The rising tide of cross-loyalties from great powers competing among themselves for spheres of influence throughout the Middle Eastern states is beginning to accelerate deeper disintegration within weakening political or economic alliances, as new political or economic alliance begin to strengthen. Alongside the competition for spheres of influence, the great powers are competing for aspects of a sphere of influence.
On the Arabian Peninsula intense competition for Saudi Arabia’s lucrative oil market is stirring countries into competitive action over currencies. Middle Eastern experts, for instance, have detailed the negations Chinese officials are leading with Saudi counterparts over the Chinese Yuan. In a recently published article in Hebrew, the author notes how Saudi Arabia’s and China’s negations focus on Chinese efforts to settle contracts for Saudi oil in the Chinese Yuan. [1]
In a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Dominant Dollar Faces Competition in the Oil Market,” the newspaper reported how no less than “[twelve] major commodities contracts settled in non dollar currencies in 2023, compared with seven in 2022.” In the period from 2015 to 2021 there were only two contracts settled in a currency other than the dollar. The speed with which former close allies like Saudi Arabia are beginning to explore alternative means of payment is hastening.
Competing great powers are also vying to broker a superior stake in Algeria’s expensive military contracts, while the country is in competition with even its own primary weapon’s supplier, Russia, over gas deliveries. In an article published in the September edition of Russia’s infamous geopolitical newspaper, Military-Industrial Complex (i.e., «Военно-Промышленный Курьер»), the authors detail how Algeria became the recipient of many Russian-made weapon systems. [2]
In an earlier edition published in 2010, the authors explain how the pursuit of Algeria arose from a broader strategy on the Arabian Peninsula, targeting negotiations with Kuwait, Oman together with Bahrain, the home of America’s Fifth Naval Fleet. The author mentions how continuing negotiations with Saudi Arabia are “no secret.” (i.e., “Сейчас работа ведется с Кувейтом, Оманом, Бахрейном. Не секрет, что переговоры продолжаются с Саудовской Аравией.”). [3]
Algeria, as a competitive nation, is itself embroiled now more than ever before in the newly emerging energy map, the energy map arising in the aftermath of the destroyed Nord Stream pipelines. Replacing Russian supplies, the Journal notes how Italy has begun to receive gas from Algeria, declaring the country one of the “Unexpected New Winners in the Global Energy War,” as a headline from the Journal notes on September 19th, 2023, underscoring the degree to which competing interests among nation states are beginning to shift the geopolitical landscapes of the Maghreb in new ways.
The pursuit of these aspects within the ambit of a sphere of influence—currency, raw materials, or military contracts—are driving the great powers into fiercer competition than in any previous period of time and this competition has become even more intensified, as the great powers continue to struggle with one another for a dominating influence within a sphere, as the spheres of influence often begin to compete with great powers.
Any one of these aspects often become a platform for expansion into the rest, while the attempt to maintain national self-determination confronts, of course, overwhelming drive to become the subject of a dominating influence at all times in asymmetrical or bilateral economic, trade, or military affairs, as they give way to cross-loyalties, conflicts, or confrontation.
Without even the slightest hint of the interactive depth inherent within these fast approaching processes, it has become all too common to group China together with Russia, as though they were Siamese twins in a political upbringing with a single future. Nothing could be farther from the true, as these two nations are undoubtedly in competition, as is clear from the struggle over trade routes on the high irons of the Eurasian railways.
In its own intense competition Russia seeks to assert its own interests, drawing competition with China’s own primary political, economic, or social projects. Russia’s decision to build extensive railways throughout Kazakstan, Inner Mongolia, or Saudi Arabia, for instance, collides with China’s own Belt and Road Initiative to usurp the rich silk roads of the Eurasian continent.
Russia’s expanded railways, which the country declared a focal point of expansion in a recent series of articles, are not or not necessarily for Chinese economic development but Russia’s. In addition, the Russians look upon the opportunity to sell weapons to the Saudis with an eye equally covetous to that of China, as stated earlier in the two points earlier. [1], [3] The separate and separating bodies of these “Siamese” twins do not have the same stomach and what one eats, the other cannot.
While Russia may neighbor China or vice-versa, the fact that their competition for tracks and lines on railways, underscores the heights of mankind. In his famous work on imperialism, Lenin, the founder of the Bolshevik party, wrote emphasized the global historical significance of railways. He wrote: “Railways are the results of the most advanced industries of capitalist economy, hydrocarbon and iron, the results and the most glaring reflections of the development of global trade and a bourgeois democratic civilization.
