The future of energy will ultimately determine geopolitical alliances. It is energy production and distribution costs that determine pricing which is reflect

The Role of Energy in Geopolitical Realignment: The Significance of the Low Cost of Natural Gas in the Post-Mackinder Global Grand Strategies.

The future of energy will ultimately determine geopolitical alliances. It is energy production and distribution costs that determine pricing which is reflected throughout the several stages of the economic process.

The three major areas of the economic process are a) the extraction of raw materials, b) fashioning them into consumer products and c) distributing them to the consumer who also takes part in the production and distribution feedback loop processes.

Since energy is a key factor in all three phases in every sector, it is energy availability and pricing that determine the gross national product (GNP), living standards, and mitigation of cost-push, demand-pull, and inflationary pressures. 

In the present case, since the efficacy of renewable energy sources is still several years off—if at all feasible—the future of geopolitical alliances between sea powers and land powers boils down to the low cost of extracting and distributing natural gas (NATGAS) overland via pipelines as the basis of “land power” infrastructural, economic, diplomatic and military (DIME Analysis) alliances in contrast to the much higher costs of liquified natural gas (LNG) shipped by sea powers as a counter strategy of supporting allies.

It is important to place the relationship of natural gas shipped by pipeline versus LNG energy forms and costs in terms of the “land power vs sea power” and “heartland versus coastal rimland” global Grand Strategies of Mahan, Mackinder, Ratzel, Haushofer, Spykman, Kennan, Gaddis, Brzezinski and Wolfowitz thought lineage so the nexus of this area of international relations can be explained to an ‘energy’ audience.

It is the author’s experience that the vast majority of people are unaware of the canon of great power international relations theories that began at West Point with Alfred Thayer Mahan in the 1890s and Oxford with Halford Mackinder in 1898 prior to World War One and gravitated to Princeton, Columbia, Yale, Harvard and the Naval War College in Newport prior to World War Two.

With Donald Kagan and Nicholas Spykman teaching at Yale in the 1940s, it is Yale that has focused on this area of study more than the other universities with the exception of Oxford in the United Kingdom.  US Foreign policy has been based on this curriculum since World War Two, through to the Cold War and the present period, yet few people are familiar with this thought lineage. (GWOT regime-change destabilization strategies)

From this background, it was Ambassador George Kennan in 1947 in his famous “long telegram” that operationalized the land power versus sea power strategies by the nominal counting of the world’s major Industrial Power Centers of each region of the world and deciphering whether they were in the Western “pro-democratic” alliance or the Eastern communist alliance.

The trick was to get as many industrial powers into the Western Democratic camp and away from the Communist camp, and secondly to divide and conquer the Communist camp.

The early “Five Industrial Power Center” framework of Kennan’s “long telegram” from Moscow in 1947 and his later anonymous “X article” in Foreign Affairs in 1950 argued that to maximize North America’s sea power advantage and two ocean geostrategic defense strategy it would be in America’s best interest to quickly rebuild Japan and Korea in the Pacific as well as France and Germany in Western Europe and keep them in the Western Democratic camp.

The idea was to coalesce the industrial power centers of North America with both Western Europe and the Pacific Rim as a means of continuing the Great Game of Britain to hem in Russia at its only three ports of St. Petersburg, Sevastopol, and Vladivostok, where St. Peterburg is naturally contained in the Baltic, as Sevastopol is trapped inside the Black Sea and Vladivostok is blocked-in by the Japanese Island chain.

In this sense, the Grand Strategies took the naturally occurring “Great Game” of preventing Russia from gaining a warm water port and codified it in more rigorously deliberate sea power versus land power and heartland versus coastal rimland geostrategies.

And of course, the strategies shifted as Stalin supported Mao Ze Dong’s defeat of Chiang Kai Shek in the late 1940s which concluded with Shek fleeing to the Island of Formosa in 1950.

The US developed the Marshal Plan to rebuild the industrial capacities of Western Europe and Japan as a means of operationalizing Spykman’s coastal rimland strategy to surround both the Soviet Union and China as a means on all sides to “contain the spread of communism” while also trying to incite divisions among Russia and China as Stalin treated Mao like a vastly junior partner.

The Five Power Center strategies (in slightly evolving forms) became the basis of Eisenhower’s “roll back strategy” as an answer to the domino theory that emerged with the advance of Ho Chi Minh from Southern China in Vietnam and Laos in the 1950s.

This inspired Kennedy’s “flexible response” to stop the spread of Communism into the coastal rimland areas of SE Asia during the French Indochinese War that escalated into the Vietnam War which became the bane of Johnson’s and Nixon’s presidencies. 

The idea of controlling the coastal rimland countries has always been to contain Communism by landlocking them to the extent possible by blocking all of the Soviet Union’s ports while also controlling the first Pacific Island chain to the extent possible to strangle China’s economy in the event of a war. 

