Six Major Trends of Global Geopolitical Realignment

Global Center of Gravity

There are six major trends contributing to the decline of the United States’ superpower status and its weakening Western European and Pacific Rim alliances that will shift the geopolitical center of gravity away from Washington and London towards the Eurasian “world island” capitals of Moscow and Beijing, and potentially Berlin.

The more financial analysts are made aware of the competing sea power-versus-land power geopolitical strategies of the major powers along and their secondary and tertiary allies, the more they will glean predictive power from conflict and instability patterns in the Eurasian coastal periphery and chokepoints and shift investment resources more effectively.

Six Major Trends of Realignment

First are the two-in-one overarching primary trends of “technology and population growth over deep time” as discussed by Nobel Laureate Robert Fogel. Since the population growth in the developing world is logarithmic, the two secondary trends are the mass migration of the developed world’s manufacturing sectors to the undeveloped countries in search of cheap labor, in conjunction with the mass migration of people from the undeveloped world to the de-industrializing (or post-industrial) First World liberal democracies seeking a better life in the socialized-welfare states.

The three most significant effects of these overarching primary and secondary trends are that the world is (a) headed toward a global wage-labor equilibrium, (b) the equilibrium point is necessarily plummeting as population growth vastly outpaces global job growth, resulting in massive portions of the population coming in below the current subsistence level, and (c) global income disparity climbing as the developed world de-industrializes, destroying the middle class that is the chief characteristic of a liberal democracy.

Secondly, the effects of cheap Russian oil and natural gas delivered via pipeline are likely to shift Ambassador George Kennan’s original Amero-centric Five Industrial Power Center “sea power” concept to a Russo-centric Six Industrial Power Center “land power”-dominant one in the near future.

The post-Mahan and Mackinder sea power-versus-land power grand strategy constitutes the competing geopolitical strategic plans of the major powers, which is manifested in the intensifying US-NATO coalition versus the Russia, Iran, and Chinese coalition. The current overt diplomatic rows, proxy wars, and covert conflicts in every coastal periphery area of Eurasia are consistent with the strategies of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard (1997).

Thirdly, the shift away from the petrodollar to purchase energy will increase as the US sanctions against Russia, beginning after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, will compel countries to move towards bilateral and multilateral Ruble-based exchanges for the purchase of oil, natural gas via pipeline, and LNG. The actualization of this trend will reduce the economic influence of the US and make servicing the US National Debt more difficult, which may drive dollar inflation.

Fourthly, the Chinese effort to (a) link East Asia to Western Europe by railways, highways, and pipelines by developing its Silk Road overland initiative as a “land power” counter-strategy in response to the US “sea power” strategy of dominating the world’s key maritime chokepoints and rivers, in conjunction with its (b) Belt and Road Initiative’s construction of ports, railways, highways, and pipelines across the Indian Ocean and Pacific, mitigates US “sea power,” disrupting dollar-centric global trade and finance.

Fifthly, the traditional Christian conservative ruling classes in the West have been eclipsed by the new ruling coalition of the Neoconservatives in league with the Neoliberal Left and the Green Left, who hold in common a desire for bigger government, either in the form of larger militaries or larger welfare states.

However, despite their alignment towards expanding governmental power, these three groups are ultimately cross-purpose. Unlike the Neocons, the Neoliberal Left and the Green Left are fiercely anti-fossil fuel and pro-deindustrialization, being instead in favor of renewable energy forms, which they erroneously believe can replace coal and natural gas delivered by pipeline to power energy-intensive processes such as metallurgy, mass manufacturing, and fertilizer production. What’s more, the Left aims to achieve a socialized welfare state utopia, while simultaneously reducing the affordable energy generated by fossil fuels, rendering them at cross-purpose.

These two forms of Leftism are ultimately incompatible with both each other and the Neocon factions in the US and UK that want the US to remain as the sole superpower because as Bismarck and Clausewitz discussed, military and diplomatic power are based on industrial strength. The Neocons ultimately cannot support a reduction of industrial power if they are to achieve the goal of remaining the sole global superpower, and so will be forced into political conflict with the Neoliberals and Green Left with little or no room for compromise.

Sixthly, this ruling coalition of the Neocons, Neoliberals, and the Green Left, are destined to clash as the US National Debt rapidly approaches the $35 trillion “high inflationary” mark, and the $40 trillion “rampant inflationary” mark. The interest on the US debt already surpasses the entire Department of Defense budget, and within a few years will eclipse the budgets of more and more executive branch law enforcement and social service agencies.

The Neocons will be forced to resist all cuts to military and intelligence budgets because they want to remain the sole global superpower. Meanwhile, the Neoliberals and the Green Left will resist any cuts to social services because they measure progress in Fabian Socialist terms: attaining socialism by the incremental expansion of socialized welfare services.

The common bond between the three entities is that they are enamored with big government and the belief in modern monetary theory. The problem is that modern monetary theory is dependent on the use of the dollar outside of the US to purchase oil and gas, stemming from the petrodollar agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia in 1973, and its adoption by OPEC in 1975.

However, more and more countries are paying in foreign currencies, and since the 2022 US sanctions on Russia, more countries are now enmeshed in various bilateral Ruble exchanges, Japan being the latest with South Korea following suit and buying hydrocarbons from Vladivostok. This is likely to continue because energy costs are becoming unaffordable without Russian oil and natural gas supplies, and in the event of a Sino-American war, South Korea and Japan would be cut off from Middle Eastern energy supplies as well as Malay-Indonesian region energy supplies via Malacca.

In other words, America’s two biggest Pacific Asian allies are already making moves to integrate with Russian energy sources which makes it unlikely that they will go to war against China on behalf of the US. The evidence for the validity of the Russian oil and natural gas domino theory discussed in other papers in the Geopolitical Realignment series (available on G3Insights.com), is steadily increasing.

Sea Power-Versus-Land Power Strategic Plans

The West’s animus toward Russian energy integration with the industrial power centers of the German World and Slavic World in Central Europe; with India at the Indian Ocean via the International North-South Trade Corridor (INSTC) through Iran; and with China (Belt and Road and Silk Road), South Korea (Korean Peninsula Pipeline Project), and Japan (Abe-Putin Sakhalin-Hokkaido tunnel project of 2016) is best viewed as a continuation of the Great Game initiated in the 1700s.

As Nicolas Spykman wrote in America’s Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (Yale 1944), and John Lewis Gaddis’ wrote in Strategies of Containment (Yale/Oxford 1982), the Anglosphere has always played a coastal periphery containment strategy against the interior “heartland”. That tradition was followed by Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard (1997), and from this thought lineage the United States’ strategic plans as a continuation of Anglo-centric seapower dominance can be understood.

As NATO raced to expand to the Russian border to block all Russian seaports, pipelines, railways, and highways to Europe, the US engaged in proxy battles in Iran, Pakistan, and Myanmar, as well as trying to diplomatically prevent or slow development on all Russian and Chinese infrastructure projects in the Pacific and ASEAN countries. Ultimately, the plan will more than likely backfire as the Pacific Rim and ASEAN countries sour to being used as pawns in a Neocon proxy war. It would not be surprising if ASEAN countries continue the effort of Ho Chi Minh and chase the US and UK sea powers away from Eastern Asia.

Since global geopolitical realignment can be forecast in terms of the fusion of geopolitical PMESII-DIME modeling (Political, Military, Economic, Infrastructural, Informational and Diplomatic, Infrastructural, Military, and Economic, Infrastructural) and SWOT modeling (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat) analysts in the energy and financial sectors can subscribe to G3Insights for more predictive power in their assessments.