“Contributed to”??? Their Gaia worship CREATED this vulnerability. It would never exist but for the idiotic Gaia Worship that left them with no viable alternative. Of course, they could fix this problem in the long term anytime they wanted to. They just need to get serious and do the things they know from past experience actually work.
Besides....wasn’t the pipeline not pumping any gas anymore anyway?
You want to talk about “friendly” nations? How “friendly” is it to freeload off of another country for generations to provide for your defense even though you’ve long since had the money to provide for your own defense?
How “friendly” is it to buy energy from the very country you say you need to be protected from militarily - rather than buying your energy from allies?
How “friendly” is it to go around the world seeking to undermine the foreign policy of an ally for your own financial benefit (Iran, Saddam, Cuba, etc etc)?
How “friendly” is it to seek to unite Europe under your own hegemony by means of demonizing another country that is supposedly your ally and which has been providing for your defense for generations - not to mention a country which allowed grossly unequal trade terms to help you rebuild your economy after a world war you started and lost?
By the way, European countries don’t “have to” become dependent on US LNG. They can frack and drill their own oil and gas. They can mine their own coal. They can build nuclear power plants. They just have to stop destroying their economies and their security and their people’s standard of living in order to worship Gaia.
Yes Europe can and should take care of their own energy security, but the US blowing out those gas pipelines was a leap beyond anything a presumed ally would do. It’s basically the US telling Europe, well we warned you about becoming dependent on Russian energy, but since you didn’t listen we’ve decided to take out those pipelines ourselves to prevent you from even thinking about backsliding on those Russian sanctions. It was a giant f*ck you to Europe and just reiterates the attitude Victoria Nuland expressed towards Europe back in 2014.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/feb/07/eu-us-diplomat-victoria-nuland-phonecall-leaked-video
You can only sh!t on an ally so many times before that ally begins to reexamine the relationship.