I think there were some naïveté on the US side of thing, just like both were naive on how mainland China would turn to democracy as it opened to outside trade and industry
That it would be a strongman who wants to go back to the era of the tsars was unexpected.
"Realization" implies truth. I bet you couldn't even try to prove your theory.
> ...not a country of 150 millions of which many are barely literate and fed propaganda every day.
Pot, meet kettle.
The "unsubstantive" part is another matter. Stop and look at the actual quality of my counterparts' comments Dang. Is it (solely) me who is deserving of a scolding?
These are not minor or inconsequential topics being discussed here. If no community takes a stand and takes thinking more seriously especially when it matters, humans will continue to be tricked into forever war, indefinitely.
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."
- Carl Jung
Fundamentally it's ok to arbitrage with your opponent if it means more prosperity for you -- it gets complicated when you're doing it on the back of large deficits, and do it for long enough that you forget it was a gambit to begin with and now it's a dependency. Oops.
This is a self-inflicted wound and I cannot feel sorry for Germany. Their choice has been fueling the Russian war machine until recently. Fuck 'em.
There was some solid naivity not only in EU in past few decades, merkel et al completely ignored warnings from baltic members or Poland that russia can't be trusted yet. Current german leadership still doesn't treat this as their top urgency, they naively hope russians will get bored or scared from human losses and do just tiny glacial moves. This won't ever happen, just look at WWII, they still have the same mentality. They have to literally run out of equipment to stop at this point, they won't run out of men, not a country of 150 millions of which many are barely literate and fed propaganda every day.