Sea Power versus Land Powers and Coastal Rimland versus Heartland Strategies

While times have changed the land power versus sea power and the heartland versus coastal rimland strategies have remained a constant in terms that the United States and the United Kingdom.

The United States and the United Kingdon still actively pursue the sea power strategies to a) control the coastal rimland areas of Eurasia, b) divide the Soviet Union/The Russian Federation and China from integrating among themselves by agitating ethnic tensions in Central Asia (i. e. Operation Cyclone), and c) keep Russia and China from integrating with heartland (e. g. Germany) or coastal rimland countries (e. g. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar). 

While the US and UK are clinging to the Sea Power versus Land Power Grand Strategies, this will become increasingly more difficult due to the rise of the Russian and Chinese economies and the immense availability of oil, natural gas, and minerals throughout Eurasia.

The abundance of petroleum and mineral resources in the current Russian Federation and the Central Asian ‘stans, coupled with the rise of China as both a land power connected to Central and South East Asia as well as being a Pacific Rim Coastal Rimland sea power with an expanding naval capability, combine to create a synergy that could shift the global political center of gravity from Washington and London to Moscow and Beijing. 

Several things are of concern on this topic and are explained in detail in other writings, but what is important in this paper is that China began the transition back to a market economy via a series of reforms in the 1980s while communism was rejected in Eastern Europe in the 1990s as discussed by Francis Fukuyama (The End of History and the Last Man (1994).

Since this time period, the Russian Federation, the oil and natural gas-rich Central Asian ‘stans and China have been steadily developing their own political economies while partnering in oil and natural gas pipeline and railway projects in a land power heartland geopolitical strategy to counter the US/UK/Five Eyes/EU/NATO sea power coastal rimland strategies.

In short, ‘if’ the US/UK pursues a divide-and-conquer containment strategy ‘then’ the game theoretic response is for Russia and China to pursue an overland logistical supply line (DIME) integration strategy combined with a break-out strategy. 

Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact—Controlling the Polish Plains above the Carpathians and the Bessarabian Plains below the Carpathians

 The modern infrastructural integration strategy of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries began in the 1980s by extending their oil and natural gas pipelines from East Germany to West Germany.

While the United States undermined this integration, it reemerged during the 1990s and became the nucleus of Russia’s land power “heartland” strategy of using the low-cost advantage of delivering oil and natural gas via pipeline into Eastern, Central, and Western Europe. The idea is to connect the energy-rich Russia with the Industrial powerhouses of Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Austria. 

Likewise, the further development of Russia’s immense oil and natural gas field in the Far East is to align Russia in the heartland of Eurasia with the coastal rimland industrial powers of Japan, South Korea, China, and India with an eye on incorporating the ASEAN countries of Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam into the Russo-Chinese orbit as well.

To understand this, all one has to do is monitor the development of Russia’s oil and natural gas fields in the Far East and construct the Power of Siberia 1 pipeline network to Beijing and Shanghai in China, as well as develop the petroleum fields in the Arctic, Vladivostok and Sakhalin Island regions that could be linked by pipeline to Japan and eventually South Korea also.

A key aspect of this eventuality that is explicated in specific papers on the Russo-centric “Six Power Center Strategy” and global “Nine Power Center Strategy” course of action models is that Russia has been and is pursuing a series of bilateral agreements with all the coastal powers in Eurasia.

Russia has indeed been pursuing a series of bilateral agreements from Germany to India, China, South Korea, and Japan despite the age-old rivalries in East Asia. Naysayers often remark that the East Asian countries are rivals and will not form a cooperative bloc, which is probably true, but that is not how competitive game theory works.

Since natural gas delivered via pipeline is the cheapest and most efficient form of energy, any country that links to Russian and Central Asian natural gas via pipeline will have a distinct cost advantage in transforming raw materials into finished consumer products and delivering them to the global markets than countries that cannot.

Currently, China is linked to Russian oil and natural gas fields via the Power of Siberia 1 pipeline, which is in a constant state of expansion and extension to more petroleum fields inside the Russian Far East, but a Power of Siberia 2 pipeline structure from the Yamal fields to Urumqi will probably occur in a decade. The idea is to link all the Arctic oil and gas fields to a common pipeline in the Ulaanbaatar area and send the petroleum overland to the Beijing area.

This ongoing project places Japan and South Korea at an impending disadvantage in one sense, but in another sense the Sakhalin Island petroleum fields have been in operation for several years sitting a mere 25 miles from the North end of Hokkaido Island, Japan.

It seems conceivable that Japan can link to Russian natural gas via an undersea pipeline relatively easily since the Nordstream pipelines were under the Baltic Sea for a far longer distance albeit in shallower water.

