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Originally Posted by Brian Swartz
That's a fair point. To me it's not really a question of geopolitical strategy at all, but just one of inevitability. If no one country can produce everything it needs and purchase everything it produces - and IMO that's a truism - then at a certain level it just doesn't matter if global trade is a good idea or a bad idea, any more than one might question whether gravity is a good or bad thing. It just *is*.
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It's more that an energy grid is a basic requirement for participation in the world economy. If you outsource the key components, you give the countries that produce what you need a lot of power they wouldn't ordinarily have.
Russia has the 11th largest GDP in the world. Yet Putin, who is not a Democratic leader even though Russia has somewhat of a modern marketplace, is one of the most powerful people in the world because he sells Europe what's closing in on half of their energy needs. The EU can't exist in its current form without Russia's oil, gas and coal. You could say the same thing about food in the past, and that's still an issue in some places in the world.
Trade is one thing. Yes, it "is" and it ends up benefiting both sides to such an extent that isolationism is reckless and damaging. Dependence is something else. When you give an authoritarian control over your existence, there's a danger this can happen.