>>World War I is an excellent example.

There's an interesting parallel going on. Before WWI, the general consensus was that "war is impossible" due to the inter-relatedness of all the European economies. Still, they stumbled into war. (BTW, Clark's "The Sleepwalkers" is the best book I've found on how that happened).

OK, so the 90s. The USSR has collapsed, and folks in Germany (primarily Schroeder) want to interlock economies with the rump USSR, now the Russian Federation. So Nordstream 1. Once there was a plentiful supply of energy using Russian gas, it was feasible to decommission all nuclear power plants - and that happened (public opinion was against that kind of power anyway). This has led to Germany and the RF being deeply interconnected (gas goes west, payments go east).

Did this prevent a war? Doesn't look like it, does it?

Now German industry is essentially a hostage.

The only bright spot I see is China's zero-covid policy, which is leading to city-wide shutdowns and more slowdowns in the supply chain - and this will almost certainly lead to a German industrial slowdown due to component unavailability. Factories slowing down means more non-RF gas available for heating.

Germany gets about 55% of its gas from the RF, so if this supply is shut off, industries could fail, but people won't freeze.

I suspect the German public is more willing to undergo a recession than they would be to endure German winter temps without heat, but I have no idea how this will go.

One thing seems certain, however. Once Germany has shifted to alternative energy supplies, they will not shift back to gas from the RF for decades.