Energy News Beat
ENB Pub Note: This article is by George McMillan III, on January 29, 2025, and he has been contributing to Energy News Beat in articles and guest spots on the podcast. His insights are critically needed in the Trump Administration as the Biden and Obama-appointed folks have removed much of the curriculum in the war colleges, universities, and think tanks. George has the boots-on-the-ground experience, and I have found his publicly available information spot-on when looking at energy and geopolitical analysis. I highly recommend the Trump administration work with George to help General Keith Kellogg with a plan to end the Ukraine War. On a recent podcast, George said, “Putin has won and does not need to meet at the negotiation tables.” He has grown the Russian economy by an estimated 4% in 2024, even under strict US sanctions. Without a viable upside to doing business in the EU, he does not need anything President Trump could offer.
Introduction: Putin’s European Populist Election Strategy
Stuart Turley and I have been explaining the “role of energy” in economic development theory and geopolitical strategies since November of 2023 in our “Russian Natural Gas and Global Geopolitical Realignment” series of papers and videos.
The problem is that the University system is so overly compartmented that far too few people understand the role of energy in the context of political and economic development theory in a narrow sense and the role of energy and economic development theory in the context of Sea Power versus Land Power Grand Strategies in a global sense.
Essentially “energy” and its ability to power machines is “the multiplier” in the “multiplier coefficient” in economic growth theory. Therefore the role of “energy in society” is best explained in an integrated causal model of political development, economic growth, and geopolitical strategies explained in the papers and slide sets presented on Energy News Beat since November 2024 and on the start-up Working Brother channel on YouTube since November of 2023.
The more people understand this confluence of interdisciplinary macro theories in terms of the Sea Power versus Land Power strategies, the easier it is to understand why Putin, Lavrov, and Medvedev are in no hurry at all to enter into discussions with Special Envoy Keith Kellogg concerning the cessation of hostilities in Ukraine.
The short answer should be obvious to any businessman, since Russia has no more meaningful commerce with the West to fuel its export-led growth import substitution industrialization investment strategy there is simply nothing to talk to the West about. Russia needs to be talking to the other countries in Eurasia and limit discussions with the collective West since they have proven to be counterproductive since the 1990s.
Post Cold War
In recent history, Russia’s attempt to join the European Union was roundly rebuffed during the 1990s and 2000s, and the movement of the EU and NATO Eastward served the purpose of erecting tariff and nontrade tariff barriers against Russia for the sole purpose of thwarting a petroleum-based export-led growth strategy that would let them economically develop and conceivably militarily develop.
The purpose of this is thoroughly explained in the Wolfowitz Plan of 1992 published in the New York
Times and the two RAND articles appearing in 2019 titled “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia” and “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground” explain that the goal of the US was to thwart the development of any near-peer super-power competitors. The US strategic plans were posted online for anyone interested in reading them, including the Russians and Chinese.
The plan to completely thwart Russian commerce was essentially accomplished via the 2014 Euromaidan color revolution to replace Viktor Yanukovych with Petro Poroshenko, which was followed by the movement of offensive military equipment and personnel to the Azov Sea area to threaten Russia’s only warm water port in Rostov-on-Don and the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea. Russia had already been witnessing Operation Sea flotilla of hundreds of NATO warships in the Black Sea since 2006. The “dominance displays” of NATO in the Black Sea were duly noted—the message that the Russian Black Sea Fleet could be overwhelmed inside the Black Sea was received.
The 2014 Euromaidan Coupe and the New Cold War
From 2014 forward Russia knew that it had to abandon all commercial relations with the West and pursue an economic growth strategy with the rest of Eurasia as the Global War on Terror revealed itself as a continuation of Kennan’s “strategy of containment.” To be sure Angela Merkel even stated that the Minsk Accords was merely a ploy to better train and equip the Ukrainian Army in the Ukrainian Donbas to attack the Russian-speaking areas that border Ukraine and Russia.
