@slimboyfat: the Nordstream 2 pipeline was stopped by Trump and Senator Cruz, Biden removed the restriction on Russia and Germany finishing it on day 3 of his administration, Russia invaded 12 months later with the glut of cash they had gotten off Germany’s Energiewende (they converted everything to wind and solar, reduced or eliminated reliance on French nuclear power and then went and begged Russia for oil so they wouldn’t freeze in winter).
The things you learned about the Marshall plan was apparent propaganda. Neither story is completely true, it doesn’t make sense that business would be better being taxed to pay for the rebuilding of Europe only to then get a trickle of that tax money back in international business. The Marshall plan allowed Europe and Japan to put in massive trade restrictions actually, 100% tariffs while the US was bound not to have tarrifs in return, that led to the Japanese car and electronics boom in the US starting in the 60s, the Europeans focused elsewhere while depending on the US for protection. They had all the leverage to export and closed their import markets to US trade.
The primary goal of the plan was to stand against future issues, when your country is in rubble, it is easy to get someone like Hitler back in power or someone like Stalin to just roll over the ruins, that was clearly stated along the way by many of those involved, they didn’t want the US to keep getting involved in future European issues and it worked to some extent, too well as socialists took advantage of the generosity to fund their utopian agendas. And you can clearly see that after the war, the US elected a series of weak presidents afraid to enforce the power they had, leading to Korean and Vietnam wars, domestically resulting in the hippie movement and Black Panthers and the Weather Underground.