If an undersea pipeline was laid between Sakhalin and Hokkaido Islands that would leave South Korea out of the Russian oil and natural gas integration scheme, but alas, Putin and other high-ranking officials have been visiting Kim Jong Un in North Korea recently in September and October of 2023.

While the Western media touted this as evidence that Russia was running out of artillery ammunition and was trying to secure and supply from North Korea, one has to wonder if a pipeline through North Korea to South Korea was also discussed. The reality is that it is highly unlikely that it was not discussed.

In short, Russia's objective is not to form a cohesive bloc but to produce a domino theory of game theoretic responses among rivals. Each industrial power will want cheap energy to remain price competitive on the world markets. They need not be friends. They just need to stay out of a shooting war with each other and not be used as proxies like the Hmong, Montagnards, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Ukrainians.

Pipelines and Petrodollars—The Anxiety of the Anglosphere

And here is the mounting problem for the Anglosphere—the more that Russia integrates with the Coastal Rimland industrial power centers the more that the global political center of gravity shifts towards Moscow and the more likely the major industrial powers abandon the petrodollar and shift to the Ruble.

In this increasingly likely scenario, one would have to ask how the US's enormous $34 Trillion in national debt would be financed.

For instance, if Russia and Germany were to infrastructurally integrate with the cheap natural gas delivered overland through the pipelines flowing through Belarus to Poland and Ukraine, or the Nordstream (Baltic) and Southstream (Black Sea) pipelines into Europe, then it is likely that the heavy and consumer products industries of the German World would have a significant cost reduction making their products more competitive on the global markets. The world loves German cars, optics, and upscale appliances.

If this “Ratzel” or “Haushofer” integration were allowed to occur, the end would be an integrated Russo-German World that would encompass the Slavic Danube River Valley countries. The concern is that eventually Germany would pay in Rubles and exit the petrodollar trading system taking ten other countries with them.

In this scenario, one can see that if Germany itself exited the petrodollar, and its pipeline network is already connected to the rest of Europe in both directions, then it would not just be Germany that would be exiting the petrodollar, but the entire German World along the Danube River Valley. In this scenario the Slavic World along the Danube River Valley would likely follow as many of them have been linked to Russian natural gas since the days of the Warsaw Pact and are not happy with the current state of affairs with rising energy costs and lowered living standards.

With the AFD gaining ground in Germany and Robert Fico winning the elections in Slovakia it will be interesting to see what happens in Central Europe this Winter when the Europeans have to buy expensive Western LNG in lieu of cheap Russian natural gas. The increased cost of energy is likely to push inflation rates and reduce living standards as people have less money to spend on other things.

Under these circumstances, in order to maintain the relevance of the petrodollar advantages in supporting the $34 trillion dollar debt burden, and to keep the global political center of gravity from shifting from the US and UK to Germany and Russia, or to Germany, Russia and China, the US and UK must: a) prevent the cheap natural gas from getting to an end user in Europe that could then transfer it to the rest of the European pipeline network; and b) stop them from eventually exiting the petrodollar and paying in Rubles.

This example explains the US and UK petroleum pipeline overt policies and covert activities since the early 1980s as the Druzhba pipeline was extended from East Germany to West Germany by Deutsche Bank President Alfred Herrhausen.

Alfred Herrhausen was subsequently assassinated by an explosively formed penetration (EFP) device in 1989. This very sophisticated assassination was attributed to the Red Army Faction at the time. 

Inductive and Deductive Reasoning in Geopolitics

From this scenario of the Russo-centric “Six Power Center Strategy” applied to Western Europe one can understand the situation in East Asia as well.

As has been discussed, petroleum products, especially natural gas, can be delivered much cheaper over pipelines than any other form of energy delivery and is therefore a distinct land power heartland advantage in terms of Mackinder’s terminology.

Since energy availability is the basis of an Industrial economy it is the core element of the “Instruments of National Power” measurement models of DIME (Diplomatic, Infrastructure, Military, and Economic) and PMESII (Political, Military, Economic, Social, Informational, and Infrastructural) power and influence capability measures. Energy is therefore the essence of the Geopolitical Grand Strategies.

Russia has immense oil and natural gas reserves from the Caspian Sea to the entire Arctic range and the Pacific Ocean; while the CIS countries of the Central Asian ‘stans also have immense oil and gas reserves as well stretching from the petroleum-rich Caspian Sea area to the mineral-rich mountain ranges of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan.

It is this availability stretched across such a vast East-to-West expanse that makes it feasible for the Russian Federation, in combination with the Caspian Sea countries and Central Asian ‘stans, to supply most of the energy and mineral needs of all the Coastal rimland countries and exit the petrodollar. It is this capability that not only threatens the petrodollar trading scheme but the current aging Cold War Five Power Center alliances as well.

If anyone wonders why Secretary of State Blinken visited Astana recently and placed an effort in Kazakhstan this is why. If the Russian Federation and the Central Asian ‘stans integrate with Russia and China then it essentially means energy security and low prices for all of Asia.

