In this episode of Energy News Beat - Conversation in Energy, Stuart Turley and George McMillan dive into the shifting global energy landscape, exploring why Putin has no reason to negotiate with the West, how Russia’s energy strategy is reshaping economies, and why Europe’s industrial decline is fueling a rise in populism. They break down Trump’s “peace through strength” approach, the future of Nord Stream, and the geopolitical power plays influencing global markets. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion that challenges mainstream narratives and reveals the real forces driving international energy politics.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:07 – Introduction
01:25 – Global Turmoil in a Short Timeframe
02:51 – Trump’s Position on Ukraine & Russian Negotiations
06:17 – Geopolitical Manipulation of Energy Markets
11:43 – Trump’s Strength-Based Approach to Russia
16:53 – Energy as a Political Weapon
24:06 – Why Putin Has No Reason to Negotiate with the U.S.
29:48 – Western Media & Political Strategy Missteps
33:59 – The Collapse of European Industry & Rise of Populism
38:25 – Potential Rebuilding of Nord Stream by Germany
52:03 – Putin’s Best Strategy: Do Nothing
58:21 – Final Thoughts
George McMillan [00:00:07] The United States has a bunch of problems. Russian oil and gas. The cheapest form of energy. So whichever industrial power centers that they connect to by pipeline, we'll have industries that prosper and basically put everybody else out of business. Russia being in the heartland of Central Asia. Chinese energy integration is so much more cost competitive globally that the other industrial power centers are probably going to have to also integrate. Japan's been having energy production in Sakhalin Island. Germany had the Nord Stream pipeline, but they also had the South Stream pipeline going through the Black Sea. And wherever there is a Russian or Chinese infrastructural project, there happens to be war, tension, color, revolutions all the way around Eurasia. That is causing a big problem for the United States and losing its allies. And also whoever integrates then pays in rubles. And then there's nobody to support or $34 trillion in debt and everything just collapsing.
Stuart Turley [00:01:07] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy News Beat podcast. My name's Do Turley, president CEO of the Sandstone Group. I'll tell you what, we are going to have some serious fun today. I have George McMillan with Geo Strategic Consulting on the day. And George, we got some things to talk about today, don't we?
George McMillan [00:01:25] Yeah, like I keep on saying, between the election and inauguration, there's literally about a decade's worth of news sandwiched into a few months.
Stuart Turley [00:01:33] And we we've had hours of recordings that we're going through and starting to roll through. And today, this one kind of caught my eye. Let me just share my screen for a sack here. We're sharing it from energy news. Beat.co. And when you go to the top stories here, this one was kind of interesting. We have Trump's Ukraine aid to set a 100 day timeline to end conflict. Let me kind of go through this story a little bit here. This is General Kellogg, I believe, stressed that Trump remains committed to restarting negotiations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky. He's not trying to give Putin or the Russians. He's not trying. Let me say that correctly. He's not trying to give something to Putin or the Russians. He's actually trying to save Ukraine and save their sovereignty. He hasn't talked to him in over two years, Kellogg said, adding that Trump does talk to his adversaries. I do respect that for President Trump, But you and I were talking the other day, George, and I don't think President Trump nor his generals have all the information they need.
George McMillan [00:02:51] Yeah, I know they don't. In that thing it was talking about. Kellogg hasn't talked to Zelensky in a few years, or.
Stuart Turley [00:02:59] I believe he was saying. Kellogg says Trump hasn't talked to Putin in a few years.
George McMillan [00:03:05] Okay. Yeah. All right. So,
Stuart Turley [00:03:09] yeah. And he he hasn't talked to him in two years, Kellogg said.
