This seems like a bit of a silly point, given that the war in Ukraine is, at least so far, nothing compared to the conflicts of the past. Do we wanna rush head first back into something that reliably produced worse conflicts than we see today simply because what we have going now isn't perfect?
>Germany’s dependence on Russian gas is now limiting its ability to respond to a crisis. They’ve handicapped themselves and can no longer promote peace and in fact are funding a war.
A bunch of western companies are pulling out of Russia over this and it looks like the whole thing is going worse for the aggressors here than they expected. I'll take this over Germany and Russia engaging directly in armed conflict.
In many ways, the theory that interconnected trade promotes peace is similar to the neo-liberal economic view that globalization promotes lower prices and thus more efficient economies. Such a view has been shown to be an over-simplification and ignores important side-effects of changing trade balances, such as rising economic inequality and the rise of populism.