The cascading effects of the Iranian war

0:00It's the tip of the spare in the epic battle to defend the United States of America. The National Security Hour exposes the wolves and sheep clothing and then a various plots to undermine and destroy U.S. National Security. Welcome and happy Friday. It is March 27, 2026 and you're listening to the National Security Hour with Sarguss Sengari. I'm your guest host, Al Johnson. I'll be filling in for Colonel Sarguss Sengari this week while he continues to recover from extended surgeries due to a lot of injuries that he incurred on multiple deployments. We're still affecting him today and we do wish him the speediest of recovery and health and that he can get back in the saddle, especially now, that a lot of the conflict is in what

1:00used to be his backyard, which is Iran. As everyone knows, Colonel Sarguss Sengari is from Iran. He, him and his family, left there in just after the Iranian Revolution and then from their Sarguss grew up in Chicago, joined the United States Army and has served America probably since then. He has a lot of insight connections back in that area, especially with the Assyrian community, the Assyrian Christian community that exists through Iran, Iraq, into even Lebanon, Syria, all across the Middle East there. It's an ancient, ancient people that have roots that have gone deep and wide and unfortunately every time in recent memory now that there's conflicts, there's continued degradation upon that population and an erasure of their very, very storied history. We do wish him a speedy recovery so they can come back in and do that great, Yomans work that he does in trying to protect that community amidst all of this chaos that's appearing before us. But is it really chaos? Is it does it look as chaotic as the corporate disinformation out that smooth 10 to put out?

2:05I would argue no. So what you're going to hear today, it's actually kind of in two parts. The first part is going to be, we're going to focus a little on the paradigm itself, right? We're going to look at this, the Strait of Hormuz, we're going to look at what I call the Persian corridor and what the commanders, the genesis of sent-com, used to call the Persian corridor, which is a rand in that area up into that region, including Strait of Hormuz, parts of Iraq, that's very important. And why is that important? Well, we'll go over some of the history of the United States in the Persian corridor and a little bit before that, one of the Anglo-Sphere's greatest minds that influenced a tremendous amount of operations and strategies through multiples and through long decades of peace, even MacKinder. And is MacKinder's strategy for his view, his vision that has been inculcated on generations of leadership, is that somehow influencing what we're seeing today, or is it not?

3:06And that's what we're going to look at. So we're going to reintroduce you if you already don't know about MacKinder, we're going to reintroduce you to MacKinder specifically how he saw this Persian corridor region involved in his heartland theory, into his great strategic or operational design, his geopolitical views. And is that what's at play here, or is it something else, or what we are seeing a fight against a roll-up, if you will, of the SEO, the Shanghai Cooperative Organization, by taking out some of those peripheral allies. The other option it could be, so the plan C, is this simply an economic grab, yes, all wars are routes and resources, but is the intensity, is the urgency, is the suddenness of this, is it because the U.S. is not just broke, but insolvent. And war, of course, is conquest routes and resources, as a means for gaining revenue in order to kind of pay down that debt, which is a possibility. Lots of people have gone back generations, I mean, throughout history, that is a prime

4:08driver of war. That's one of the only drivers of war, even if the stated cause is something else, the real driver is that, and that's what the power groups, the economic forces of nations and kingdoms allow a war to happen and fund a war and continue a war in return for a reward at the end of that war. And so is that what we're seeing? And then the final one is, well, is this just all chaos? Should we go to war on behest of some promise from an eschatological view of another nation? We're not going to talk about that final one. That's the one that's getting all the buzz on the corporate disinformation outlets. I've seen it on social media, social media is burning with all sorts of insane questions and answers, and it's usually by people that don't actually understand in depth of those issues themselves and the history of those issues and that sort of thing. So we'll leave that one aside for now. There's enough comment on that. I would like to focus on, is A, are we looking at McKendor in action? Are we looking, that's A, B, are we looking at the West versus the SEO, rolling back that

5:14and with the ultimate goal being to isolate and kind of manage a decline or reduction or a detente, if you will, with the CCP? Or are we looking at C, which is, we just need money. We need revenue resources badly. And amongst all of these, of course, there is the underlining point, which isn't incompatible with either ABC or even D, that the end result of this unfortunately is going to be downrange effects that include mass, mass casualties globally. And what I mean by that is the resources that are being constrained, the resources being constricted, along with policies that are being implemented in not just the United States but all over the world, and we've seen these predate the war. Are they going to combine to create conditions which are extremely advantageous to mass famines, to food shortages and to, in some cases, to systemic collapses that create even further mass-casually incidents, mass death and instability, social and political instability

6:18which could lead to war? We're going to look at that in the second part specifically on taking the case studies in Asia. What has this done to Asia and the Pacific? Just the Strait of Hormuz, just the curtailing of some of the resources. We won't even go into the second, third order effects, everything that's happened since COVID and actually before, we're just going to focus on that and then see what the implications are. If this is just taken in isolation, the restriction of the resources from the Strait of Hormuz, what's that doing and what is the domino effect that's going to be impacting multiple nations in turn in Asia, which is an incredible economic crucible that the United States relies upon. These are all the questions that we need to address in the next hour and hopefully we'll be able to get through most of them. If you're interested in more, I would invite you both to look at Colonel Sargas and Garry's Neary Center for Strategic Engagement. Of course, the America Out Loud Security Network is another great place. There's many other wonderful podcasts and radio programs on there.

