Michael Grossmann, managing partner at Tumbleweed Partners, noted in a commentary to Energy Club after the talk show: "Before 1914, the accepted wisdom was that war in Europe would be impossible because the economies of Europe's empires and the Ottoman one were too interdependent and that it would lead to economic catastrophe. Likewise, Germany's Östpolitik since Willy Brandt and all the way to Angela Merkel was to engage with the USSR/Russia to reduce the risk of war and of course to benefit Germany's economy. If this aggression should teach Europeans one thing, it is that autocratic Russia thinks differently from them, just as Wilhelm II's autocratic Germany thought differently over 100 years ago. Far from making autocratic countries less aggressive and more prosperity-minded, trade with these countries only creates dependence".