The World Economy No Longer Needs Russia
foreignpolicy.com
foreignpolicy.com
Never underestimate environmentalists' ability to create mayhem for their own self-serving purposes. They've already made housing unaffordable for much of generation Z by helping municipalities pass all of the exclusionary zoning laws that makes it so difficult to build new construction.
US fossil fuel production (specifically LNG) saved the winter. US production remains high but ROI is dropping, quality is dropping (e.g. an increasing portion of "oil" is light fuel or not even fuel at all), and we're resorting increasingly to shale and other high-tech costly methods.
Meanwhile Russia is sitting on huge reserves that it doesn't even have the infrastructure to produce yet. A huge savings account just waiting for investment. In 10 or 20 years, we may find ourselves desperately purchasing from Russia. Putin's playing the long game here, let's not get cocky.
Will he be around in 10 or 20 years?
Also, if a business leader, politician, or some other kind of member of the Russian elite was openly friendly to the west there's a good chance Putin knocked them down a peg or six and they will not be in line to succeed him.
Anything is possible however!
India is right now chugging Russian oil like there is no tomorrow. But it may end up doing this tomorrow and years to come. India can do this and have its PR arms float the "but Russians helped us in the 70s that's why" as the cover story and ignore the largess from the West during globalization (a good chunk of IT section of US economy went to India) because everyone knows the controlling interest of global investment is shopping around for the 'Next China'. So this is trading Germany (industrial goods [+EU]) for 'next China' (production).
We wait to see whether long or short term [self-]interests will prevail.