7:20It'll be, I think about 24 hours after, usually about 24 hours, they'll post all of the live broadcasts up on their site and there's some great information on that. I would highly recommend it. If I could do a quick shout out to my own blog, if you will, the historical detective agency, where you're going to get some of the information on McKinder, but especially the Persian corridor in World War II, which we'll talk about here in a minute, that one was absolutely fascinating to me because I had never heard of it, except in a couple of references that General Norman Schwarzkopf's dad was a general in that region in the Persian command at one time and that we had bases up and around. The scale of that operation was absolutely phenomenal. Before we begin, we're going to lay some of the foundational points that we're going to talk about and the first one is the debt. As everyone knows, if you listen to corporate disinformation outlets, you may not have heard this, but those that are paying attention have probably heard the Treasury Secretary released this week, some disturbing numbers, and just going over it, I'll read the base numbers

8:22and then we'll get into an analogy that kind of makes sense of it, but the United States assets is right now only 6.06 trillion. Our liabilities are 47.78, right? So the federal debt is about, as God has like 30.33 trillion, the social insurance is about 10 trillion. So our total obligations, right? The total obligations that the United States has, we'll kind of break this down, is 136 trillion and our total gross domestic product is 31.4 trillion. So our debt is 136 trillion that we have to pay off and we've only got an income a year of about 31.4 trillion if everything kind of goes right. So that's pretty tough. And then putting it in layman's terms because it's hard to visualize trillions, most Americans don't, right? So you just can't, you know, I explain this to my mother and she's like, I don't understand what you're talking about, but when I put it in these terms, she's like, that's horrible. How can anybody get to that level? And so I'm going to put it here and this was actually kind of pushed out today if you

9:24go on, actually see this floating around, it's a really good analogy. So let's take it in household terms that most people would understand. The United States government, if it was in the scale of a household. So let's say you earn $52,446 a year. That's your income, $52,446 and you spend $73,378, right? So every year you're going to go into some credit card debt, right, of $20,923, right? So your total liabilities and all that eventually will move up over time so that your total liabilities and unfunded promises will amount to $1,361,788 dollars and your assets, right? All total assets are only $60,554. So basically you're $1.3 million in debt, right? Because that's it, right? So in other words, we are with an income, the United States has an income of equivalent of like $52,446. We've got some assets to $60,554.

10:26But our spending, we have spent ourselves into $1.3 million in credit card debt. That is what the United States government owns. He can't write off the debt because the government doesn't own the debt, right? It's a number of businesses that own the Federal Reserve that loan the government money, they print the money, the Federal Reserve does and then the United States government pays off the Federal Reserve by taxing, you, me and businesses all over, right? That's it. So even if we work all day long for the rest of our lives and our children's lives and our grandchildren's lives and we focus everything on that and we just eat a slice of bread and some water a day, we're still not going to pay off that debt. So that is the extreme pressure that's facing the US government right now, right? It's a tremendous pressure that's facing the government. And this went wild about COVID. We've always had the problem of debt, you know, pay down the debt. Those that were still alive during the Reagan administration, remember? That was a big deal that the debate sometimes with Tip O'Neill, who was the Speaker of the

11:27House and he was going back and forth, you know, we got to pay down the debt and that sort of thing. It became an issue and the pendulum swam back and forth between focus on the debt and not focusing on the debt. But when COVID hit, the amount of US national debt went through the roof. It absolutely was, it was astronomical what happened. And it's rather than kind of try to get control of it, the United States literally seemed to in their policies set fire to everything, it was just insane. So to give you an idea, in 1945 when the United States had to borrow a lot of money to conduct World War II and supply all of these nations, including the Persian corridor where we had massive factories, we'll talk about here in a minute. We had about 103.9 percent debt, right? So in other words, we could not pay down the debt. Now, just a little bit before, before World War I, when you see a big shift in the United States, 1914, we only have 3.5 percent debt, that's it. But by World War II, because of basically the United States moved its way into kind of

