Fareed Zakaria of CNN posed all the right questions to German Chancellor Schulz and got all the right sounding answers. But to me watching the video, the interview sounded pretty menacingly portentous for the future of the world in decades to come. On a quiet Sunday morning yesterday , I couldn’t thus help falling into a self-absorbed personal reverie of crystal-ball gazing.
America under President Biden has succeeded spectacularly in its long-term strategic geopolitical foreign policy objective of militarising once again all of Europe! That’s what I’m quite convinced about.
Schultz of Germany is now talking of the imperative of “permanent production of weapons” in his country and his French colleague President Macron has already said that France will go all out rooting for the establishment of a European military force independent of America underwriting Europe’s security via NATO …. So I’m convinced that it’s going to be only a matter of time before there will be another gigantic Pentagon-like “military-industrial complex” right in the heart of Europe.
I also think American foreign policy has already gone into overdrive with its hegemonic designs for a new world order . It’s moving all its pieces quite astutely on the chess board of global geo-strategic engagement
Let’s take a close look at how AMERICA has moved its pieces on the chessboard and what presently are their positions.
Firstly , there is NATO that will operate throughout the Atlantic and western hemisphere to ensure American dominance ; secondly , there will soon be a European-Pentagon in Franco-Germany serving as America’s formidable fortress overlooking all of Europe; next, with the rapid nuclearization almost overnight of Australia , the AUKUS will be the central command post for the entire Pacific region. That leaves only the Indian Ocean where the Americans have already enticed, cajoled and nearly succeeded in forging a very enduring and intimate comprehensive naval defence partnership with INDIA.
Then there is of course the Middle East from where the USA has recently almost completely withdrawn its military presence …
After nearly 90 years of constantly meddling in the politics and Petro-economics of this region. America has already militarily degraded, devastated and destroyed all the major powers in this entire region. Egypt has been degraded, Iraq has been devastated and Libya has been destroyed. The rest of the pack of countries in the Middle East (including Afghanistan) are all really only flyweight powers with absolutely no geopolitical heft or influence of any kind —- except Saudi Arabia , Iran and Israel.
America will deal with each of these 3 countries not militarily but economically to reduce them to the status of insignificant pawns on the global geopolitical board game — and that would be done predominantly through deft and subterfuge movements on the Energy front.
America is already energy self-sufficient and no longer needs oil imports from Saudi Arabia. Strategically, US no longer needs to invest and embed defence or naval forces in Saudi Arabia. Europe , another major importer of Saudi Arabian oil will continue to be dependent for fossil-fuel energy on the Saudis for a decade or less but given the recent experience suffered from gas-supply disruptions from Russia (in the wake of the Ukraine war) Europe too will increasingly move to energy self-reliance through switch to coal-based , LNG, nuclear and renewables energy sources. Saudi Arabia then will be left with only China and India as its major oil customers.
Saudi Arabian oil exports to China however will then have to compete with Russian gas exports to China … Both KSA and Russia will end up fighting for the same market share. And that will by itself cause in the long term very testy if not severe trade tensions between the two competing energy-exporting giants.
Eventually one of them will have to be relegated by China/India to junior vendor status if not loser status. Natural Gas is a more cost-competitive contender to crude Oil. Saudi Arabia’s economy will thus find it extremely difficult to transition to the non-oil economy position it is now aspiring for. The dream of the brash young Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman will come a cropper without American cutting edge technology know-how and intellectual capital . Saudi Arabia will more or less have to bow down to American dominance in R&D.
Iran the implacable enemy of America in the Middle East will continue of course to threaten to go nuclear. If that happens the combined fury of both American, European and UN economic sanctions will be unleashed on Iran to further cripple its already enervated and embattled economic fortunes. The CIA will be working overtime to foment a state of permanent low-grade state of warfare between Pakistan and Taliban Afghanistan which will only keep seeping if not spilling into Iran. Iran will never be allowed to become a major-league player in the global energy marketplace. And that will effectively keep Iran positioned as no more than a 3rd grade and marginal regional power in the Middle East.
Now to Israel. The US-Israel relations are complex and long-standing. The Jewish population in America is a powerful lobby within the American political power structure. Jerusalem and Israel are central to American political dynamics. However, with gradual but progressive minimisation of American strategic presence in the Middle East , the position of the Israeli factor in US politics too will begin waning . Israel will have to politically reconcile itself to making either working or workable peace with Saudi Arabia and Egypt …. And eventually Iran and Israel too will have to come around to learning how to live and let live …. Israel could even end up as major technology/know how provider for both Saudi Arabia and Iran under the recently forged “trilateral” pact signed between Iran and Saudi Arabia and China.
