George McMillan III, Copyright © February 18, 2025/March 21, 2025
The Cover-for-Action Narrative in Distinction to the Underlying Grand Strategic Realities
The problem with Keith Kellogg is the same as with all the other television generals. They cannot differentiate between the cover-for-action rhetoric and the underlying Sea Power “strategies of containment” versus the Land Power ‘overland logistical supply route’ strategies that are the basis of strategic planning of global and regional powers.
It is the Sea Power versus Land Power strategic planning variations that explain how and why the SuperPowers form trading bloc hierarchies with the Major Powers and vassal states. This superpower, major power, and vassal state trading bloc hierarchy strategy used in the context of the global Sea power ower and Land Power strategies were mentioned briefly in previous articles in this series and separate papers. A much longer fifteen-page page working paper on this topic will be posted later in the Spring.
The trading bloc hierarchy is essential because geostrategic theories are based on three ingredients: (1) geoeconomic growth, development, and sustainment strategies; (2) the geopolitical Sea Power versus Land Power strategies regarding the control over maritime, riverine, and terrestrial land bridge chokepoints, (3) targeting packages regarding the different financial economic and militaristic domains of warfare.
The Geoeconomics, Geopolitical, and Targeting Package Trilogy of Geostegic Thought
The more one understands the interaction of these three elements of strategic planning, the more one will realize that the real reason for moving the EU and NATO Eastward was to prevent Russia from pursuing an export-led growth strategy to fund an import substitution industrial modernization investment strategy.
This is expressed in the opening minutes of the Deutsche Welle Documentary videos titled Russia’s Energy Empire” Putin and the Rise of Gazprom uploaded on February 3, 2024, and Russia’s Gazprom—Corrupt Politicians and the Greed of the West uploaded on February 10, 2024.
The opening statement of the “Russia’s Energy Empire” video states the Cold War problem as “you’re giving the Soviet Union hard currency and they’re using that to build up their military, and this will come back to haunt us.”
Likewise, the opening of the “Russia’s Gazprom” video was “the gas business, a source of conflict since the Cold War because the gas Europe soc desperately needed came from Russia. A partnership that that created major political dependency so this was seen as part of an overall Soviet strategy to weaken the West and break up NATO. Fears that were by no means unfounded using oil and gas dependencies as a political weapon was common practice in the Warsaw Pact…”
Natural Gas by Pipeline is the Cheapest Form of Clean Energy to Run an Industrial Economy
The common theme of the DW series of geopolitical experts, businessmen, politicians, and ambassadors is that they say they do not want Russia’s state natural gas monopoly to sell natural gas to Germany and Europe because they wanted neither the Marxist communist Soviet Union nor the nascent Orthodox Russian Federation, to earn hard currency ($USD or € Euros) so they could modernize their economies that would allow them to modernize their military.
As was explained in the “Russian Natural Gas a Geopolitical Realignment” series of papers on EnergyNewsBeat, the USA and UK moved the EU and NATO Eastward to cut off Russia from exporting oil and natural gas via pipelines to thwart Russia’s economic development strategy, and thereby thwart their geopolitical Eurasian Land Power strategy.
In terms of the Geopolitical “strategy of containment” as explained by John Lewis Gaddis in Strategies of Containment: A Critical Analysis of American National Security Policy During the Cold War (1982 and 2005), the fear is that the more Russia infrastructurally integrates with the German-speaking industrial world in Germany, India, China, South Korea, and Japan on the axial ends of Eurasia, then Russia will economically integrate with these coastal rimland industrial power centers, then diplomatically and militarily align with these industrial power centers following the DIME (Diplomatic, Infrastructure/Information, Military, and Economic) national instrument of power framework.
Under this logical progression, the global political center of gravity from Washington, London, and Paris to Berlin, Moscow, Beijing Seoul, and Tokyo. Under these conditions, the Moscow-Bejing alliance would be a Eurasian rival to the Anglosphere Sea Power dominance that has existed since the colonial era.
