[…] The painful truth is that Putin has not only to be deterred and morally denounced, but engaged, since the chances of changing his regime in our own image is as likely as remaking Russia was in the 1990s, or of Napoleon or Hitler adding Russia to their empires.
Russia interlocks with all of the world’s top geopolitical players. To wit, Russia is crucial to Germany, the most powerful state in the European Union. The Germans want to complete the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia not because it is necessarily critical to the German economy—the Germans could if needed get gas from the emerging Mediterranean pipeline network and also from North America by way of natural gas conversion terminals. Rather, the Germans require Nord Stream 2 because it will both supply them with comparatively cheap and direct energy supplies and stabilize their political relationship with Russia, a country which they view as too big and powerful to change or defeat. The Germans have come to terms with Russia, that is. Läs artikel