George McMillan [00:03:11] Right. And then, yeah, Putin stopped, gave up talking to the Biden administration folks, you know, a few years ago, too. So that's right. No communications. And of course, that's going to be our topic today because the the we have been talking about the Russian natural gas and geopolitical realignment since last last November. Right on the on this show and other ones, you know, since December of 2022, I have been on the Working Brother program when I was just starting out, trying to never been on YouTube before. I've been on Backpage and speaks, and then I started going over my, you know, boring academic slide sets with working brother just to get the different five power center doctrines out, because I realized, well, let me back up a second. From about end of February 2022 when the war started, I started going on with Felix Rex and Michael De La Brock on the Black page and speaks channel, right? And I already started talking about moving Naito East versus having a new having making the Warsaw Pact countries a big neutral zone of free trade either direction. The Caspian reported the Intermarium Intermarium project video several years ago. That's a good one to watch, you know, to know what I'm talking about. And then a closely associated Three Seas initiative which would have made the entire center just a few countries that Intermarium project focused on that was just the Baltic, Poland and and Ukraine, the old Polish-lithuanian empire, basically. Right? The Three Seas initiative was would have been the whole Warsaw Pact and in a free trade zone to develop. So you'd have the EU, Central European and then Russian. So you have a neutral zone keeping the superpower separated and have free trade so that. Those countries could economically develop. The EU moved east and of course people were like, don't these countries have freedom? Yes, they can have freedom. They can develop. But you had a whole bunch of different alternatives, right? Propaganda. Propaganda is not just telling you something false. It's lying by omission to keep to keep you from understanding the truth because the other options are not discussed. You know what to look for because I'm one of my majors is the international relations that I got. I also have an MVP. So that's my that's my standard aspect and that's my political science aspect. So I'm aware of these things. But 99% of your audience is not. So then you have to say, well, opportunity, cost tradeoffs. What? How come they chose that option? And then what was the trade off that they lost? With? The other options while they're removing the EU is to erect trade barriers and non-tariff trade barriers, to cut off Russian, to cut off Russian commerce because it's really natural gas, because they don't want Europe, they say, dependent on natural gas. No, they don't want Europe to become independent of the United States because of natural gas. They phrase, you know, in the in the framing how the Western media frame stuff. They they mis frame stuff and they're misleading on purpose.
Stuart Turley [00:06:17] You just said you just said something very, very critical in how they frame it that we don't want that it would be best for Russia to not become dependent on Russia natural gas because then that would be independent from the United States.
George McMillan [00:06:39] Correct. When Lord Ismay were the first heads of Naito right after World War Two, he said, To simply put, the purpose of Naito is to keep the US in Europe, the Germans down in Europe and the Soviet Union out of Europe. All right, So and Kennan's Ambassador George Kennan's original Power Center doctrine is based on North America being power center number one, using the Marshall Plan to develop Western Europe and Power Center number two, and then using the Marshall Plan and in Japan to make Japan power center number three. And then you're trying to contain Russia in power center. Number number five now to include power center. Number four, the United States was trying to support Chiang Chiang Kai shek and the KMT against Mao Zedong in the comics. The idea was to have four of the world's power centers to isolate communism. But when Mao Tse tung defeated Chiang Kai shek and the KMT went to the island of Formosa, Taiwan, then that power center strategy changed to surrounding both Russia and China. You know, strategies of containment and separating China and Russia. Yeah, I don't want to go too much into the history of that, but I went over those in detail on Black Pigeon Speaks and on the Working Brother program. A couple of years ago. I did that on purpose. I wanted people to let go. George, why are you doing your boring slides? That's because I wanted on record, because I could see that this was a missing piece of information and it had to be in. I wanted to people see that I had it in writing, right? But for a whole bunch of different reasons. But it is critical information. Okay. That