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European dependence on Russian energy was an obvious vulnerability. The Soviets never cut off supplies during the Cold War since there was never a conflict as divisive as Ukraine is today, while when Russia invaded Ukraine it did weaponize energy flows. The US was right to oppose gas dependence and stuff like the Nordstream pipeline, in terms of both liberal idealism and simple power politics.
Most of what you've written here isn't wrong, but it's mixed with a lot of rhetoric implying the US is a uniquely evil, conniving nation that wanted to sabotage Good Guy Russia from living in peace and harmony with the rest of Europe.
I don't think Tretiak's rhetoric is implying any of that unless you're looking at the world through the basic lens of good and evil. It's more like US benefits from Europe that's more US dependent, while Russia is weak, poor and kept on a leash. Because the alternative is a possibility of strong Germany-France-Russia alliance that is able to project its power on the rest of the world. A Europe that is able to do things beyond writing strongly worded letters and accepting refugees as blowback from US's actions like a good boy is not in America's benefit and that's why things are the way they are today.
Again, I don't disagree with this in vague terms but it's a glass half-full vs glass half-empty sort of thing. It's like if you saw your friend about to shoot themselves in the foot, so you stole their gun. You took something from them, sure, but you also prevented something that was obviously going to end up going badly.
Also, the US was not as monolithically opposed to EU and Russian detente as is being implied here. The US publicly supported the Minsk agreements instead of trying to sabotage them.
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This is literally what Trump and MAGA wants and the response from Europe's political leadership has been a genteel, refined, well-bred, exquisitely credentialed version of a toddler throwing themselves on the floor and screaming because you asked them to put on their own trousers.
The response from Europe's political leadership for the general current situation, ever since 2022, has been steadily hiking up defense expenditure. Despite this being presumably exactly what Trump wants, this hasn't led to a positive change in American attitudes, to say the least.
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Make no mistake, 'MAGA' wants EU states to 'contribute more to NATO' aka flow more capital into (mostly) American arms manufacturers. They don't want Europe that unilaterally decides to stop letting American planes use their airspace to, for example, bomb Iran whenever they want. Big difference. Not to say that Europe would prefer either in its current state. They would rather close their eyes and pretend it's 2007 again and it's all sunshine and rainbows.
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I will also just add that while I myself have made the point that a strong (and especially unified) Europe is not in American interests – and I think the US has acted in ways cognizant of this – to be fair to the US, it has consistently asked its NATO allies to step up to the plate and spend more on defense. SecDef Gates was EXTREMELY pointed about this! So it's not like the US is suddenly rug pulling Europe, they've been ignoring increasingly pointed US complaints about the state of their armed forces going back to the Clinton administration.
I think (from the US POV) there's a sweet spot where Europe is strong enough to deter Russia and not strong enough to meaningfully threaten the United States, but it seems like we've somehow instead found ourselves in a weird spot where Europe might not be strong enough to meaningfully threaten Russia and is desperately casting about for ways to deter the United States.
I'm self-aware enough to admit that a strong, muscular Europe would probably also annoy me, if in different ways. But it's hard to imagine it would be less pleasant to look at than the current version of a suicidal Europe that hates itself - not even for it's sins, but most of all for it's former muscular virtues!
It's like watching your dad mainline MSNBC until he looks like Rosie O'Donnell.
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The problem is that we don’t have undisputed control of two continents and loads of homeland shale. The closest we can get to energy security is diversifying our in-flows and buying from people who don’t like each other to keep prices down and make it hard to cut us off and this is what the US has been determined to prevent.
Personally I am cynical enough to think that the US is quite happy with gas dependence as long as we’re dependent on the right country, viz. the US, but that’s by the by.
Diversification is good, but really it's just "don't become dependent on Russia" specifically. I bet the US would probably be upset if Europe became dependent on Chinese hydrocarbons too, but they don't export much of that so it's not an issue. Buying from Azerbaijan or Kuwait or KSA is all mostly fine. They're authoritarian, but have much less leverage to blackmail large concessions compared to Russia, and also far less likely to have diverging core interests. Buying from nations other than Russia will be a little bit more expensive but it's worth it in the long run.
EU countries could also put a bigger emphasis on renewables and nuclear too. They're better than the US there, but still haven't pursued it nearly as far as they could have.
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