It is this concern of Mackinder’s and Spykman’s “Eurasian Heartland versus Coastal Rimland” strategies that motivated Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stansfield Turner to implement Operation Cyclone to support the Afghan Mujahideen in the late 1970s, and his 1997 book titled The Grand Chessboard which were advanced by the Wolfowitz doctrine expressed in his “FY 1993-4” National Security Council paper published in 1992, and the RAND April 2019 “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia” and “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground” papers were about.
The goal of all of these writings was to (a) thwart Russian natural gas sales because the profits from the natural gas enterprise stayed in Russia and were/is the most reliable form of internal investment funding source; (b) “overextend and unbalance Russia” in an attempt to break it up into a series of smaller Oblasts and Republics; (c) access the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf oil and natural gas for the purpose of (e) rerouting the pipelines as a means of re-routing the profits into the banks of Washington, London and Paris.
Since oil can be delivered economically by shipping it over the ocean, the importance of taking over the Middle East and South Caucus landbridges was/is to control the natural gas pipeline routes through the Anatolian Peninsula into Europe and under the Black Sea into Europe.
Natural gas via pipeline is the cheapest and cleanest form of energy currently available and the liquefaction and regasification processes of Liquified Natural Gas shipment by sea is an expensive process. For this reason, the movement of the EU and NATO Eastward was specifically aimed at stopping Russian natural gas fully knowing that since Russia invested so heavily in its overland pipeline routes it lacked the number of ocean-going tanker ships to deliver oil in such quantities that its pipeline system did.
The strategy of the West in moving the EU and NATO Eastward boils down to two reasons: (a) thwarting an export-led growth strategy of Russia and (b) ultimately thwarting a DIME integration strategy that would lead to global geopolitical realignment.
The Brzezinski/Wolfowitz/RAND 2019 Strategy Is Backfiring
The problem with the Brzezinski/Wolfowitz/RAND 2019 strategies is that it has spectacularly backfired on all fronts.
As originally argued in the “Russian Natural Gas and Geopolitical Realignment” series of papers appearing on EnergyNewsBeat in December of 2023, the Brzezinski/Wolfowitz/RAND 2019 strategy has been successful in the first phase of cutting off the German Speaking industrial World from affordable Russian natural gas by expanding the EU and NATO Eastward.
But the second aspect of it was to use terrorism as a cover-for-action narrative was to use the Global War on Terror (GWOT) strategy to (a) successfully move Western oil companies into the vast oil and gas reserves of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia (ME/NA/CA) while (b) also controlling the landbridge pipeline routes between the Persian Gulf, Caspian, Black, Mediterranean, and Red Seas and the Indian Ocean. The West achieved (a) but not (b).
It is important to understand that the important distinction between the Col War Brzezinski/Turner regime-change destabilization era and the post-Cold War GWOT Wolfowitz/Cheney era is that the Wolfowitz/Cheney strategy switched to a regime-change nation-build strategy of Wolfowitz and Cheney during the George Bush 43 administration.
As is well known, the regime-change nation-building strategy of the GWOT era was a spectacular failure as well across the Middle East with GWOT, in North Africa with the Arab Spring color revolutions, and in Central Asia in Afghanistan.
Regime-change Destabilization Strategies and GWOT Regime-Change Nation-Building Strategies
What most people do not realize is that the US reverted to the old Brzezinski regime-change destabilization strategy of Brzezinski and Stansfield Turner’s era of Operation Cyclone in Pakistan and Afghanistan in league with Islamist General Zia ul-Haq in Pakistan in the late 1970s to the late 1980s.
This is important because the constant of the Sea Power “great game” strategy was discussed in several books by Peter Hopkirk during the 1990s. The regime-change destabilization strategy has always been to exploit historic ethnic, religious, and linguistic rivalries into color revolutions and covert insurgencies.