Railways in turn are also an indicator of and one of the harbingers of world war. Expanding railways, its unevenness, its uneven development, are the results of modern, monopolistic capitalism on the world stage and these results demonstrate the absolute inescapability of imperialistic wars within the economy so long as the means of production remain in private hands.”[4]
If it is that war and global imperialistic war are now inescapable and cannot be avoided, the whole world is holding its breathe. In a recently published article by the Journal, the authors, who are surveying the confines of Europe’s plunge into economic despondency, make reference to a number of elephants in the room.
In one statement, for instance, the authors write how Europe’s “proximity to geopolitical flashpoints” is “threatening to weigh further on the European economy,” while a “crisis” in the Middle East is “widening.” These statements sound like someone walking away from the truth. The world is in a state of catastrophe from Europe to the Black Sea, from Israel to the Red Sea, from the Levant to the Caucasus.
While the catastrophic state of affairs throughout these regions, on these high seas, or between economies of power, have not yet lead to a complete breakdown in the world order, the results are a startling transformation of the global order that falls just short of world war.
Azerbaijan’s forcible acquisition of Nagorno Karabakh is not a catalyst for world war, anymore than Russia’s annexation of the four territories in eastern Ukraine. Neither of these events reached the level of a cataclysm that World War I reached.
The cataclysmic consequences of WWI, however, like the fall of century old dynasties during pitched battles in World War I has not yet occurred. World War I crushed power structures, killed off millions of people and left in their wake devastating social, economic, and political consequences that shaped future generations. It sent the Hapsburg Dynasty into the abyss. It resulted in the outbreak of mass protest in Russia for the second time in less than two decades, resulting in the collapse of a five hundred year old dynasty whose territory covered great swaths of the inhabitable earth. Ludendorff and Hindenburg ripped the Kaiser Wilhelm from the throne.
The fallout from the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and the Gaza Strip as events has been catastrophic with much death, destruction and redivision but not yet cataclysmic, as WWI was. While the great disaster of the 21st century has been diverted, at least partially, there are any number of scenarios for a complete breakdown in the global order.
As the world continues to witness exacerbated competition, great powers competing amongst themselves for spheres of influence or competing for aspects of a sphere of influence, for a dominating influence within a sphere, the world is descending into conflicts, the result of which may be a cataclysm.
Cataclysmic are the following scenarios:
- Russia conquers Kharkov on the road to Kiev, reversing the gains the Ukrainian feint achieved in September 2022, thereby threatening the Kiev regime with collapse, a result which would undo more than a decade in NATO foreign policy.
- China launches an amphibious landing on Taiwan, threatening the sole remaining Island in the South China Seas that the United States maintains within its sphere of influence.
- Saudi Arabia decides to settle 25 or more percent of its oil contracts in the Chinese Yuan, not only threatening FDR’s agreement with the country but undermining the world’s reserve currency with a secondary status for the primary means of economic development.
- Turkey joins a Russo-Iranian block, a hornet’s nest of cross-loyalties for the NATO member, shutting down the Bosphorus or the Dardanelles, adopting the non-SWIFT payment system, to establish an entente from the Black Sea onward.
- Pakistan, which recently imprisoned Imran Khan illegally for his decision to meet with Vladimir Putin on the day the Russians invaded Ukraine, initiates a bombing campaign against Iran, whose aim is to wipe out Iran’s nuclear facilities, military, communications, or logistics centers, triggering Lebanon to attack Israel, the Houthis to lay siege to the Red Sea in a blockade, or Syria to establish a no-fly zone for Saudi Arabia, the United States, Israeli or Turkey.
- If Iraq or Iran renew hostilities, the war could become a catalyst for a wide Middle Eastern conflict. If either one blocked, Al-Faw, the famous port at the end of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the blockade could cause a world war.
- If China or the U.S. were to ally with any one of the С5+1 in an effort to forbid Russia from the use of its tracks, a world war may erupt.
Any one of these situations, which concern railways, currencies, ports, trade routes, disputed territories or satellite nations, could “boil over” in the near future. With the world holding its breath for the next development, the timing and the place for the beginning of the greatest breakdown in the history of human relations in the 21st century is upon us.
[1] – [סועדיה וסין מחישות את מו״מ ביניהם להשגת הסכם על תשלום עבור רכישות הנפט הסיניות בסעודיה ביואן סיני במקום דולרים, תיק דבקה ,03.16.2022]
[2] – [“Торговец Пушками,” «Военно-Промышленный Курьер», 14—20 Сентября, 2021. № 35 (898)].
[3] – [«Военно-Промышленный Курьер»,, 21–27 июля, 2010. № 28 (344)]
[4] – [В. И. Ленин, Империализм Как Высшая Стадия Капитализма]
[5] – [Europe’s Economy Falls Further Behind U.S., Wall Street Journal, January 31st, 2024]