In that context, why would Russia wait until the hostilities cross the border? After all, the favorite slogan of the American military has always been “it is better to fight them over there than here” as the pretext to forward deploy its military all over Eurasia to encircle Russia and China. In reality, it has been the US and NATO who have been consistently forward deploying offensive military assets into former Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe, not the Russian Federation.
It is in this recent historical context that the Kellogg-Gorka approach of “dealing with Putin from a position of strength” was dead on arrival for two simple reasons. First, it has been the West that continually engages in naval and military dominance displays in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea, and secondly, since the Russians no longer have any meaningful commerce with the West they have nothing to discuss.
Lavrov stated in his December 26, 2024 interview that a “ceasefire was the road to nowhere.” Lavrov and Medvedev both have reiterated that sentiment several times since which is why the Kellogg-Gorka plan to “deal with Putin from a position of strength” only sounds like a good idea to an American electoral base who are not familiar with the history of Sea Power versus Land Power Grand Strategies, but for those who are familiar with the Grand Strategies the Kellogg-Gorka plan was a complete non-starter for the reasons that will be explained in greater detail in the next articles in the series.
Source: George McMillan
LinkedIn
The following is the last 10 minutes of a podcast with George McMillan and Stu Turley. It is an excellent starting point for folks to understand that Putin does not need to come to the negotiation table. We have a few ideas, and I highly recommend the Trump administration visit with us.
George McMillan [00:38:25] All right. But again, it’s just like just like Kellogg’s proposal. It’s a complete nonstarter. If the AfD comes into power, just nationalize it, give them their money back and take control of it. You don’t want to have the deal is between Russia and Germany. Why would you want a third party? What, so they could just screw with your strategic plans and and and play with your economic development strategies and so they can bankrupt you whatever they want. They I think they’ve already had enough of that. So, no, it’s it’s a complete nonstarter. I see why the Westerners would propose the idea so they can control it and use it as a club to keep Germany in line. But if they if they if it comes into power there. Yeah. Just nationalize it, give that company their money back and just own it outright because it was it would have been done in bad faith anyway. So I mean it wouldn’t be nationalizing it in a bad way. It’s just, you know, the whole thing was done would be done for, you know, nefarious, underhanded reasons. So just give their money back, buy back, keep on going. And that would be perfectly fine. Okay. So I ran across this this article because I’m pretty sure that the Rand talked about this when it came out. This article came out on December 26th of 2024. So Putin, as Trump is talking about, you know, he’s going to not let Germany rebuild Nord Stream as Gorka And all these people are on TV every night talking about they’re going to be dealing with with Trump, is going to be dealing with Putin from a position of strength, you know, and just, you know, it’s not just Gorka, it’s Marco. Ban on Fox News. It’s General Jack Keane on Fox News. It’s it’s Sean Hannity. It’s Dan Bongino. Okay. He’s not on Fox News anymore. But just all these people are every night going on on their different news platforms talking about how Trump is going to be dealing from a position of strength. All right. I’m not in any way, shape or form connected to this administration or any other administration in history. But I can read what this article says. Dated Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis. I had this video up on the screen or he was talking about the video. I mean, not this video. I mean that video. I mean this article, rather. And so I looked it up and I found it. And here, right here, I’m not going to read the thing and in detail, but it’s he he’s just he’s totally against even meeting with Kellogg or anybody in the Trump administration because the cease fire is the road to nowhere. Right. All they’ve done so far in the past 30 years is move Naito East and then arm all the different different countries in that area. Control. Okay, I got to go. I got to back up a second here. The purpose of sending the EU and NATO’s east to the Baltics, Poland, Ukraine and Georgia is to cut off every single overland logistical supply route going east to west. It’s about patrolling. They’ve already got they already control the maritime choke points because I got to put I got to take the economic strangulation strategy and put it into geopolitical terms. You strangle it on an economy by take, by covering the