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> solid naivity not only in EU in past few decades

I think there were some naïveté on the US side of thing, just like both were naive on how mainland China would turn to democracy as it opened to outside trade and industry

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Hindsight as they say, is 20/20

Yes. It wasn't inevitable that Russia would take this route. There were a few years of freedom, but with a broken economy. Then the era of the oligarchs. That didn't work out too well either. So now there's a strongman.

That it would be a strongman who wants to go back to the era of the tsars was unexpected.

I wouldn't call it naivete on the US side - most people with a functioning brain weren't snowed by that. However, the money men who make theirs on the backs of success OR failure trumpeted that it was a new dawn for democracy and capitalism in China because it was in their best interests to do so despite what centuries of history and decades of dialog told everybody who would listen.

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