jkIHGs

You did not address the reasoning, which is about the fact that the last country on earth with oil reserves will have a strategic advantage.

Russia can always trade with China to have enough money for weapons. Anyway, even with all the Europe trade in the past decades they can barely advance 50 km in Ukraine.

Germany and other European countries are the contained nuclear war location in case of an escalation. It is easy to support all sorts of things from another continent.

De Gaulle also did not trust the U.S. precisely for this reason and chose to build nuclear weapons and avoid being under the NATO command structure.

I agree. Even if Russia is our worst enemy, depleting their resources first is quite a logical step. Would you want Russia to be the last country that still has oil reserves for its military?

Replacing Russia with Qatar or Saudi Arabia (Jemen war?) is hypocritical.

Replacing Russia with the U.S. gives the U.S. too much power over the EU. It can be used as a bargaining chip in unrelated negotiations like privacy rights etc.