Operation Cyclone was about getting the Islamic factions to (a) prevent the Russians from gaining a warm water port in Baluchistan, and (b) destabilize the Islamic Republics of the Southern Soviet Union. Operation Cyclone principally worked with the Sunni Wahhabis from the Arabian Peninsula to sabotage the Soviet Union’s overland logistical supply route infrastructure in Central Asia during the 1980s.
Other historical examples are Lawrence of Arabia and the sabotage of the Berlin to Baghdad (ending in Al Faw in the Persian Gulf) Railway in the 1930s, the blowing up of the Western Siberian pipeline in 1982 followed by the assassination of Alfred Herrhausen who financed the pipeline on behalf of Deutsche Bank and German Ost Politik, the invasion of Iraq, Syria and Libya during GWOT and the Arab Spring after Saddam Hussein and Bashir Al Assad wanted to build pipelines to the Mediterranean Sea and sell oil to Europeans in Euros instead of petrodollars, and the overthrow of Ghadify after he wanted to build oil and natural gas pipelines to Italy and pay in some sort of a Gold/Euro exchange.
This mode of covert sabotage operations has continued with the disruption of Chinese infrastructural projects in Sistan Baluchistan Iran, Baluchistan Pakistan, and Myanmar. In Ukraine the use of exploiting ethnic, religious, and linguistic rivalries is between the Catholic Slavic Ukrainians that were part of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire, then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, followed by the Soviet Empire, and the Orthodox Russian speakers in Eastern and Southern Ukraine plus Crimea.
Hence the covert agencies in the West trained and equipped the Stepan Bandera followers in the Catholic Speaking Lvivi area of Northwestern Ukraine and deployed them to the Kherson, Militopol, and Mariupol areas near the Azov Sea in the Orthodox Russian-speaking areas.
There are videos of Lindsay Graham and John McCain promising to train and equip the Stepan Bandera influence Azov Battalion and Right Sector groups on social media before the 2014 Euromaidan Color Revolution.
What was the purpose of training, equipping, and deploying them so close to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea and Russia’s only warm water port in Rostov-on-Don and pipeline terminals in Novorosysk? It is obviously to capture Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and only warm water port. Anyone who can read a map and understand the concept of critical infrastructure can see that.
Anyone who can understand that training, equipping, and deploying troops en mass so near to critical shipping and pipeline infrastructure can see that this is a “preattack indicator” since the rival group has all three of the Opportunity, Intent, and Capability (OIC) criteria.
Furthermore, those who know the Sea Power versus Land Power strategies in any depth can see that the US and the UK moved the EU and NATO into The Baltics, Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia as a matched set specifically to control all overland logistical supply routes.
The West achieved this by using the USAID/NED and Soros-funded NGO’s to influence the elections in Eastern Europe. This pattern has been replicated in each and every Rimland country in Eurasia. The Brzezinski, Wolfowitz, and RAND 2019 “strategies of containment” that are in action, i. e. covert action everywhere in Europe and Asia.
All the intelligence agencies in the region know that it is the US and UK covert entities that are behind these operations, it is reported widely in their media along with the Mahan, Mackinder, and Spykman Geopolitical strategies that explain the motives.
With knowledge of the Sea Power versus Land Power Grand Strategies and the Atlanticist versus Eurasianist variants, this combination with regular-irregular, and insurgency-counter insurgency, regime-change destabilization, and color revolution types of warfare are very easy to see.
Modern Mass Media Cover-For-Action Narrative to Direct Global Markets
However, the overwhelming majority of military generals, news anchors, and critical race and gender-educated journalists push the cover-for-action narrative every day on their respective media platforms and seem to fully buy into the cover-for-action false narrative that the proxy wars and color revolutions are completely organic.
The clinging to the cover-for-action false narratives by the American television generals, news anchors, and journalists on Fox News is persistent even as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have been highlighting the corruption of of United States Agency for International Development (USAID), National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other affiliated think tanks and NGOs.