was two years ago. We are now here. They have totally cut Russia off from natural gas and now the European, Europe, European industry is collapsing. We've already talked about Germany. Automobile manufacturing went from went from producing 77 million cars per year to now they're only producing 4 million. And it's just it's just it's just cratering. Right. Same thing with Japan. You got the big Honda Nissan Mitsubishi merger going on because they can't all stay in business. Right. Toyota's also in trouble without cheap Russian natural gas. All of those both those economies are going to crater what the United States was trying to prevent. We we did this last year, the Russian natural gas pipelines coming from Russia going to Germany and Japan. They're trying to stop those direct connections because if they infrastructure, we integrate the economically integrate diplomatically and militarily integrate. So I keep on throwing that dime analogy out there because the government does Diamond Penny's analysis, because the government, the geo strategic model. All right. Right. So and it's you know, people can look that up. It's it's online. Well, I sent my slide tests. I showed the methodologies. So they're trying to stop because. Well, if the heartland of Russia in statements terms integrates with them, then the ISO, then the U.S. is isolated by itself in North America. So the part that I like about Trump's policy is he wants a stronger Western Hemisphere alliance system. That's what the the Panama thinks about. He wants to do a stronger dime integration with north and south. America. So he's got Rubio as secretary of state to to deal with that specifically because Rubio speaks Spanish and he's Cuban. So he's anti-communist, Chinese and Russian. He checks those boxes. So he's picked to do that mission set nice in Europe. He's got. And now here's the rub. Let me preface this by saying I like Trump's domestic Western interests about the part that is missing is it's in the West because he's got General Kellogg as being a special envoy to Ukraine. Right. He's got Rick Grenell, the old CIA DCI, director of Center Intelligence, DCI. He's got him as as also an advisor to Europe. So he's getting he's not having his secretary of state. He's basically having multiple secretary of state here for different reasons. Right. So he's got Rubio for South America. It looks like I mean, I'm not in the meetings, obviously. I have no idea. I'm just guessing with those people. What would I do with them? Exactly. Yeah. All right. If if you had a bunch of football players, you're going to put your big guys in the front line, and you're your fast light guys outside, right? And skill. Right. Right. Okay. That's all I'm doing is like, okay, where do their talents match up? And I guess I have no idea. Yeah, I wish I had behind this guy behind the scenes information, but I just don't. Anyway, ever since he got elected and started selecting his cabinet, you see, you see people, especially like Sebastian Gorka on his borders News back show. He starts talking about, that president is going to deal with Putin from a position of strength. And then Kellogg has is all I can do is share screen on this. Okay. Kellogg Yeah. Let me let me show people this, because just just so people know where I'm getting this from, I really like to have my citations up.
Stuart Turley [00:11:43] So you're bringing up the points now. George Kellogg is saying this on the CW, and you're saying that they're still missing some serious points.
George McMillan [00:11:54] Right. So in the in Kellogg's article, it was dated April 11th, 2024. Right. Gets elected names his cabinet people and then and then the real then the second string people. And Kellogg is one of them. So. Kellogg and well, you also have Sebastian Gorka as deputy NSC and Michael Wallace as the national security advisor. You start to have these people, you know, echoing that Trump is going to deal with Putin from a position of strength, dealing with Putin from strength, peace through strength, all these slogans. Okay. These are slogans. All right. And it indicated to me was they don't understand the sea power versus land power strategies in general, the industrial power center strategies more specifically, and the role of energy information, dime instruments of national power, you know, instruments, national power. It's very, you know, Bismarck and Clausewitz. The stronger your economy is, the stronger your military is, the stronger your diplomacy is. Dime analysis. Again, I know I say this all the time, but for those who have watched, it's an acronym for diplomatic, infrastructural, informational, military and economic, it actually the way it actually flows. That's the mnemonic, the acronym. But the way it actually flows causally is the more the more telecommunications and transportation infrastructure that you have, the stronger your economy develops, the stronger your economy is, the