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That's ignoring all the times when closer trade ties did lower the likelihood of armed conflict - not in the least, within Europe itself.

I agree that we badly miscalculated Russia, but not every actor is Russia and willing to tank its own economy for revanchism.

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Note that I said specifically dictators, and most of Europe isn’t that. The closest would be Orban and maybe Erdogan. But Hungary is seemingly a disliked minor player. Turkey is actually interesting in that Erdogan is a strong man and he’s actually really good at it seemingly. He’s also got a very modern and well trained military.

The US also isn't a dictatorship yet and certainly wasn't when we started becoming so dependent on them.

You can try avoiding dealings with any autocracies, but that's really hard given our modern world and it's not like other democracies can never screw you over. I think it's more realistic to demand that we diversify our imports so that we can react to things like Russia's Ukraine invasion better.

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