Table Of ContentGrand Reversal: Russian Global Ascendancy
GRAND REVERSAL
RUSSIAN GLOBAL ASCENDANCY
Portraying and analyzing the nearly-completed
Geopolitical Grand Reversal of Russia
Along with its strategic partners in
Energy-based ascendancy
Over the West
A graphical depiction with textual analyses
and a forecast of near-future developments
By W. Joseph Stroupe
August 31, 2006
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Grand Reversal: Russian Global Ascendancy
Copyright © 2006 by W. Joseph Stroupe
All rights reserved
First edition
ISBN-13: 978-0-9789068-1-8 (eBook)
ISBN-10: 0-9789068-1-0 (eBook)
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Grand Reversal: Russian Global Ascendancy
Grand Reversal
Russian Global Ascendancy
When the US presided over the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, leaving a
severely weakened Russia to stand on the very precipice of a chaotic collapse, and the US took
up the position of unquestioned global dominance few imagined the possibility of a grand
geopolitical reversal, wherein Russia (acting in concert with an array of strategic partners) would
rise to global energy-based ascendancy over a severely weakened US.
However, just such a stunning Grand Reversal is currently underway. In fact, it is nearly
completed.
The implications for the current world order and for the West are gargantuan, to say the
least. Both Europe and the US have already forfeited their independent economic and political
might. Europe’s forfeiture comes principally as a result of its growing, irreversible dependency
on foreign gas, and the US forfeiture comes principally as a result of its gross and irreversible
(anytime soon) twin dependencies (1) upon foreign financing of its colossal debt and (2) upon
foreign oil.
The West’s loss of independent economic and political might translates to the
geopolitical ascendancy of the multifarious East for the simple reason that it now firmly holds
the key levers over the economies of the West. The multifarious East constitutes Russia as the
nucleus, key oil and gas producers the world over, and the key rising powerhouse economies of
the East such as China, India and others who have gathered around the Russian nucleus. A few
key Western economies are being ushered, to varying degrees, into Russia’s new rising
multifarious East. Germany is one example.
How real and how imminent is the threat of an energy-based economic checkmate of the
West? At the August 29, 2006 Purdue University Summit on Energy Security, keynote speaker
US Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana expressed the acute fear that the US would act much too
late to prevent what he called “the severe economic and national security consequences of our oil
dependence”.
Senator Lugar went on to note that the rapidly rising economies of the East, such as
China and India, are creating a global situation wherein the oil and gas needs of the West are
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Grand Reversal: Russian Global Ascendancy
progressively taking a back seat to those of the rising economies of the East. That is occurring as
those rising powers in the East search for and consolidate their grip on an ever greater portion of
global supplies while simultaneously the West’s influence over and access to the world’s oil-
producing states wanes. Senator Lugar concluded:
“In the long run we will face the prospect that the world’s supply of oil may not
be abundant and accessible enough to support continued economic growth in both the
industrialized West and in large rapidly growing economies [in the East].”
[Bold italics added]
Senator Lugar then proceeded to make further significant points which he labeled as
points three through six. He said:
(cid:190) “Third, adversarial regimes from Venezuela, to Iran, to Russia are using
energy supplies as leverage against their neighbors. We are used to thinking in terms of
conventional warfare between nations, but energy is becoming a weapon of choice for
those who possess it.”
(cid:190) “Fourth, the revenues flowing to authoritarian regimes often increase
corruption in those countries and allow them to insulate themselves from international
pressure and the democratic aspirations of their own peoples. We are transferring
hundreds of billions of dollars each year to some of the least accountable regimes in
the world. Some are using this money to invest abroad in terrorism, instability, or
demagogic appeals to populism.”
(cid:190) “Fifth, the threat of climate change has been made worse by inefficient
and unclean use of non-renewable energy. In the long run this could bring drought,
famine, disease, and mass migration, all of which could lead to conflict and instability.”
(cid:190) “Sixth, much of the developing world is being hit hard by rising energy
costs, which often cancel the benefits of our foreign assistance.”
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Grand Reversal: Russian Global Ascendancy
“Each of these six threats from energy dependence is becoming more acute as time
passes. Any of them could be a source of catastrophe for the United States and the world.”
[Bold italics added]
Under the subheading of “The Vulnerability of a Superpower” Senator Lugar said the
following:
“The vulnerability of the United States rests on some basic factors. With less than
5 percent of the world's population, our nation consumes 25 percent of its oil. World
demand for oil and other forms of energy is rapidly increasing. Within 25 years, the
world will need 50 percent more energy than it does now. If oil prices average $60 a
barrel through 2006 -- a figure that we are currently well above -- we will spend about
$320 billion on oil imports this year. This is roughly the same amount that the United
States has spent on the war and reconstruction effort in Iraq during the first three years of
conflict.”
“These conditions might be negotiable in the short and medium terms if oil
resided with responsible, secure producers who maximize production during periods of
elevated demand. But just the opposite is true. According to PFC Energy, about 79
percent of the world's oil supply is controlled by state-run oil companies. These
governments profoundly affect prices through politicized investment and production
decisions. The vast majority of these oil assets are afflicted by at least one of three
problems: lack of investment, political manipulation, or the threat of instability and
terrorism.”
