[ben_w]

On the one hand, yes.

On the other, please don't over-estimate the competence of the people in charge of Europe (states or EU) — we're still just a bunch of independent sovereign states pootling along quietly doing our own thing with no real hard stressors to force us to select the best of the best as leaders, certainly not a unified cohesive whole.

When it gets to sink-or-swim time, I don't know which way we're going to go. I hope swim, but the US isn't the only one who can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory — that's something every civilisation in history has suffered from, one time or another.

[scotty79]

Yeah. The fact that something makes sense doesn't mean it's significantly more likely to happen. But it could. And I'd say that both Russia and USA are now accidentally hellbent on providing sufficient stressors.