I've never heard of Mike White or the Unz Review. Thanks! I know of several other writers who pointed out the US' "problem" with Nordstream I and the coming (at that time) NS II. Condoleeza Rice talked openly about the "problem" at least 10 years ago.
I've also been saying something very similar since soon after 2022 invasion and my initial research into the origins of the conflict. I came at it from the EU side. The Treaty of Rome in 1957 brought France, Italy, the Benelux region and Germany (West at that time) together in a customs union. The main idea is that countries bound by commerce won't want to fight each other on the battlefield.
Clearly this peace-through-commmerce plan worked if you compare the number of land wars in Western/Central Europe from beginning of time until 1945, and then since 1945 to the present.
Obviously this was working with Russia since the end of the Soviet Union, and particularly since the end of the looting of Russia soon after Putin came to power.
Europe paid Russia billions per year for gas and oil. Europe also consistently did not live up to our requirements to pay 2% of GDP to (mostly) the US for NATO weapons. Because no one here saw Russia as danger.
Did we see Putin as a cuddly old uncle? Of course not. Putin came to power around 2000, about the same time as Bush. Did Putin light the Mid-East on fire, invading two huge countries killing millions and displacing 10s of millions. Or was that Bush? I could continue with Obama (Libya and Syria), Trump (Syria and Iran) and Biden (Syria, Ukraine and China). But I digress. The point is that in the question of which country is more dangerous, Russia is way behind the US (who is number #1 every time that poll is done).
As you noted that Mr. White wrote, in the environment developed between 2000 and 2022, Europe and Russia were winnners. The US was losing in the fact that we don't need to buy weapons and finance rebuilding of things destroyed by war if there are no wars.
Goading Russia into a war with Ukraine solved all those problems. Or did it?
European leaders are pretty spineless (easy for me to say when I won't be getting a visit from the CIA for this comment...), but Europeans are not stupid. The people see that this war is only good for the US, and bad for Europeans.
European politicians today are not going to buck the US. But leaders are already falling because of the war that the people of Europe didn't want and still don't want, even if we don't want Russia killing Ukrainians.
I believe this war was overreach by the US. It has cracked the foundation of the Trans-Atlantic partnership, and will lead to a distancing and maybe even a physical breakup of the NATO alliance. In practice if not on paper.
When the war ends here and US aggression turns to China, I expect a reckoning here on the continent (LOL, in the UK too, but different) with the centra European leaders who openly side with foreign countries rather than their own constituents and their own countries well-being.