maritime riverine and terrestrial land bridge choke points. So they’ve already taken those over. They use got to take those over already. So Russia is already precluded from dealing from trading west, so they can only trade east and south. So under this rubric, why would. Well, first of all, Russia, the reason why Russia invaded Ukraine in the first place is because we’re putting our armaments in Mariupol right next to Rostov on Don, and arming the well, the Catholic Ukrainians, which are from that ideology that was popular during the 1930s. If you use that word out loud, the algorithms automatically delete videos. All right. So there you’re there. Their adherence to step on Bandera, I think I can say that name without getting an immediate strike. So they do those people. And there’s Lindsey Graham videos on this. So you’re putting tanks and offensive weaponry within 50 miles of the Russian border. And with 100 miles of Rostov on, Don, the only warm water port for minerals, agricultural exports. And right next to their oil and gas terminals in Nebraska and right next to Crimea, where their Black Sea fleet is. So, yes, that was a military action by the United States that was met with a military response from from the Russians. Yes, that is a symmetrical response. There’s Stevie Wonder. Could have seen that coming. The only people that can’t see that coming are Americans who watch CNN and Fox. You’re right. Totally false story. Again, I watch Indian News because India reports on it and they report out in English. So it makes it easier for me. Right. So I’ve been doing this for a long time because the way Western media framed stuff, everybody’s seen the montages where there is an event and every single news station, you know, national or local, all uses the same phraseology on the same date. So obviously BlackRock and Vanguard are writing the scripts for for all the news agencies.
Stuart Turley [00:43:40] Right.
George McMillan [00:43:41] That is so it’s been obvious for over a decade now, maybe longer. I don’t know. So in this article, Lavrov is already saying there’s no reason to to meet with anybody in the Trump administration. So then you get to that video that’s put out on January 2nd where Kellogg is planning to have a meeting that Lavrov already said is a complete nonstarter. So what we’re explaining in this video is why it’s a nonstarter If he cannot pursue an export led growth strategy by trading with Europe and to the West. Then there’s no reason for him to have any discussion whatsoever with Europe and the West. And so the problem is, why don’t Trump’s advisors, why didn’t Trump’s advisers already know that in advance when I knew that in advance and I’m on the work Team Brothers show laying these models out. I knew it years ago. Right? It should be. Stevie Wonder should be able to see this. Well, if you’re.
Stuart Turley [00:44:36] In part of the problem, you and I have talked about this before, is that your models and your sources of information have been removed from the war colleges and gone into the woke type trainings.
George McMillan [00:44:51] Well, yes. Do you have that problem? And then you have the you have the reality that it looks like the. Black Rocks and the Vanguards and the and the key people do take their economists that they like and send them to the Yale Grand Strategies to get that, to get that aspect and add that into their models. So the people at the very top do know it. It’s just right. Yeah. We’re just throwing out numbers. You know, it’s only going to be a dozen people here, a dozen people there that that know these strategies. But when you look at when I watch Indian media, they actually have these things as a prerequisite to get into their civil service. They make these strategies widely known. So for their state, you know, for their federal employees, they make sure that they all know this contrast. Look on LinkedIn. Look at the crazy responses I get. You’re one when we when we posted those Russian natural gas global geopolitical response, they’re like, no, this is crazy. We’re supplying them with LNG. Yes. At much higher prices. And they’re and their industrial economies are collapsing. Let me go. Okay. This article is so you know the point there. I want to I want to do some more some more screen shares. But the point there is, when you don’t know the geopolitical strategies, you become a check for players and buy you know, the Dunning Kruger your Checkers players playing against chess players. Just go back and look at the LinkedIn comments, the negative comments, and you’re dealing with the rigors of the world because, yeah, we’re supplying them with LNG at 30% higher cost and they can’t anticipate the ripple effects of that.
Stuart Turley [00:46:31] The ripple right at LNG and pipeline are not equal.
George McMillan [00:46:36] Right. So the point there is like, okay, well what happens if you just use a common sense strategy and you don’t know the theories? Surely common sense must be good, right?