stronger your military is, the stronger your diplomacy is. So if flow charts that way and are people that are familiar with economic growth theories like solo swan models, you know, think in those terms for your economic majors out there and you'll get it. So what Putin wanted to do was use Russian natural gas. Gazprom is the is the national is that National Gas Company of Russia. It's state owned and it has a monopoly on Russian gas. Why is that? He does not want to privatize that because that's what he runs his government on. He's got to go from a super outdated economy in the Soviet era where they're still driving turbines and these cars that were junked and they were outdated in the 1940s. So he has the problem of having everybody knows that Russia produces a lot of great theoretical mathematicians. I see them and game theory conferences, people that are, you know, ten times smarter than me all over the place. So having having high IQ people is not that's not the problem. The problem is a communist bureaucratic economy strangles them. So he's got he's got to open up his economy. And how does he do that? He's going to pursue an export led growth strategy based on energy, based on Gazprom. The oil fields he's got are joint ventures with with Western companies. So he's losing a lot of that profit going back to Wall Street and City of London. And he can't develop his economy that way. Right. What Jeffrey Sachs complains about the The economist from Harvard, and he's at Columbia now, who is in the Scotland 500 day transition plan. Was arguing, Yes, they put the oligarchs in charge of all these big operations in Eastern Europe over the resources so they would be easily controlled by Wall Street, City of London, so the profits would emigrate out of out of Russia. And under those circumstances, under a structuralist theory underscore good or frog singer theory those things, it has merit. Because as long as the profits go to Wall Street and City of London, it's not going back into the Russian economy and they can't economically develop. So, yeah, we just the video came up, right. This is a complete nonstarter on every single level. The pipeline contracts going through Ukraine on the Jerusalem pipeline, they ended December 31st. So that ended all the Russian natural gas flows going into Europe before they had moved the EU east and put up these trade tariff barriers and non trade tariff barriers to stop commerce. So essentially 100% of Russian commerce going to Europe is now ceased on midnight December 31st. So Russia now has no more commerce with Western Europe. We talked about it in the previous shows. If Russia cannot pursue an export led growth strategy, West, he's got to pursue that export led growth strategy south and to the east. Just like that, there's nothing on the North Pole, so we can't go north. I mean, he can send two ships that way, but the industrial power centers or on the rim land of Eurasia. So we're going back despite mid heartland, really, in theory here. So every time every time I have an economic development model, you also have a geopolitical model that overlays that. So he's got to pursue an export led growth model with an import substitution, industrialization investment strategy. All right. Saying that I want to play another I want to play another video as.
Video Speakers [00:16:53] A case officer. You have to be able to manipulate people because there is no such thing as a former KGB guy. Gas is one of his two main tools for coercion, for leverage, for influence. Soviet traditions continue to build on gas, oil and gas dependencies as a political weapon. Was par for the course in the Warsaw Pact. Gunmen gave up on one of the world's most powerful men has strategically wielded what's probably his most effective weapon. With the help of Gazprom, Vladimir Putin has implemented policies designed to strike fear into the wider world. The whole purpose of Nord Stream was to be able to pressurize Central and Eastern Europe. North Sea once was a project aimed at allowing Russians to play hardball against the Yamal Peninsula in western Siberia. The region's indigenous people maintain thousand year old traditions on the tundra. Here the Nenets are reindeer herders and Mikko Cerato is their leader.
George McMillan [00:17:51] Yeah, I was look, I was trying to look for another book. I'm sorry, but the point there is it's using energy as a weapon. They misfiring the issue. They don't want the Russian natural gas used to rebuild the military. What is what are you saying in that video? It's not using as a weapon because they're going to all of a sudden cut off gas flows to different places. They might have done that in the Soviet era, too, right? Like they do. You know, they have done that before. But we're this is Stalin's not in charge anymore. Khrushchev's not in charge anymore.
Stuart Turley [00:18:24] I have to hand it to Putin. He understands finances better than Stalin.
