Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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That depends on who you think 'we' are, and who 'our' economy refers to, and what an alliance entails in terms of from others to you, but from you to others.
In the case of Nordstream, for example, it was not European infrastructure in a political sense- it was German-Russian infrastructure project series, built over the objection of European partners, only stalled due to organized Anglo-European lobbying against German interest groups and German government positions which prioritized German economic self-interest over the economic and security concerns of a number of their eastern neighbors. It was an extension of an economic dependence to a power who would- just as predicted by the warning of Germany's allies which were repeatedly disregarded- attempt to blackmail the German economy to the European detriment. And it was one which the Germans- even when aided by the warnings of allies- was unable to defend, but relied on other parties to ignore even if doing so came at the expense of their own interests and to german benefit, even though the Germans were not allies (and were shaping their policy on the basis of the Russian blackmail to Russian benefit vis-a-vis Ukraine).
If one wants to apply a bad-ally model, this would beg the question of who the bad ally up for consideration is: the Ukrainians being a bad ally to the Germans and Europeans, or the Germans being a bad ally to the Europeans and Ukrainians. It's not as if the Germans were ignorant of the history of Russian gas-coercion against European Union members when they were investing in Nord Stream, which would have had the effect of negating German costs, and thus inherent alignment with their European allies if the Russians did so again in the future (as they ended up doing).
That the German economic model at the heart of Europe was dependent on what was functionally a subsidized Russian export scheme to cultivate influence was never a secret, and neither were the consequences if that link of subsidized gas broke.
Ultimately, international relations is anarchy, and anarchy sucks. It's not masochism to endure it, it's that it doesn't suck less if you break off connections with people who don't prioritize you over their own interests even as you do the same to them.
I think an alliance more-or-less entails long-term mutual support, which in practice usually requires some distance. Britain and Portugal have been allies for 900 years, Britain and Japan have usually got on pretty well. Likewise Britain and Australia. It is fundamentally different from vassalage (support from a superior power in exchange for obedience from a lesser one) and mutual cooperation (countries who pursue their own competing interests but cooperate on occasion).
Almost no countries in the EU are allies, except of convenience, and I find the constant desire to pretend otherwise tiresome. Britain's politicians fawn over every foreign connection they can find, our newspaper write stirring paeans to the bravery of Ukranian troops who we basically treat as meat-shields and who would in turn butcher us all if they thought it would help against Russia, and we just tank knife after knife in the back with a smile on our face.
Allies of convenience are still allies, and expecting others to pretend otherwise based on one's own unique definitions of what an alliance is / is not is certainly a position one can take, but it's also one that will be continually doomed to disappointment. Particularly if the criticism comes from a position dripping with historical irony- there are reasons Perfidious Albion is and has been an international relations meme for centuries. (Centuries longer than the last British-Japanese war even, which makes that appeal an interesting example of alliance-compatible behavior.)
If common understanding of alliances breaks with your convictions of what an alliance fundamentally should be... swell! Such a standard also means there is no moral injury deserving sympathy over the violation of a standard that never applied. If long-term mutual support on the time frame of centuries is required for there to be an alliance, then countries that have not existed as independent polities in their current form for even 50 years will never be able to be bad allies. Being a bad ally is conditional on being an ally, after all.
But it does undercut the earlier criticism of Ukraine's actions as being those of a bad ally, as the new standards of alliance and allies puts even less onus on the Ukrainians of having committed any sort of immoral action for you to be aghast over. After all, what was targeted was not 'our' infrastructure, but the infrastructure of non-allies by not-allies that was being leveraged against the interests of other not-allies, both in the immediate context and for years/decades prior.
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