The net winner in all the foregoing geopolitical/ geospatial chess-board game is certainly the USA.
This indeed is an existential challenge for both Russia and China whose combined military and economic strength might still not be able to tilt the geopolitical balance in their favour …. not for the next 50 years at the very least.
On the chessboard of geopolitics of the first two decades of the 21st century, we may look upon the Russia Vs NATO war in Ukraine as the opening gambit. The middle-game will be what happens in the next 5 decades as I have essayed above. And the end game will be played in the last 3 decades of the 21st century CE . Who will ultimately emerge winner is anybody’s guess … only the Almighty knows for sure …
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Now, please do also read the long Disclaimer Statement of mine below .
My “Crystal-ball Gazing” can be easily challenged of course by well-informed followers of current world affairs. The challenge to my premonitions of how the world geopolitical stage will look like in the next 7 decades of this century might be phrased as follows:
“Your crystal ball gazing on Sunday morning no doubt has a touch of realism, that will most probably happen. But geopolitics changes quite often significantly, as you are aware. Would your gazing in this week from Monday to Saturday be much different as you roll on to the next week or month?
“Geopolitics changes occur mercilessly. At one point of time, US was the unipolar power. Later it became bipolar with USSR on the opposite pole. When USSR disintegrated, unipolar again surfaced. Now with China rising as a powerful power, geopolitics has metamorphosed. During the dictatorship of Hitler, the world dreaded him and this forced a collective of nations jointly taking on the dictator. Japan raised the bar of invincibility that it was known for, by taking on the US by bombing Pearl Harbour. Retribution came in the form of nuclear bombs decimating Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Geopolitics have suffered many a change over the years since the first world war, to recount which emails lacking space would hardly constitute a vehicle. I am giving these examples just to prove that geopolitics is not a constant.
“Your crystal ball grazing vignettes have a touch of realism. But the caveat is that such vignettes may change if geopolitics turn different or turn sour to the detriment of our planet and its inhabitants, you and I included. To list the possible or probable geopolitical changes is no mean task, as they occur with a frequency difficult to digest.”
The above reaction to my freewheeling “Crystal-ball gazing” is indeed quite well-reasoned and convincing. It therefore deserves a nuanced explanation from me with regard to what exactly is the thought-process that underpins the “vignettes” I have painted in my essay above.
I do agree that foreseeing probable (geopolitical) changes is no mean task, as they occur with a frequency difficult to digest”. And I am aware too that such changes are what are usually labelled “black swan events”. All the examples of unpredicted historic events related above are kinds of “black swan events” only.
A black swan event, a phrase commonly used in the world of finance, is an extremely negative event or occurrence that is impossibly difficult to predict. In other words, black swan events are events that are unexpected and unknowable. The term was popularized by former Wall Street trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who wrote about the concept in his 2001 book Fooled by Randomness.
Taleb outlined the three defining attributes of a black swan event:
- An event that is unpredictable.
- A black swan event results in severe and widespread consequences.
- After the occurrence of a black swan event, people will rationalize the event as having been predictable (known as the hindsight bias).
Some of the most recent events in the history of the world which might qualify as “black swan events” are
The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis;
The “Dotcom” Crash of 2000
9/11 Attacks in the USA
The 2008 Global Financial Crisis
Brexit
To the above list one may add today two more :
The Covid 19 pandemic
The Russo-Ukraine War that began suddenly
All the above “black swan events” have had such profound and truly far reaching consequences in world affairs.
Although by definition a “black swan event” is one that can never be predicted and its many consequences can only be understood in hindsight, the little bit of “Crystal ball gazing” that I indulged myself in while penning away my blog on the subject is wholly premised on the following “black swan events” not happening at anytime in future in this century :
— the Russo-Ukraine war having an outcome in which one or the other antagonist is defeated conclusively;
— a sudden outbreak of full-scale war between China and USA (AUKUS) over unification of Taiwan with mainland China;
— Europe descending into deep economic Depression a la 1929;
— Disintegration of Pakistan resulting in another theatre of war being suddenly inaugurated between the West and Russo-China with India being ineluctably dragged into it;
— new revolutionary discovery in the science of cyber-attack and biological warfare which then suddenly gives overwhelming battle superiority and advantage to one of the superpowers over the other or others;
— unforeseen climate disaster happening suddenly to the detriment of one or more of the antagonist powers;
To conclude, the geopolitical “vignettes” that I have portrayed above are built around the above thought-processes as they happened to pan around the above assumptions.
Sudarshan Madabushi