“As recently as four years ago, spare production capacity exceeded world oil
consumption by about 10 percent. As world demand for oil has rapidly increased in the
last few years, spare capacity has declined to less than 2 percent. Thus, even minor
disruptions of oil can drive up prices.”
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“Our current dependence on imported oil has put the United States in a position
that no great power should tolerate. Our economic health is subject to forces far beyond
our control, including the decisions of hostile countries. We maintain a massive military
presence overseas, partly to preserve our oil lifeline. One conservative estimate puts U.S.
oil-dedicated military expenditures in the Middle East at $50 billion per year. But there is
no guarantee that even our unrivaled military forces can prevent an energy disaster.
We have lost leverage on the international stage and are daily exacerbating the
problem by participating in an enormous wealth transfer to authoritarian nations that
happen to possess the commodity that our economy can least do without.”
[Bold italics added]
Based entirely on the irrefutable evidence at hand therefore, the warnings, analyses and
forecasts regarding the current perilous economic and political position of the West carried
within this document are, not sensationalism, but rather the dispassionate realism that must be
faced, sooner rather than later.
The current world order is undergoing fundamental geopolitical transition as the meteoric
rise of the multifarious East alters the global energy security, economic and political landscapes.
What kind of new configuration is arising for the world order?
The Transition to Which Configuration?
To Multipolarity or to Asymm·Plexity (asymmetrical bipolar complexity)?
“Multi-polarity” has increasingly been trumpeted by Russia, China and many others since
the mid-1990’s as the most desirable and equitable configuration for the world order. Multi-
polarity is seen across much of the globe as the most attractive replacement for US-dominated
unipolarity. Does it really matter? Are unipolarity and the US-centric world order really at risk?
Indeed, yes.
The fundamental configuration of the world order is rapidly undergoing transformation as
US power and influence continue their progressive dilution in all spheres and those of rival
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centers or poles such as Russia and China are becoming ever more concentrated, thanks in no
small measure to their advancing control over strategic energy resources.
Control over strategic resources has become the primary lever to increased global
influence for those powers either rich in such resources or closely allied with those who are.
Hence, in the insidious and perceptible rebalancing of global power, moving from
inordinate concentration in one pole (the US) to distribution among rival poles (Russia, China
and others) we are witnessing the arising of a new world order. However, what will its true
configuration turn out to be?
Fundamentally, multi-polarity simply means multiple poles, or centers of power,
distributed widely and more equitably across the globe, with no single pole inordinately
dominating the others. However, does the term “multi-polarity” accurately describe the
configuration of the new world order that is now arising? Or is its real configuration developing
into something quite different than mere generic “multi-polarity”?
The concept of multi-polarity does not properly take into consideration a recent and
ongoing development of fundamentally enormous significance – the re-division of most of the
world order into two camps, East and West, with control over strategic energy resources as the
primary dividing line between the two camps.
Even the so-called Non-Aligned
Centers of power (“poles”) are not truly
Movement (NAM) consisting of 116
discrete, nor do they become evenly
developing nations, most of the world’s
distributed across the entire international
authoritarian governments and two-thirds
system. Rather, lesser poles tend to align
of UN membership, generally takes
with or even to orbit greater ones, causing
stances independent of, or even against,
the US pole, thus most often in de facto power to coalesce principally around the
alliance with East rather than West. two foremost poles, Anglo-America and
Notably, NAM has come down on Iran’s Russia-China, thereby causing a reversion
side in the ongoing nuclear dispute,
to bipolarity. “Multi-polarity” is both a
reaffirming Iran’s right to domestic
misnomer and a delusion
enrichment activities, to the pointed
chagrin of the US. Significantly, a large portion of the member nations of NAM possess great
deposits of strategic energy and mineral resources of very high value.
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Thus, simple multi-polarity allows for the fundamentally erroneous assumption that all
the poles or centers of power are discrete, that each pole is virtually isolated from the
gravitational effects of other poles. In the real world such is certainly not the case.
Any pole or center of power that achieves a noteworthy degree of power and influence
tends to pull or attract other centers of power toward itself – especially those in proximity to it,
whether geographically or geopolitically speaking. Furthermore, that rising pole tends to draw
additional power from the poles that begin to lean inward, as it were, toward it, thus fueling an
accelerated rise of the more prominent pole. The result is a new center of power that is complex
in nature, with many lesser poles in array around one or two greater poles in the core of the
newly arising center of power.
A prime example of the above is the Russia-China axis that is rapidly attracting into array
around itself many lesser but significant poles. Another example is the US-British pole that also
still retains, to varying degrees, some lesser poles in array around itself. As noted above, these
two poles (Russia-China and America-Britain) each possess a gravitational pull of such force
that no other on the globe can lay claim to, and the dividing line between the two poles has
become control over strategic energy resources.