George McMillan [00:18:29] Well, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, he wrote his his thesis on how to convert mineral wealth to economic development. So again, you're talking about export led growth strategies, raw materials, and then how to do import substitution, investment, industrialization. So yeah, all these, you know, all these different books that, that I have all over the place. Yeah. He's well, this is Rochdale's Growth strategies. He was the advisor of of Kennedy and LBJ and he worked very closely with Ambassador Kennedy and a whole bunch of other people. Ralph Nelson, who did Nessie 68, the whole economic development strategy that created Dhaka and investing into key industries to grow the economy and produce a lot of dual use technologies. All of that was in the 40s and 50s and 60s, all of us intertwined. So that's why my models are interdisciplinary, because at the NSC during that time frame that a whole bunch of experts come in and worked on these things. So again, that was that was decades ago, but now we're at another iteration of the same thing. So it's to stop. Our media doesn't miss frames the issue. The fact is Russia's you know, Putin has never shut off his gas because he wants the gas to be continuous and he doesn't want to interrupt it because he wants to take the money, invest and build up his economy. The United States is trying to stop it because of the Firepower Center doctrine. They don't want Germany aligned with with Russia. Hostile fire wrote his books on that. They don't want them to integrate because once they're integrated, then the United States loses its western ally. Right. Same thing with Japan with stopping that 40 miles of undersea pipeline. All right. We're back to the automobile Industries are crashing. So now what the Wolfowitz doctrine was, you don't want it. You want to stop all near-peer competitors. So you're trying to stop him from selling his raw materials to getting money and then vertically integrating those fields to get value added production in this country to build his economy, but also horizontally expanding his sectoral development. By almost theory, the guy from Princeton. So you don't want him to grow vertically or horizontally and economically develop because that's what most wine models are all about. How many sectors can you advance in your given situation and what order are you? Do you do the men give an on your particular situation? So they're trying to stop that. They just miss frame it that he's going to use it as a weapon, but not like these videos say. Right. The United States.
Stuart Turley [00:21:02] He's going to use it. He's going to use it to make his weapons and build his economy as opposed to being used as a weapon.
George McMillan [00:21:11] Correct. Okay. Now you get to narcissistic personality disorder. They have target fixation on on their worst fear. And because they are focused on their worst fear, they drive right into it.
Stuart Turley [00:21:25] So another thing.
George McMillan [00:21:26] That's very, very important when I build my strategic models, right, the way I mean, the way you build models is the ideal versus reality. Okay. How do you understand what reality is? Well, you start to define an ideal as if everybody was a cooperative, altruistic player. In game theory, you build your rational actor model on how do you get raw materials out of the ground, process them into consumer products and then distribute them with everybody cooperating to their fullest extent potential. All right. When you're looking at maps where mineral deposits or natural gas resources are and where the factories are or where they should be or whatever, where your transportation centers are, you want to have some kind of logically coherent program of doing it. Okay. Right. Used to take twice is. My father used to always talk about this when I was a kid driving to Pennsylvania a lot. It takes twice as much coal to produce steel. So you bring you bring the iron ore to the steel, not vice versa. So when you talk about what's a logical thing to do, you're always thinking in those types of efficiency terms, then you have to take and distribute it. This is very important because.
Stuart Turley [00:22:34] You're you're getting to that point, though, that you're you are leading up to a critical point.
George McMillan [00:22:41] Right? So that means the Internet is going to crash right now, right?
Stuart Turley [00:22:44] Yeah. We've had this problem trying to record this. You you are coming up to what I think you are talking about is there's no club. And this is your thoughts, right?
George McMillan [00:22:55] Right. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:22:57] Not the Club. Right?
George McMillan [00:22:57] Yeah. See, this is why I like to talk to your audience because they understand, you know, there's a lot of MBAs out there that know energy. So to go into these different theories and explain why these videos are so misleading. Yeah, I can do it is easiest to somebody that has a background in economics or studies.
Stuart Turley [00:23:14] Energy is you you're articulating right now, George, and we're having some Internet problems but what you're you just nailed a huge topic and that is General Kellogg is trying to negotiate from a strength, a position of strength. But you've nailed it. There is no strings or carrot for President Putin to come forward, correct? Right.