Stuart Turley [00:46:48] Well, the common sense going out the door with fluoride. So.
George McMillan [00:46:51] Well, okay. But yeah, but. But with common sense. You’re playing checkers against chess Grandmaster Chess players. If you have if you have the walk in military decision making process, you have code analysis, code development code selection in your code analysis and code development stages that you want to put up a big menu of options. So as you choose a strategy, your opponent chooses a counter counter strategy. You can switch to another strategy and keep on going. Right. A common sense layperson is isn’t going to be able to readily switch policies. They have to rethink everything. Right. Well, if you’re you can’t call time out during a gunfight to rethink things. No, you’re going to be dead in two seconds. You don’t have a day or a week to go train and go back into it. So we’re we’re in a fight here where if the other people are prepared and they already have their codes laid out, they can switch between codes very, very quickly. While you’re just sitting there looking stupid.
Stuart Turley [00:47:54] And we need to.
George McMillan [00:47:56] Yeah. So now. Yeah, he had when, when, when we went over those when we went over those slides that I had, the four levels of warfare of grand strategic, strategic, operational and tactical levels. It looks like Trump’s cabinet picks are trained at their strategic level and a regional basis, but not a graded strategic where they can see the ripple effects because otherwise, why have they been saying we’re going to deal peace through strength, we’re going to deal with Putin from strength? And then you read the Sergei Lavrov article on the 26, and he’s like, we’re not even going to have a discussion. There’s nothing to. Right. And it should be very obvious they’re not doing business. So there’s no reason to talk about that. On one thing, big thing is if they do nothing, the populist governments take power in Central Europe, they kick out the EU and Naito and they do they and they start buying Russian natural gas again. But then if the EU and Naito is gone, there’s going to be some kind of I’m going to trade, yeah, there’s going to be another trading bloc that’s going to take its place. I’m going to call the Danube River trading bloc because it’s it’s a party in Germany, Freedom Party in Austria. Then the Visegrad, Visegrad, Visegrad countries, minus Poland. So. All right. Well, it would be Czech would probably fall into that because they’re landlocked now. But you know Orban in Hungary and Slovakia, verkaik in Serbia and your goodness. Okay. Georgia still should they elect the the elections were canceled so he’s not allowed to take office. But that’s not going to sit well with the Romanian people. Now they know, the West has been pro democracy. They pretending is pro democracy. We elected a guy and they canceled the elections. Okay. That is not going to go over well. Now, now the Romanians know they’ve been lied to and their energy costs are rising in Moldova with Maia Sandu there. Her population is shrinking. They’re in a tremendous they’re in a tremendous energy crunch. Right. So let me. Yeah, let me do another let me do another presentation to another share screen here just in this article. This was this was December 19th of 2024. So just last month, it’s on. It’s in Politico. Europe’s economic apocalypse is now. So going back to what I was just saying, all Putin and Lavrov have to do is do nothing because the neocons and the Green Party have got their way. They’ve won the elections. They shut off you know, they separated Europe from natural gas on one hand and they went to completely unreliable solar and wind renewables, which you can’t run an industrial economy on. So the economy is collapsing. All right. Let me go to let me go to another because I said Stevie Wonder should have seen this. And yeah, I’m sure the people that watched your channel saw that. All I’m adding is the geopolitical land, power versus sea power and Kennan’s five Power center strategies knowledge behind this. You know, that’s what I mean. All right. So, yeah. Let me go to the next one. This one is dated December 22nd, so.
Stuart Turley [00:51:05] 2021.
George McMillan [00:51:06] Of 2021. So you already had energy prices rising because they they started weaning themselves off natural gas going through going to renewables, decreased the Russian natural gas even more. This problem gets worse, not better. And they did it anyway and they ended the nuclear. So this is all Putin has to do is nothing. He just has to leave these people in charge, even if they’re doing something obviously stupid. And it doesn’t matter if you tell them that it won’t work, the Green Party will do it anyway.