Consequently, the new configuration of the arising world order is fundamentally bi-polar
in nature. Just two rival primary poles increasingly dictate, by their gravitational influence,
developments across the globe. Stated another way, major global developments increasingly fit
into the framework of the competition and rivalry between the two primary poles.
Generic multi-polarity ultimately fails to describe properly these real-world phenomena,
those of a global reversion to bi-polarity along with the inherent complexity found within each
pole, especially the new pole arising in the East. But that is not all with respect to the failings of
the multi-polar model in describing accurately where the world order is actually heading.
Multi-polarity insinuates that no single pole is inordinately dominant over the others. But
contrary to that insinuation, the bi-polar configuration that is even now arising will definitely
facilitate a meaningful degree of control by one pole, the one now arising in the East.
Yet, the configuration will still correctly be described as bi-polar (not unipolar) because
the pole in the West, though it is even now moving into a situation where a significant measure
of control by the East is inevitable, will not be absolutely dominated in all spheres, nor will it be
made to utterly collapse as did the Soviet Union.
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How will the West fall under the significant control of the multifarious East? By means
of consolidation of its control over global energy the East will take a significant measure of
political, economic and even military independence away from the West, including the US itself,
which has become hopelessly dependent upon foreign sources of financial capital, energy and
minerals. In fact, the processes of Eastern consolidation over global energy resources and the
resultant Western loss of independence are already underway and they are accelerating.
The Russia-China axis is busily constructing a global oil and gas axis that includes most
of the vital exporting states around the globe. Both Russia and China are spreading their wings
(or tentacles as the case may be) far and wide to encompass key oil and gas exporting states,
ushering the world’s important producers into cooperative agreements that expand far beyond
energy-related matters to include the military sphere as well. Venezuela and Algeria are only two
recent examples. A clear global strategy is evident, one that is compelling and brilliant. It is also
unstoppable by the West. And while it is here called an axis of global producers, there is much
more involved in discerning the real global structure of what Russia is constructing, and that
additional insight is revealed in the new book RUSSIAN RUBICON.
In the military and energy spheres, the uniting of Russia’s technical expertise and
strategic resources with China’s enormous financing and manpower capabilities, and the
extension world-wide of their joint influence to gather into orbit about themselves the key global
exporters of minerals, oil and gas, is a development of enormous consequence for the current
world order.
That axis, when soon completed, will form a global energy monopoly whose strings are
virtually pulled from Moscow and Beijing. Increasingly, key members of the axis speak about
dispensing with the US dollar in their international energy transactions. The eventual
consolidation of the new global energy axis will result in loss to the West in various important
ways, and in a grand reversal, will place multifarious East in ascendancy over West.
Russia and China, the foremost promoters of what they have called the multi-polar world
order, insist that such is not aimed at any single power such as the US. However, that is mere
indirection on their part as they work smart and energetically to construct the foundation, namely
global control of strategic resources, that facilitates the rise of their new world order, an order
aimed directly at undermining the US global position.
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Additionally, they now know full well that what is arising will not be merely “multi-
polar” in nature, that is, an even distribution of power centers across the globe. Instead, they fully
realize their potential to achieve an energy-based checkmate of the West by means of the global
energy axis they are now constructing.
Consequently, the move toward global equilibrium (from unipolar to “multi-polar”) will
overshoot the mark of equilibrium and hand an energy-based checkmate to the now rising
multifarious pole of the East.
Along the path toward this eventuality there will undoubtedly be more oil wars such as
the one waged in Iraq in 2003, and ideological “wars” such as the Orange Revolution of 2004,
but the West cannot prevent the eventuality described here being realized, most likely within
only a very few years at most, gauging by the rapidity at which developments are proceeding.
Hence, the bipolar world order now arising
Asymm·Plexity is the concept of
will not, in fact, be balanced or symmetrical, with
lopsided bipolarity, where one side
both poles roughly canceling each other out.
can checkmate (but not collapse or
Instead, it will be asymmetrical, with the East in
destroy) the other side and where
ascendancy over the West. From the preceding
one pole (the East) is multifarious
fundamental analysis of the geopolitical system
we can now construct a new and more accurate or complex in its makeup
term to describe where the world order is actually heading:
Asymmetrical Bipolar Complexity refers to the uneven bipolar world order that is now
arising, one in which especially the East pole is complex in nature, consisting of many lesser
poles in array around the core that consists of the Russia-China axis.
To coin a new word, the phrase is shortened to Asymm·Plexity, dropping the “bi-polar”
part for the reason that in its most fundamental sense the word “asymmetrical” already strongly
insinuates two parts (bi-polar) of unequal size or power. Multi-polarity fails to meet the
requirement of accurately describing where the world order is actually heading.
Asymm·Plexity (or asymmetrical bi-polar complexity) does accurately describe the new
lopsided bi-polar world order that is now arising. The concept of Asymmetrical Bi-Polar
Complexity, or Asymm·Plexity is discussed in much greater detail in the new book RUSSIAN
RUBICON. Therein, a wealth of additional evidence is brought to bear on the subject to
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