George McMillan [00:23:42] Right.
Stuart Turley [00:23:43] So so what position of strength are we talking about here?
George McMillan [00:23:48] Yeah, there is no position of strength because since once Russian natural gas stop flowing east and they're not selling any other commerce because now you've got to pay tariff and non-trade tariff barriers. So they're not selling any you know, Putin is not selling anything to Western Europe.
Stuart Turley [00:24:06] So I did not see this one coming. George, you nailed it.
George McMillan [00:24:09] Yeah. So once that occurs, there's no reason to talk for Putin and Blinken or Putin and the new incoming Trump administration if the problem is there and Blinken will have to go over Blinken's video another day, the one that he recorded a couple of days ago. We need to break that down because Blinken has been talking about separating Europe from from Russia. Yes. In his in his just in his master's thesis, I think it was. Or is this a dissertation? I'm not sure. I can't remember. I read too many books. But he wrote about this at Yale of separating Germany, Russian natural gas, you know, 30 years ago.
Stuart Turley [00:24:49] No, but we need to stay on this General Kellogg discussion from a standpoint that you've nailed a critical piece of the puzzle I wouldn't want to play. I've said this before, I would not want to play chess against President Trump. I would also not want to play chess against President Putin. That being said, you just nailed that. Now we have President Trump, who has just had General Kellogg delaying his trip to go talk to Putin and Zelensky because there's no reason there's no carrot for President Putin that you just brought up. Right.
George McMillan [00:25:28] So I was very curious what I wrote last week when I was preparing for this show, because there was a delay of of of if we could do several hours at a time, this information would have gotten out much faster. But anyway. Right. I was very curious because I wanted to know how how Putin and Lavrov were going to play this because there's no reason for discussion. Man. If we're not doing business with each other, we don't really talk to each other because we're focused on making a living. Same thing for the world leaders. You're not you don't have time just to go hang out and shoot the British. So since they've already shut off all commerce, there is no reason for them to talk. What I was thinking was, was that Putin would go ahead and me, and then, you know, Trump would try to deal from a position of strength and Putin would be like, look, we got nothing to talk about. But that would be embarrassing to Trump, right? So they wouldn't do that because, you know, in diplomacy, you got to you know, you got to let your opponent save face if you want to maybe do business later on. Right. And you don't want to. You want to stay away from world.
Stuart Turley [00:26:27] And we know that President Putin respects President Trump. We've seen the videos.
George McMillan [00:26:32] So there so what I was trying to what we're going to do this for, I'm just thinking about it like, how are they going to do this? Well, they're going to have to have the underlings meet, develop a back channel and say, look, we don't do business with you guys anymore. There's no reason for for this discussion to take place.
Stuart Turley [00:26:49] And the other thing, George, the one thing that you and I had talked about before filming was both of us agreed that the seizure of Russian assets by the EU is not a club for President Trump. It is less than one of the you called it a little tiny baseball bat that you get at the thing at the.
George McMillan [00:27:12] Yeah. For the baseball players.
Stuart Turley [00:27:14] Yeah, yeah. A souvenir bat because, you know, be like me trying to hit you with the base pen book. Yeah it was stolen assets. It's not ethical, and B, it's Russian assets. You're trying to negotiate to give back to them. And it would not be what President Putin would be considering. Honorable. So it's not a player even think that it's a club.
George McMillan [00:27:38] Right. And it's he's already written it off as a soft cost. You know, it's you know, he's already sunk cost. Just forget it and move on. He's already done that. So for him, there's nothing you know, there's absolutely nothing to discuss because we're not doing business with each other. So rather than Trump dealing and this is why I was laughing during the month of December, because there is no you know what? I'm laughing. I'm talking about watching Gorka on on Newsmax because he's so happy is that is that he's the deputy national security advisor. Well this is a problem. You now have a deputy national security adviser that doesn't know anything about the sea power versus land Power strategies, doesn't know anything about. Well, now he does know something about that because he was it. He was he was in Britain and he is he has read books on Mackinder and Specter, but he doesn't know how to apply them in the current in the current atmosphere or there sort of disconnect in there. I don't know what it is because.