Stuart Turley [00:51:43] You know, this is just unbelievable. This is almost like that movie Christmas vacation where he’s watching the Christmas vacation, but it’s also the Christmas story where he’s watching the kid put a fork into the plug and his wife comes in and says, by the way, are you going to stop him? And he’s like, No, he’s going to learn.
George McMillan [00:52:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I won’t kill it. Right? So yeah, yeah, I even know that. And I do electrical stuff all the time and I get chocolate or whatever the Yeah, I know in advance I still make that mistake. Well I don’t, I wouldn’t do if it was, you know, too many apps. Right. But I like the amber too. I have not. They are. But Trump knows that the Green New Deal stuff is complete. You know, it’ll destroy your economy. It’ll destroy your military, will destroy everything. Okay. Trump gets that, and he knows that. But and, you know, he’s probably for everything that’s on your show because we’re all drill, baby, drill because it’s the Green. New Deal is a complete nonstarter. And true. T Boone Pickens has been talking about natural gas, natural gas for, you know, for 20 years now. So, I mean, he died a while ago, but, I mean, he’s been saying it. Yeah, you are the first major proponents of it. So this has been going on for a long time. So Trump administration gets that. It’s just a situation in Germany that they don’t get because if they understood this, the situation in Europe, they wouldn’t have been over there saying, you know, touting that they’re going to be dealing with Putin from a position of strength. And then Sergei Lavrov in December 26th just says there’s no reason to make, you know, the neocons won the Green New Deal won. We’re doing business south and east because you’ve got you have sanctions on us. So now they’re Putin’s best move is to do nothing. Just let Germany and Japan collapse. Well, and he has to do absolutely nothing to make that happen. And what happens in an economic collapse of another country or just anything, if a business goes out of business, guess what? Their assets go on fire sale. Right. So if he wants to pursue back to the export led growth, import substitution, industrialization strategy, if he wants to buy a Japanese automaker on the cheap, those prospects get better, not worse. Right. Like it’s like these videos. We’re sorry, but you get these leftist females that want to go to renewables, You know, the Karens of the world, they they want to go to renewables because it sounds so great. No, the reality is, if Putin does nothing, he can buy operating companies that are going out of business, hire their engineers who would go from healthy six figure jobs to nothing. He can restore their salaries, buy their plants and equipment, move them to Russia and start that sectoral development. That’s part of the solo swan models or the or the Rostow five stages of growth models he can write. A lot of people talk about there is inflation in Russia while okay everybody here knows there’s monetary cost push and demand pull inflations right Well he’s not experiencing a cost push. He’s experiencing a demand pull from the growing economy. So how do you solve. Solve that problem. You increase supply. How do you do that? You buy operating companies, move them into Russia, and then whatever that bottleneck is, you’re trying to alleviate that bottleneck in whatever sector you’re talking about. What if he starts buying whole operating companies that are multinational automobile makers and buying their staff to move there? Well, then that alleviates that problem. So there’s going to be a bunch of big multinational corporations that are going to be going under. So this fight, if he does nothing, he wins. He wins. The Populist party takes power and he gets to buy these businesses on the rebound at passing. Wow. Yeah. So why why would he talk to anybody in the Trump administration? His best play is to stall now.
Stuart Turley [00:55:43] I think we need to pause here for for the day and then try to figure out, because I think we need to come up with something and say, what would you tell General Kellogg, you know, and say something on that. So I think we need to kind of take a look and say Putin is playing chess right now. And then I think we’re just going to say, you just hit the timer. It’s now Trump’s turn. Well, let’s take a look and see how you do.
George McMillan [00:56:09] Yeah, I just want to do a preview of what that is. Okay. The neo cons and the greens, what they want. Okay. There’s nothing Trump can do now between now and when more of these populist parties rise. Very simply. How long does it take to build a pipeline? Years. Right. How long is this going to take for the political situation to change in Europe?
