In hindsight everything is obvious, but it was a close call and there were many moments history could have taken a different route. Sanctions were painful for russia, but so was cutting ties of a lot of industry towards russia in east germany for instance. A bit more cooperation (and maybe less US started wars as a guidance) and all would be quite different.

This is ahistorical, at least from the POV of US administrations.

I'm no fan of Donald Trump but this was one of his rare Ws. At a NATO summit in 2018, he warned Europe about the dangers of dependency on Russian energy and basically bullied Germany into building an LNG plant, something that was critical to Europe after Russia invaded Ukraine 4 years later [1].

Biden as Vice President to Obama warned Europe of the same thing in 2016 [2] regarding Nord Stream 2.

So American administrations have consistently and repeatedly warned Europe about the dangers over 6+ years. So how can anyone argue that "[Russia would] never start a war in Europe" when the US said basically that?

[1]: https://archive.ph/4K5BP

[2]: https://www.dw.com/en/biden-warns-europe-against-dependency-...