Well, we have to whack the Iranians, otherwise the proliferation problem means likely disaster for the entire globe.

The Russkies? Oy! They believe they must divvy up Central Asian gas and oil with the Persians to survive. Our problem is keeping them alive AND convincing them that free trade in gas and oil from Central Asia is really a better bet for their survival as a nation.

Anyone got a pitch for ‘em?

The only reasonable national interest goal for the USA is to create buffer zones between Russia and the Arabs that preserve maximum global free trade with Central Asia. We have no fundamental reason to defend trans-Caucasian nations or freedom of shipment for trans-Caspian polities other than the raw fact that we die if international trade is significantly curtailed.

That’s, you know, existential.

We are the successor global naval power to [formerly Great] Britain so we are now stuck with the inheritance of “Mahanism”, i.e. geopolitical theory based on the obvious truth that sea power has been controlling national destinies for a long time.

In competition [?] vs Mahanism, a very bright Fabian Socialist named Mackinder established a “heartland” theory of geopolitics. Mackinder famously described Britain as ‘a lump of coal surrounded by fish’.

To my amateur-in-geopolitics eyes, the fact of oil and gas in Central Asia has forced strategists to achieve a synthesis of Mahan’s sea power-centered theories with Mackinder’s Heartland theory. This requirement is upon us now, due to two things: 1) the exceptional efficiency of pipelines for transportation of oil and gas, and 2) containerization –a physical abstraction of shipping of goods– so that “by land” or “by sea” have little consequence apart from where something comes from, to where it is going, and the route in between…

Before we can convince Russia to take “the high road”, we will have to see her freed of her “siloviki” — i.e. what we call the Russian Mafia.

The situation is desperate and the outcome is by no means settled.