence in the world. The US has killed an estimated 6 million people as a result of the "War on Terror" so hard to say we've a leg to stand on.