None of these color revolutions and insurgencies are grassroots organic, instead, they are highly orchestrated by the hierarchy of USAID, NED, and Soros-funded Non-Governmental agencies who attract disaffected individuals and indoctrinate them into “repressive tolerance” of shouting down conservatives of Marcuse, whose concepts were advanced by Saul Alinsky in his Rules for Radicals (1971) combined with The Politics of Non-Violent Action of Jean Sharpe (1973), and the understanding of Why Men Rebel from Ted Robert Gurr (1970).
The Western covert organizations have become very adept at Crystallizing Public Opinion of Edward Bernays (1923), using Propaganda: Formation of Men’s Attitudes (Ellul 1965/1973) and the Manufacturing of Consent (Herman and Chomsky, 1988) in combination with the link analysis, target audience identification, and mass messaging capabilities that the media has convinced large portions of the population that “men can get pregnant.”
Oliver Stone did an excellent job of portraying the methods of mass psychosis and the manufacturing of hostilities in the Euromaidan Color Revolution coup in his documentary titled “Ukraine on Fire” which was released in 2015 about the Euromaidan Revolution in Kyiv which overthrew Viktor Yanukovitch.
The Grand Strategists in the financial world have become adept at controlling the media narratives to completely hide the underlying motives of moving the EU and NATO Eastward and the actual motives of Putin to resist being completely locked out of trading with the West, and having his critical trade infrastructure encircled militarily by the Stepan Bandera inspired Azov Battalion and Right Sector groups trained, equipped and deployed to the Russian Speaking areas of “Ukraine.”
The Western military generals, news anchors, and journalists, not just Keith Kellogg, are so untrained in the area of the Sea Power versus Land Power Grand Strategies that they misadvise all presidents and the Western electorate, not just Donald Trump.
The Cover-For-Action Narrative
As the neoconservatives and neoliberals were pursuing the Brzezinski/Wolfowitz/RAND 2019 strategy to cut off the German-speaking industrial world from affordable Russian natural Gas via pipelines, the Green New Deal Left closed the Groningen natural gas field on the Netherlands, and coal-fired and nuclear power energy plants in Germany—and moved to delusional wind and solar renewables to put the net-zero policy into effect—all without any substitutes or back-up plans.
This one-sided combination where Germany has been cut off from affordable Russian natural gas via pipeline as the neoconservatives, while the neoliberals and the Green New Deal Leftists switch whole-heartedly to renewables without a cost-effective replacement is unfathomable.
The energy prices have soared over the Winter and will probably ease during the Spring and Summer, but will predictably rise to stratospheric levels again next Winter and every Winter thereafter. Year-round industrial and manufacturing facilities cannot stay in business under these conditions.
This combination of neoconservative, neoliberal, and Green New Deal Left is leading to the “strange death of Europe and the West” (referencing Douglas Murray) at breakneck speed. It is not the Russian Federation that is “overextended and unbalanced” it is the West for all the reasons expressed in the “Seven P Plan of the Left” and the “Russian Natural Gas and Geopolitical Realignment series of papers. “All Putin has to do is nothing” but sit back and watch “the strange death of Europe.”
It would be wise for Donald Trump to first expose the “cover-for-action false narrative” of the DC think tanks that are exposed in the aforementioned series of papers on EnergyNewsBeat and elsewhere, and secondly to leave the Russo-Ukraine conflict to the Europeans and avoid the “strange death of the United States” as the US National Debt is at $36 trillion and headed towards the $40 trillion rampant inflation mark and the interest payments on the debt start outpacing too many Federal agency budgets.
Part 3: Understanding the Catastrophic Downside Risk of the Kellogg Plan and Exploring Alternatives
Part 2: Why Keith Kellogg’s Plan is DOA: Shifting the Global Political Center of Gravity Part 2
George McMillan Articles and Interviews: https://energynewsbeat.co/george-mcmillian/
