Mackinder’s Paradigm, Reversed?

from a war to an investment model - and a terrible global digital prison

Note for my readers: the content of this article was defined by me, but my sparring partner chatgpt did most of the writing (which suits me well because of my eye problem). Chaosnavigator and Peter Duke showed me how you can train chatgpt and I found that it works very well, most of my corrections are to sharpen the formulations. Please criticize the result and pass me your thoughts!

Mackinder’s Paradigm, Reversed?

In 1904, the British geographer Halford Mackinder published The Geographical Pivot of History. His “Heartland” thesis became one of the foundational ideas of modern geopolitics: whoever could dominate the Eurasian landmass could potentially acquire the resources and strategic power to challenge the maritime powers. In a 2015 surprise, STRATFOR’s George Friedman revealed how the US had always applied MacKinder’s 1904 heartland theory to prevent a politically and economically integrated Eurasia:

“The primordial interest of the United States over which we have fought wars, the First, Second and Cold Wars, has been the relationship between Germany and Russia, because united they are the only force that could threaten us, and to make sure that that does not happen.”

Now, 122 years later, are we beginning to witness the reverse process?

Recent developments suggest that this possibility should at least be considered.

Russia’s economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev and leaders of Germany’s AfD are reportedly preparing talks about restoring Russian gas supplies to Germany. The proposed initiative could involve American figures close to President Trump, including Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The discussions are reportedly conditional on a Russia–Ukraine peace framework.

This follows an earlier meeting in St Petersburg between an AfD foreign-policy spokesman, Dmitriev and Gazprom chief Alexei Miller, where the reopening of Nord Stream was discussed.

The significance goes far beyond natural gas.

A renewed Russian-German energy relationship would move in precisely the opposite direction of MacKinders guideline.

And if American capital and political influence were to become part of such a reconciliation, something even more interesting would be happening:

The former maritime hegemon would no longer merely be trying to prevent Eurasian integration. It could be positioning itself inside it, to manage it.

That would be Mackinder in reverse.

This possibility fits a much larger historical transition happening in our time. The American cycle of hegemony is being brought to its end. Meanwhile, China has been prepared (see my article “From Tao to Mao ...”) as the principal economic and organizational force of a new Eurasian-centered cycle of Glafia’s domination project. But that new world order is of course not being presented as an new empire. Its deceptive language is multipolarity: sovereignty, equality between nations, non-interference, civilizational diversity, mutual benefit and respect for different development paths.

China is explicitly promoting this language. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in September 2026, Xi Jinping called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world,” emphasizing sovereign equality, mutual respect, independent development paths and a more representative global governance system.

This is precisely where the hegemonic transition becomes particularly interesting.

From war to investment

During the American cycle, the financial-industrial system could profit enormously from geopolitical confrontation: armaments, military expenditure, destruction, reconstruction and the indebtedness of states all created enormous opportunities for capital.

But there is another way of extracting value from geopolitical transformation.

Investment.

Instead of destroying a country and subsequently rebuilding it, capital can increasingly profit from integrating that country into a global economic system: energy, infrastructure, mining, technology, finance, logistics and reconstruction.

The reported discussions surrounding Russia point toward precisely such a possibility: peace, sanctions relief, renewed energy flows and potentially new American-Russian business arrangements.

If this develops, the economic geography could become remarkable:

American capital + Russian resources + German industry + Chinese markets and infrastructure = a potentially reintegrated Eurasian economic space.

That would be very different from the geopolitical configuration of the twentieth century.

And it raises a provocative question:

What if the next stage of American power is not preventing Eurasian integration, but participating in—and profiting from—it?

From real unipolarity to fake multipolarity

This also gives a different meaning to the emerging “multipolar world order.”

On the surface, multipolarity represents the opposite of the American unipolar system. Sovereign states are supposedly free to choose their own development paths, while no single power dominates the world.

But multipolarity does not mean deglobalization. On the contrary, it’s a different form of globalization: a world of interconnected sovereign states, regional blocs, common technological standards, international financial systems and increasingly integrated digital infrastructures.

China’s current BRICS and SCO rhetoric makes this explicit. At the 2026 BRICS summit, Xi called for reform of the international financial architecture, greater representation for developing countries, stronger multilateral institutions and a common framework for global AI governance.

Thus the official geopolitical language changes:

Unipolarity → multipolarity
American leadership → sovereign equality
Westernization → civilizational diversity
military confrontation → investment and integration

But the underlying process will still be one of increasing global integration.

This is where my larger thesis about Glafia becomes relevant.

Glafia is not abandoning global control. It is changing the mechanism through which it is exercised.

The American cycle is ending not because the system has collapsed, but because its architects planned a new geopolitical configuration of the very same old system.

China was prepared to lead the next cycle under the attractive banner of multipolarity and respect for sovereignty and traditions. During the transition from West to East, the US-Israel “war revenue model” may increasingly be replaced by an “investment model.”

Why wage expensive and more and more dangerous wars when the same territories can become profitable investment environments?

And there is another reason for such a transition.

The emerging technocratic system of population management—what I have called “our digital prison”—depends upon stability, connectivity, identification, data integration and cooperation across borders. That project can’t be carried out in a permanently unstable world of major wars.

The apparent geopolitical antagonists—China, Russia, Iran and the West—may therefore remain competitors at the political level while simultaneously participating in increasingly compatible systems of economic, technological and digital governance.

If that is where the world is heading, then Mackinder’s old question has acquired a strange new form.

He asked what would happen if Eurasia became integrated enough to challenge the maritime hegemon.

The question for our time may be the opposite:

What happens when the outgoing maritime hegemon decides to participate in the integration of the Eurasian Heartland— because there is now more money, and more control, in investing in the new system than in destroying the old one?

That would be Mackinder’s paradigm, reversed.