12:28a socialist economy, it's a 1945, we had 103 percent. Now that went down over time, so that by the time we see the 80s, it was actually reduced significantly, we're about 20, 30 percent. And that maintained till about 2007, we're still roughly bouncing around 30, 35 percent to roughly 50. And then it just started going through the roof. In 2020, it was astronomical. We crossed the line that we did in World War II by 2020. We were at 98 percent. And it has absolutely gone through the roof to where we are today. It's almost 200, it's going to be about 200 percent, I'm pretty sure. It's just insane. And so is the war, keep that in mind as we talk forward, why we're looking at these resources, why we're looking so much into, we are going to be the only point of sale for fuel sales that say to Europe, right? When the Nord Stream was collapsed, the United States said, you're going to be buying our oil to Europe. Well, why were we hitting our allies? Well, they're not allies if we're in debt, right? We have to pay down the debt and we're going to call the mark for everything that we can

13:30and make some sales. So that seems to create a lot of validity toward the theory that this may be in part, a giant economic grab on that region. And so we need to be the point of sale for energy. We need to control, we need to get a cut of that energy. Notice there was also something very interesting. We went against, apparently, we went against Britain for becoming the insurance or the insurance carrier for those ships making it through the Gulf. The Trump administration said, well, since Lloyds of London are not going to insure it, the US Navy will. Now, you can better believe that we're going to be charging for that service. But unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which side of this war you're on, Iran also said, well, we'll let ships through, but you got to pay us, right? And we'll let you through. We won't hitch as long as you pay us. So that's going back and forth, but it seems very odd to try to take business away from Britain unless you understand that the United States has this massive amount of debt and is looking outward in the globe for how we're going to get that money's in there. It explains a lot of long motivator for Venezuela.

14:30Now, it may not have been the motivator, it may not have been the calculus, but it does stand as a very interesting data point that we need to take into consideration as we look as where does this go next? Follow the money, follow the routes and resources, follow where the United States can kind of get some of those resources in here because we have to pay off the debt. We just have to. The other downrange effect, which is very interesting, which would impact that economics, is what those people are talking about, is these data centers, right? There is an AI space race going on. Remember the old space race, the nuclear arms race, we had a space race, we had all kind of races with the Soviet Union, and that was a big deal, staying technologically ahead. There is a massive amount of AI race going on right now, and there's a lot of internal fighting with what I call the AI princes within America, you've got Larry Ellison, Sam Altman, they're kind of allies, but you also have Elon Musk and you have a whole bunch of other groups that are coming up. You have kind of the opposition over in the CCP world, and they're pushing out a lot of different AI models. The centralized AI model, the US is kind of banking on, that Trump, in his very first

15:30day in office, promoted, was the kind of the Sam Altman, Larry Ellison, and there was Basia, she saw in there, it was kind of the bundler, and it was this centralized system with giant server farms that run. Why is this important? What does this have to do with a straight-of-ermuse? Well, that requires a lot of energy, I mean a lot of energy, and that they are having problems now when they're setting this up, because the energy drain that these AI servers are needing, requiring, is going to be competing directly with residential areas around them. I visited Groc or Colossus, is what they called it, which is Groc, but Colossus won, which was being built in Memphis at the time back in January last year, and Tennessee Valley Authority and Memphis-like Eson water were working very hard to try to get power lines in there, right? There was a whole bunch of generators, large kilowatt generators that were just all over the building, the sides of the building like in a perimeter, and the heat shimmer was coming off of it, and Elon needed a lot of money to keep that, a lot of power, to keep that thing going, and where does that come from? If energy generation, that's very important, because this is a massive uptick in what's

16:33required for keeping AI moving, it's just going to exponentially increase, and where does that power generation come from? There are a lot of areas that don't have surplus power, they just don't have it to be able to give to it. So that creates this tremendous strain upon the infrastructure, right? The power infrastructure now, with rising gas prices, that creates even more strain, that that power goes up, the rates go up, so we're going to see a competition for resources within the United States and elsewhere, especially the United States, between that local area and the AI model, or even between region areas and those AI super centers that are being set up. Colossus is one, Stargate's another, there's a few others, so it's very interesting to see, and the pressure is going to be to make these things bigger and bigger and bigger, and more power, more power, more power, and that's going to run into, much like when they were running railroads across the United States, that's going to run into individual property owners and their rights, and now individual utility purchasers and their rights. So where that goes in this situation is going to be interesting, because that will create a strain on that system, it's going to accelerate the already-strained system even more in that