Stuart Turley [00:28:38] We're he he his videos that we've seen do not reflect his ability that he's connected the dots is what you're saying.
George McMillan [00:28:47] yeah, yeah. Connect the dots. Because I knew what he was talking about. He's going to deal with a position of strength. Well, they're already not doing any business. There's already all these. There's already so many sanctions against Russia. What more are you going to do? So therefore, what's your strength? You've already played all the other cards. So what? They're left to play. There are no more cards left to play. So when I watch these people on television, all I can do is roll my eyes. Right? I would. I was then it then comes to, okay, there are many more cards to play. So then how is Putin going to very politely say, look, there's no reason to have discussion?
Stuart Turley [00:29:21] What would you tell General Kellogg right now?
George McMillan [00:29:24] Well, they need to well, they should call me, of course, and of course. But I will go through my slide sets and very detail to them and track this mistake. But now the problem is, since they've already played these cards and let me cue up this next video because I want to I want people to know where where these what these GW videos are because these are Mockingbird videos.
Stuart Turley [00:29:48] Operation Mockingbird as in the three letter agency.
George McMillan [00:29:52] Yeah. Yeah. These are Mockingbird videos. Yeah. Yeah. Let me. Yeah, right, right. So I'm going to go ahead and just.
Video Speakers [00:29:59] That creates major political dependency. So this was all seen as part of an overall Soviet strategy to weaken the West and to break up NATO's fears that were by no means unfounded. Gas attack using oil and gas dependencies as a political weapon was common practice in the Warsaw Pact. Meanwhile, a young Putin began what Neri career as the case officer. You have to be able to manipulate people because there is no such thing as a former KGB guy. Vladimir Putin became one of the world's most powerful leaders and made the gas business a top priority. The Russian president recognized the power of his nation's greatest treasure. He said we do have more oil and gas than anyone else. And people should remember that Europeans know that there's no truly reliable alternative. Russia as an energy Department. German governments in particular continued their reliance on Russian blue gold. It was clear who had the upper hand in this arrangement. Even which fields can we access? What pipelines are available if you don't have any? And that's the case here, will have to look for ways to be compensated. Suppose the adequate number was Gazprom Set the prices and the conditions, the challengers.
George McMillan [00:31:10] All right. I'll stop it there. What we were talking about last year with the Russian natural gas geopolitical realignment was, yes, I keep on going over this power center doctrine. They didn't want Putin in the heartland to connect to the axial of Eurasia, German industrialist Power Center and Japan. Okay. So they've cut them off from natural natural gas. So they cut off that dime integration strategy. So they've won. They've declared victory. Now, here's the problem. Those those axial ends of Eurasia, their economies are collapsing. They are deindustrialization. And now the populist parties are rising in Europe. Farage and the U.K. Marine Le Pen. And in France, the AfD is gaining power. In Germany, Freedom Party has majority of the votes. In Austria, Orban is already in office in Hungary. Same thing with Robert Fico in Slovakia. Same thing with Alexander Verkaik in Serbia. You then have Maia. Sandu is completely unpopular in in Moldova and in Romania. Georgia screwed one and they cancel the elections. And in Bulgaria, the the politics there is heavily influenced. The Russian backed person is going to outspend all the other people combined 20 to 1 and campaign contributions coming from coming from the West. So but even despite those big, huge advantages for Western backed politicians, the populist movements are rising because with the energy costs are so high, their industrial economies are collapsing, their energy costs are rising, unemployment is rising. So obviously their living standards are collapsing. Right? Okay. So the West has won. The West has won. They've separated Russian natural gas from that from Western Europe. And their economies are crumbling. The populism are rising. So if Putin does nothing, if Putin does not talk to Trump nor any of his associates, these populist movements will eventually come to power throughout the EU and NATO. Wow. And they join Russia and they rebuild the Nord streams and the natural gas pipelines. If Putin does nothing that happens, he gets the I'm going to call it hostile for and Doogan Eurasian integration, because they're the ones that are riding on this type of integration A and horse offer in the 20s and 30s respectively, and then do again since the 90s. You know it's great geopolitical theory. So you got the my hand Mackinder spike men seapower theories that the West follows and then the land power strategies are Ratso sulfur and Doogan and you know there's a few others people can Google that.
