Comment by hkpack

Yes, but if you remember, the consensus was that countries with economic ties don't go to wars. There were no illusions about Russia, but the idea was to tame it by making it prosper through trade with "rich EU".

A lot of people were calling this strategy stupid, but that was the consensus for multiple decades.

You can also tell that the strategy with China failed in exactly the same way.

So I think the world will be a very different place in the next millennia.