George McMillan, Copyright © November 30, 2023/September 13, 2024
Cold War History of Soviet Oil and Natural Gas Pipelines
The indication that Russian oil and especially natural gas shipped by pipeline is the biggest threat to geopolitical realignment can be seen by the reaction of the United States as Russia began developing its oil and Gas fields in the Caspian, Ural, and Arctic regions in the 1950s and then began constructing pipelines to the Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern and Central Europe via the Druzbha Pipeline in the mid-1960s.
As anticipated, the logical extension of the pipelines would be to move them through the Warsaw Pact countries and onto Italy in Southern Europe, as well as into neutral German-speaking Austria where it could be transported to the neutral German-speaking countries of Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Southern Germany via the Southern branch of the Druzhba Pipeline and from Poland to East Germany and on to West Germany via the Northern branch of the Druzhba pipeline.
Following Mahan’s differentiation of “production” and “wealth,” petroleum “production” does not become “wealth” until it is traded for goods that a country needs for further economic development but does not produce. In this case, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union wanted convertible Western currencies to purchase technical equipment and machine tools from the West so they could reverse-engineer them and catch up in terms of economic know-how and dual-use capabilities.
“Russia Will Freeze Europeans and Invade Europe”
The West always put forth the narrative that the Soviet Union could blackmail Western Europe by shutting off the pipelines during the Winter. But that threat diminishes when one considers that if the Western countries maintain the minimum three-month strategic petroleum reserve as they are supposed to, then they would have plenty of time to buy energy supplies elsewhere, albeit at a higher price. So why are they discouraged from buying as much oil and natural gas as they can at a lower price?
The reason why the US is so strongly opposed to its Western European allies buying cheaper Russian oil and natural gas via pipeline lies in the logic of the “Instruments of National Power;” that is, the way a nation’s “power” is measured. The two primary measures are PMESII and DIME SWOT analysis, i.e. Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructural, and Informational (PMESII), or the shorter Diplomatic, Infrastructural/Informational, Military and Economic (DIME) measure of effectiveness in terms of Strengths, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat (SWOT) symmetrical and asymmetrical response analysis.
While the acronyms are sequenced to create the best pneumonic device for the sake of memory, the behavioral reality is that humans always employ “armed guards” to protect their investments. It is known from Solow-Swan economic growth models that infrastructural investment and integration promote economic integration and expansion culminating in enhanced diplomatic and military armed alliances.
After 1973, when the US and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) left the Bretton Woods gold standard and shifted to the floating petrodollar system after the Yom Kippur War, an additional concern arose that the US wanted to maintain the petrodollar trading scheme. Since the 1973 Petrodollar was agreed to by the US and the KSA, and OPEC accepted the arrangement in 1975, the US always relied on the global petrodollar demand to finance its yearly budget deficits.
It might have taken a few decades, but since the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in 2001, the US budget deficits have risen from $5 trillion to almost $35 trillion. It appears that as the US national debt rises the more important the external use and demand of the US dollar externalizes inflation to the rest of the world as opposed to being realized domestically. It is the external use and demand of the US petrodollar trading scheme that has so far prevented the US from experiencing Weimar Republic-style inflation. But of course, this can change.
The Post-Reagan Budget Deficits
After the increases in national debt during the Reagan administration and the profligate spending in the post-GWOT Bush and Obama administrations, the original reason for the US to prevent its European allies from buying cheap Russian oil and natural gas shifted beyond the initial “DIME” concerns to the potentially catastrophic mass exodus of its allies from using the “petrodollar” in their energy purchases.
Since 2023, the US has approximately $35 trillion in accumulated debt, plus three or four times that in unfunded social service mandates and future pension liabilities, this makes the US petrodollar aspect even more paramount.
As mentioned in a previous article, and as will be restated in future articles in this series, there is no way the US can (a) allow cheap oil and natural gas from Russia to be shipped to any ally in Europe or the Pacific Rim, and then (b) allow the end user to pay directly in rubles, cutting out the Wall Street middle man thereby exiting the petrodollar system and paying in other currencies.
The US—to maintain its Superpower status and avoid Weimar Republic-style inflation—must focus on preventing (a) its allies from infrastructural “DIME” integration from occurring and (b) its allies from paying in non-dollars.
The US/UK/NATO Global Political Center of Gravity Counter Strategy of the 1990s
The US depends on maintaining Western Europe as an ally on the Atlantic side, and Japan and South Korea as allies on the Pacific side, to keep the global economic and political center of gravity in Washington and London. The more one understands the “DIME” national power sequence in conjunction with the Five Power Center Doctrine of George Kennan (see John Lewis Gaddis’s “Strategies of Containment,” 1982) the more one will realize this necessity.
The alternative—had the US allowed Russian oil and natural gas to be delivered by pipeline to Western Europe since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s—is that the global political center of gravity would have shifted from a Washington and London center of gravity to a shared center of gravity with Berlin and Moscow. Had this option been chosen Beijing might have been somewhat isolated in this scenario.
However, this course of action was not chosen. Instead the US and UK, following the Mahan, Mackinder, Spykman, and Kennan Sea Power versus Landpower geopolitical thought lineage, decided to thwart Russian oil and natural gas delivery by pipeline to Western Europe at all costs which is the ongoing theme of the articles in this paper and slide set series.
