Let's take brief walk through history:
- during the Ottoman Empire's long decline, Russia sought to expand further into Europe and Britain responded with force;
- in the 19th century, the rise of Napoleon brought the prospect of a power stretching from France, across Germany and onward to Russia. Britain responded with force;
- in the early 20th century, Britain sacrificed its wealth and empire to stop the spread of a German-led coalition that threatened to dominate from France to Russia;
- fearing that a Moscow-based government in Russia could bulldoze across war-torn Europe and extend its power as far west as France, industrialists in America and Britain financed the rebuild of a new German power in the 1930s;
- over the course of the next decade, German power was restored. It also expanded eastward. Seeking to prevent the rise of a German-led coalition stretching from France to the Steppes of Old Russia, Britain responded with force;
- a new, German-led coalition arose nonetheless and threatened to establish a sphere of influence stretching from France to the distant east of Old Russia. The United States and Britain bombed the German power to pieces and gave aid to the Moscow-based government, deep inside Old Russia, to combat the German power and prevent such an occurrence;
- the British and Americans landed in Europe and raced across the bombed-out landscape of a German power in ruins. Their goal was to meet the Moscow-based power from Old Russia. And so, the Cold War began, with the British and Americans determined to stop the Moscow-based power from bulldozing across war-torn Europe and as far west as France;
With the collapse of the Moscow-based power in the 1990s, most of Europe was consolidated in the European Union, an American-friendly political and economic system that, like NATO, sits near France, in Brussels. To what degree the EU is independent from the United States is debatable. But any sort of understanding between Russia and continental Europe seems out of the question. The question is: for how long? And who is going to be sacrificed to prevent it - and why?