The Indian Subcontinent and the International North-South Trade Corridor (INSTC)

This looming reality even gets worse when one considers India as an emerging Industrial power center with a population of 1.7 billion people.

In this scenario, if Russia had a series of bilateral agreements with China, Japan, and South Korea to feed their industrial facilities with cheap natural gas delivered via pipeline, that would leave India lagging behind.

As is well known, the “TAPI” pipeline connecting Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India has been held up for decades due to the age-old ethnic, religious, and ideological rivalries that the region is famous for.

This situation has compelled India and Iran to develop a workaround by constructing the deep water Chabahar port outside of the Strait of Hormuz which now only needs the completion of a 500-kilometer railroad extension from the port to Khash, which is already connected to the railway network in Zahedan.

This port and railway project would connect India to the entire Iranian network which is already connected to the old Soviet railway system that has already been radically upgraded in the Chinese Silk Road Initiative.

Due to the Chinese Silk Road and larger scale Belt and Road Initiatives, the last missing links needed to complete an integrated Eurasian railway network are now down to a measly 500 KM rail line connector from Khash to Chabahar in the Sistan-Baluchistan province of Iran that borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This 500 KM long rail line connector is the last missing piece to complete the International North-South Trade Corridor needed to include India in Russia’s Six Power Center Strategy.

It is apparent by watching news videos from New Delhi that the US is desperately trying to prevent India from engaging in the INSTC as much as possible since the fall of Afghanistan in August of 2021.

The Indians are irate since the US and UK not only funded the Sunni Wahhabi Pashtun during the 1980s under the banner of the “Mujahideen” but trained and equipped them again under the banner of the “Taliban.” The Indian media and government are still furious at the present US administration. 

Shifting the Global Political Center of Gravity via Bilateral Agreements

It is this series of infrastructural realities of Russia potentially aligning with Western Europe, India, China, South Korea, Japan, and the SE Asian countries that would shift economic and political power towards Moscow as each one of the numerous pipeline, port, railway and highway infrastructural projects are completed by each Eurasian country with their neighbors. Multilateral deals are not essential.

One needs to understand that at the same time as Russia and China are advancing their economies and infrastructural projects Wall Street and the City of London have been steadily offshoring manufacturing facilities and jobs since the 1980s and recently have been deindustrializing under the urgings of the Leftist climate change idealists.

The strategy of massively offshoring manufacturing to China to bring them into the Pacific Rim and Western orbits since the “ping pong diplomacy” of the Nixon and Kissinger years, and accelerated during the 1990s, has immensely backfired since the 2000s. The US now needs to bring back strategic industries which takes a decade or so to ramp up both the infrastructure and a trained workforce that is used to working with each other.

China, trying to avenge its “century of humiliation,” has pursued a mercantilist drive towards autarky and a balance between trading with the West and its Asian neighbors as it wants to nearshore all critical fuel and food staples.

China has read the sea power versus land power Grand Strategies as well and is careful to avoid maritime encirclement by the US Navy in the East Indies and the first island chain of the Pacific. China realizes that its’ fuel imports can be cut off at the key maritime chokepoints during a time of conflict and has vigorously pursued alternative sources and delivery infrastructure since the 2014 Euromaidan color revolution.

To conclude this paper, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the greed of Wall Street and the City of London to increase quarterly profits by offshoring manufacturing jobs during the 1980s, combined with the rise of the Left Wing climate change idealists of further deindustrializing the West and ceasing fossil fuel extraction and distribution capacities, in combination with ridiculous debt to Gross National Product ratios to “transform America” towards a welfare state, are combining to create a perfect storm of economic and financial vulnerabilities.

Adding a trillion dollars a year to the cumulative national debt cannot go on forever and is creating a situation where a shift of global alliances around Russian and Central Asian natural gas is inevitable. 

In conclusion to this paper, the author uses a “Nine Power Center Strategic Model” to monitor elections in the nine power centers of the US, UK, France, Germany, India, China, South Korea, and Japan, as well as the minor powers in each region, to see how the energy sector will change alliances during the Winter, especially if a war in the Middle East closes down the key maritime chokepoints in the key coastal regions.

Editor's Note: Originally Published October of 2023; Updated and Republished February of 2024.

Zbynek Burival Grmw Vn Vs Sd U Unsplash

As the Founder of the G3Strat Group, he combines business acumen with military precision to guide companies in risk resilience. With over a decade of experience, he has held multiple roles in security, intelligence, and training. His expertise includes risk assessment, national security, operational planning, and intelligence analysis.

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George McMillan

Founder and Head of Research

<h2>Introduction</h2><p>The future of energy will ultimately determine geopolitical alliances. It is energy production and distribution costs that determine pricing which is reflected throughout the several stages of the economic process.

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