The problem gets compounded that the post-Nixon effort to merge economies with China has not transformed China into a Western-style Liberal democracy as hoped for, as Communist China merely returned to its traditional Chinese Emperor and command economy concept of government.
As China’s economy has greatly expanded due to Wall Street and the City of London’s policies to steadily export their manufacturing base to China during the 1980s and 90s, China has become increasingly determined to end its “hundred years of humiliation” by the European Colonial Powers and has pursued its own Monroe Doctrine and push the US and UK out of the “first island chains” in the Pacific. The US and UK strategy to “coopt” China has backfired geopolitically as the financier class has benefited tremendously.
The US and UK have since increased their sea power maritime chokepoint strategy on both Russia and China and have returned to Kennan’s “five industrial power center strategy” to contain and separate Russia and China. However, it appears that this course reversal might be far too little and far too late. The US has compelled Russia and China to integrate instead. Since the political sabotage on the Southstream pipeline in the Black Sea in 2014 and the black operation sabotage of Nordstream in September of 2022, Russia has increased its effort to build its oil and natural gas pipelines to China, while China has increased in highway and railway pipeline infrastructural integration with Russia and the Central Asian “‘stans.”
The US has responded with a return to the Brzezinski-Turner Operation Cyclone-style proxy wars across all of Eurasia, as the US and UK increase their “encirclement sea power strategy,” which is met with a corresponding Russo-Sino energy infrastructure “integration and breakout” strategy. This series of “Russian Natural Gas and Global Political Realignment Strategy papers will be complemented by a corresponding Chinese overland logistical supply route geostrategic plan series of papers as well.
In its attempt to maintain its sole Superpower status by increasing its sea power maritime chokepoint strategies and “rimland” proxy wars across Eurasia, the United States is risking its financial well-being and that of its allies as Professors John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs, as well as many others, have been cautioning since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in opposition to EU and NATO Eastward expansion.
A war in the South China Sea could quite possibly create the conditions under which the US’s allies of the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan are all cut off from their Middle Eastern oil and LNG suppliers.
Faced with the choice of having an economic collapse due to the lack of energy supplies, and compounded by entering World War Three as US proxies against China, one should not be surprised if the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, one of all, decides not to participate, choosing to purchase Russian oil and natural gas from nearby Vladivostok and Sakhalin instead while completing the last segments of connecting pipelines. Why enter into World War Three and have one’s country destroyed like Ukraine if they can purchase energy from the nearby Russian Far East instead?
It appears that the Russo-Chinese strategy is to create the conditions under which the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan would (a) buy Russian oil and Natural Gas via pipelines, and (b) exit the petrodollar trading scheme and pay in Rubles. Any US counterstrategy to punish its Pacific Rim allies via economic sanctions would only drive up inflation in the US instead.
Types of Geopolitical Theory
In this type of scenario “course of action” modeling, it is important to understand the role of PMESII-DIME SWOT geopolitical analysis of national economic, diplomatic, and military power relationships in the context of post-Mahan sea power versus sea power and post-Mackinder sea power versus land power geostrategic theories. The core concept of geography has remained constant, while the method of international trade has changed with the advances in technology, the sailing ships of Mahann’s day have been advanced by modern shipping, highways, railways, and pipeline infrastructure (logistical transportation) while the telegraph of old has been superseded by fiber optic internet and satellite communications as the means of turning “production” into “wealth” via international trade.
In terms of Mackinder’s geopolitical theory, it is important to understand that Russia is in the “heartland” of Eurasia and is pursuing a Haushofer-style “land-power” style integration of Eurasia strategy. China is using both a land power integration of Eurasia strategy with its original Silk Road Initiative and a sea power strategy with its maritime Belt and Road Initiative maritime break-out strategy to minimize the distance and time its ships can pick up cargo in the Middle East and Africa and can unload on a post on the Indian Ocean. China’s Silk Road initiative is a land power integration strategy whereas the Belt and Road Initiative is a maritime chokepoint mitigation strategy.
In contrast, the US and the UK appear to be continuing the three-hundred-year-old “Great Game” of blocking in Russia’s three ports of St. Petersburgh, Rostov-on-Don, and Vladivostok via a maritime chokepoint strategy, while employing a Spykman/Brzezinski/Turner based “sea power” divide-and-conquer “balance of power” strategy carried out in the series of proxy wars occurring across Eurasia.
The goal of this is to thwart the global economic and political center of gravity from shifting from a Washington and London global political center of gravity to a Moscow-Beijing global political center of gravity, which could become a Berllin-Moscow-Beijing shift in the global political center of gravity if the Alternative for Deutschland Party (AfD) gains power in Germany and rebuilds the Nordstream pipelines to reindustrialize the German-speaking world.
The “threat” aspect is that if the US goes all in by continuing its proxy wars across Eurasia to maintain sole superpower status with full spectrum dominance, the Anglosphere risks the global political center of gravity shifting to a Berlin-Moscow-Beijing alliance while economically collapsing due to its $35 trillion in debt and $200 trillion-plus in underfunded pension liabilities if the Alternative for Deutschland Party defeats Olaf Scholz in the future election cycles in Germany. The series of proxy wars across Eurasia fools no government in the region, the proxy wars only fool the Western public.
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Part 1:Russian Natural Gas and Geopolitical Realignment—a reverse domino theory