Stuart Turley [00:33:59] So what you just said is that is I did not have this on my bingo card that Putin would be better off waiting because the green energy policy's helped him d industrialize Germany and that Naito would not be able to even have any funding. In fact, Chancellor Shultz today, who I t's must be related to Sergeant Schultz on Kelly's Heroes because he sees nothing. And Chancellor Schultz says that they cannot afford their 5% ends and in building up their military to even try to help appease President Trump's demand. Non-NATO NATO, who is has the potential of folding.
George McMillan [00:34:55] Right. Yeah. All he's got to do is nothing. You know, there's a lot. Wow. Because and I like to break this point down. You have the Neo, you have superpower strategies, then regional power strategies, then then local, you know, local factions. Right. I like to do it in layers. In the superpower strategies, you have the neo cons, sea power versus land power. The neo liberals do that too, because they want to bring about the one world government that the globalist agenda. Right. All right. But then you have a party that that delusional wants to go towards renewables. Well, we already did the video last week where the energy prices are spiking. They you know, they just don't have enough energy to go around. And what what what was the kilowatt per hour? It was like $150 a kilowatt hour last week on a spot in Germany. So people's people's energy costs, their electronic electrical bills are going to equal their paycheck. So they I mean, this is going to be insane. They're going to have to shut off, although they're already industrialized. But this is the effect of the neocons winning, getting their way. This is the effect of the Green Party on the left going to win and winning. So the effect of them are winning is the economies are collapsing. Populist movements are rising. So again, this is the narcissistic personality disorder, realizing making their worst fear become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, with populism rising, what are they going to do? What's Japan going to do to save this car industry? Eventually, they're going to build that pipeline to Sakhalin Island. Eventually, the AfD is going to rebuild doored straight, right. And the AfD leaders are already talking know Alice Beetle. And between beetle and hookah, they're already talking about whether they want to whether they want to rebuild their army and rebuild their relationship with Russia and have and stay in the EU and NATO on one end of the scale. Some of them say, look, this isn't going to work out. There is no appeasing the EU and NATO. We have to rebuild relationships with Russia, rebuild Nord Stream and just completely get rid of the EU and NATO. I mean, there's there's other people talking about in between gradations. But the way it is looking now, because Trump during after he won the elections in November, December. Well, all the way before, before, during and after the elections, he kept on saying he's going to stand tough against Putin. He's not going to let Germany rebuild Nord Stream. They will not sell one ounce of gas west to Germany. Okay. So he said that several times now. So now Kellogg puts out his overture to meet with with Putin and Lavrov. Well, he wouldn't be meeting with Putin, but he would be meeting with Lavrov and Medvedev, right? Yeah, the second, third tiers. All right. Right. Let me let me now do another screen share.
Stuart Turley [00:37:48] Why are you bringing that up? I was just showing the article last week that I talked about on the podcast and the German prime minister for Nord Stream for their energy was calling for it to be reactivated. And the rumor was circling that the United States would be doing it. President Trump, if that happened, would then have the ability to have an American company. If the rumor was out there that it would be a Slavic. President even said that U.S. could buy Nord Stream and then it would be coming in, you know, the Russian gas. So this that fits in to what you're saying.
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.
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