When US President Donald Trump attacked Germany at the 2018 NATO summit for making itself completely dependent on Russia for energy supplies, Chancellor Angela Merkel reacted with condescending smugness.

Their diplomats spread the hypothesis that the Americans only wanted to get rid of their fracking gas.

That was perfidious.

America's presidents, regardless of political persuasion, were opposed to Russian gas supplies to Germany long before the US began exporting LNG in 2016.

Today Germany is again dependent on being hewn out of America.

Of all things, it is begging for the fracking gas that was categorized as an irresponsible climate poison by two of the three governing parties in politically more comfortable times.

The world is learning that Germany has not only outsourced its military security.

Rogue states are German energy suppliers

Germany is not the only country that has made its energy supply dependent on rogue states.

Saudi Arabia is a financier of Islamist terrorist groups and a loyal supplier of oil to many countries, not least the United States.

But Germany is among the few countries that are disclosing their options for greater independence at a moment when the bloody seriousness of dependency is becoming apparent.

No technocratic talk makes it morally justifiable to shut down safe nuclear power plants and leave shut down ones out of commission.

If they continue, gas deliveries from Russia can be reduced.

A responsible government would also immediately reassess Germany's unconventional natural gas reserves.

According to older estimates, the resources are sufficient to meet Germany's gas requirements for many years.

The energy suppliers would have to ask for it.

Nobody claims that this is a particularly gentle mining method.

But is it better if America flocs, liquefies the gas, ships across the Atlantic to a facility that turns it back into gas?

And please don't forget: the entire grand coalition made its peace with Russian gas, whose funding conditions make Russia one of the biggest climate sinners in the world.

Methane, which is particularly harmful to the climate, escapes from dilapidated pipelines and extraction sites under the benevolent ignorance of German politicians and that species of eco-fighters who have proven to be particularly determined climate protectors when it comes to the western energy giants.

The situation is forcing German politicians to grow up, and their observers to become self-critical.

Everyone is learning the lesson that trading in autocrats does not make them democrats, it gives them the tools to undermine democracies and attack countries.

"Change through trade" was put forward

One could have guessed that the "change through trade" thesis was advanced anyway, at the latest in 2014, when Russia conquered the Ukrainian Crimea.

It would have been the time for a strategic reorientation.

Instead, BASF, of all people, which is urgently dependent on gas supplies, gambled away the reserve caverns to the Gazprom group, which is proving to be a compliant instrument in Putin's expansion plans.

Now the caverns are almost empty and the astonishment doesn't even turn to anger.

At that time, all gas deliveries from Russia should have been questioned and a diversification strategy should have been initiated.

Nobody wanted that, because it would have involved admitting that the sacred energy transition was based on a scoundrel's supply monopoly.

Putin forces realpolitik.

Germany must regain the freedom to forego deliveries.

For this, regenerative energy must be further expanded.

The procurement of natural gas must be diversified.

Germany should help finance gas projects in Africa and contribute to a change of course in the World Bank and the IMF.

There, such projects are denied approval for climate policy reasons, while the West is currently increasing its climate footprint.

That's grotesque.

And finally, Germany should finally show openness to new technology.

In America, venture capital firms are funding small nuclear power plants, large batteries and systems that capture CO2 from the atmosphere.

There lies the future that Germany is once again in danger of missing out on.