Stuart Turley [00:56:33] Six months
George McMillan [00:56:34] Less. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So they’re out of time. So now Trump has to. Has to just. I think the best thing that at this point for Trump to do, and this would be correct is just tell the neoconservatives and tell the Green Party and the neo and the neo liberals that they want. Now, there’s nothing you can do. And then, you know, just to close it out here, what’s the what if you listen to a Tenet, Colonel Daniel Davis or Colonel McGregor? The Ukraine war, you know, Russia won that a long time ago. They’re doing a static defensive war, war of attrition and just been feeding their soldiers. Just to make it just be.
Stuart Turley [00:57:14] Right into that buzzer.
George McMillan [00:57:15] Yeah, they’re just putting their soldiers underneath a Russian artillery. So this whole thing is beneficiary. There is no reason for Russia to change their military strategy. So then what’s the purpose of Ukraine? Keep on sending soldiers to die underneath Russian artillery. Putin is playing this perfectly, by the way, because as long as they’re doing that, he doesn’t have to change strategies again. All Putin has to do is nothing. He doesn’t have to change his strategy. He has to wait until the populist parties take power in Europe and kick the EU, NATO out. He has to do nothing. This isn’t the purpose of this. I want to close out on this point. What’s the purpose of continuing the war? It’s to continue the narcissistic delusion. If people look under narcissistic personality disorder, the narcissist person doesn’t want to face their delusion. Right. So Trump has to call and we’ll end it on this. Trump has to just explain that to the public and and formulate a policy of what do we do best now?
Stuart Turley [00:58:21] Exactly. Wow. I got a lot to think on this one today, George. Yeah. What do we do? Today is going to be an interesting topic as we get rolling for the next one. So I will have your LinkedIn information because as I’ve said before on our podcast, if I was a Energy gigantic CEO of Chevron or Exxon or any of those other big guys and wanted to think about a pipeline, I’d be talking to you about where what is going on in the world. And if I was a brand new president in an administration, I would be hiring your firm right now trying to say, what am I generals not know?
George McMillan [00:59:03] What I might do is LinkedIn is not a good forum. Right. Look, I looked at your YouTube video collection the other day. Out of all the dozens of videos I’ve done, there’s only there’s only three that are still posted. So obviously, obviously I’m in limited state. Okay. All I do is talk about academic books that anybody can buy off of, off of Amazon or a used books. Right. Right. But yet I’m obviously as an individual and limited state. Right. Okay. There is a reason for that. So LinkedIn is probably on probably limited state over there. Okay. Right. Over Christmas, I complete I did about four dozen posts that say short posts with maps and charts. If you read them sequentially, it lays out all the strategic plans on LinkedIn. My friends, my friends got none of those feeds. So LinkedIn is probably not a good forum. What I’ll do is I’ll set up the easiest thing to do is to set up on Telegram. The problem with that is I don’t want to deal with anybody. In pseudonyms. If I don’t have a real name and I don’t know where you work, you know, because I don’t I I’m not allowed to deal with everybody. Right? I need to they need to have a legitimate name, a legitimate job, you know, from a preferably, you know, a Western company, because I can’t work with anybody from Russia and China. That should be obvious.
Stuart Turley [01:00:17] Yeah, we’re kind of like not going to jail.
George McMillan [01:00:20] Yeah. Yeah, I. I don’t. I can’t get into any trouble. No, I need to set up some kind of forum where I can communicate with people because all the other ones are blocked.
Stuart Turley [01:00:30] In the meantime, we’ll have your LinkedIn contact information in there.
George McMillan [01:00:34] Yeah, and I got to work something out. Maybe Patreon. You know, I can do telegram as long as people do it in a real name. Right?
Stuart Turley [01:00:41] I hear you. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, George. I do appreciate you today. So we’ll we’ll be back with you here soon. Thanks.
George McMillan [01:00:49] Thanks a lot.
The post Why Keith Kellogg’s Plan is DOA: Avoiding the Catastrophic Downside Risk of Russo-Ukraine Negotiations appeared first on Energy News Beat.