17:37sort of competition. So can our data centers get enough power, and as this, the access to some of the resources gets squeezed, what's going to happen to that? Let's look quickly at the, we're going to continue the economics before we look down, but first we're going to take a hard break here, and when we come back, we'll start talking about what else is coming out of the straight-of-war moves that we need to be looking at, and we need to be taking account of in this calculus, and in the final we're going to look at a little bit on Asia. Again, we're going to go back to MacKinder, we're going to go do a little bit of history, but we had to set that economic basis, we had to look at it, but it's not just fuel coming out of the Gulf that may impact down range here in America and Asia, it's going to be a lot of other things that, at one of which you're going to be wanting to watch, because it's going to be a lot more important in some ways than even the fuel. So we're going to go to a hard break, and we'll be right back here on America Out Loud Talk Radio Network, National Security Hour with Sargas Sengari. We'll get ready, my fellow Americans, July 2nd, 3rd and 4th, AmericaOut Loud.News in partnership

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20:49held together with syrups or sweeteners. To learn more, just visit bearbar.com slash Out Loud. Feeling off lately, bloated, brain fog, low energy? It could be parasites. The sound invaders so weaken your gut immune system and mental clarity. That's why Dr. Peter McCullough and the doctors at the Wellness Company formulated an Ivermectin and Mebendizoclens, a medical great solution designed to help eliminate parasites and restore balance. No gimmicks, just real medicine trusted by top doctors. Go to twc.health-out Loud and use code Out Loud for 20% off your first order. Take control of your health today. And welcome back to the second part of National Security Hour with Sargas and Gary. I'm your guest host, Alfred Johnson. And we just talked about the United States is broke, not just broke, really broke, insolvented by the Treasury Secretary last week. And we need resources in order to fund it, generate revenue. Is that part of the driving calculus for what we didn't

21:52win as well or continue to do in the Gulf? That could be an influencer on it. It could drive some operations, but it may not be the only explanation. And I mentioned before the break, we're going to talk briefly about another resource that's probably equally as important as the fuel. And that is the helium. It's a tremendous amount of helium that comes out of the strait of hormones, specifically the cutter. It's LNG. It's about one third of global helium. Now this isn't your balloons at parties and the funny sound when you breathe it in. This is actually very, very, very important for semiconductor production, for medical imaging, and a lot of other tech processes. And helium was one third, like I said, one third of the global helium came out of cutter. Now what is also necessary in these AI data centers? Helium, because they need a tremendous amount of those Nvidia chips and other chips, specific for AI. These things are ram monsters, and they need helium to be produced. If that helium is out there, it's going to slow that process down. And whoever controls more helium, they're going to get a leverage up into being able to

22:54grab that production to continue to produce these AI centers, and the others can get squeezed out. So it's really as a resource work. Kind of like what we're doing in World War II with resources and oil. If we could deprive, for example, the Japanese of oil, we did so actually before the war. We started putting the squeeze on them with oil and other materials. They were already at a disadvantage, so that by, you know, quickly within the war itself, the Japanese were at their engine power, for example, in their aviation assets were at times 60 to 70% of their max power. That's all they could put out of it, because they had to create synthetic gas, Marianas gas, and they called it at times. And there were some other words in other areas. But the point being is that they were resource deprived, so they were never able to move their full power, their full national power forward in a combat with the United States. And so we might be seeing some of that here and grabbing these routes and resources that we are not only getting them for ourselves, but we're denying them to the adversaries, which in this case would be the CCP, as well as some others. So keep that in mind as this route and resource game goes.

23:55Where are the other routes and resources? Even though we're talking straight of Hormuz, we have Panama, we have the straight of Malacca, we have a lot of other areas, we are choke points for these routes and resources. Now, I wanted to talk briefly about McKinder. So we've looked at the economic pressures. We've seen that it's absolutely important to get the fuel, the fertilizers, the helium out of that region and into the large economy, the strains on the economy that come from that. And that's very important because the United States is broke, right? So we need to be getting away to pay off that insolvency, that massive insolvency, or at least enough that the creditors kick the can down the road, right? It's one of the things that the government does best, and they'll probably be going for that. And grabbing assets globally might be part of that calculus. But what does McKinder say? Let's look at geopolitics. As I mentioned before, numerous times about the Persian quarter. If you go over to historyda.org or by sub-stack with historical detective agency, we did about a year and a half ago, a year and a half ago, two years ago, an article on the Persian

25:00corridor. And there was a United States command for the Persian corridor. And it is an amazing history. So that whole area, Persia itself, is just a fascinating history that usually doesn't get talked about in the West. And I mean, all the way back, if you're a fan of religion, you can look at Serastrianism and its impact is arguably the first monotheism. You look at its impact on philosophy, even within India, the interchange with India, and what eventually became China. And then also with the West, the interchange is just amazing history there. But in recent history, we see that it suddenly became an important geopolitical piece of land, not just for its position, but also eventually, once we began to transform into an oil-based economy, then it was also important because there was a lot of oil there. Now the British had their eyes upon Persia very early. They needed Persia because it was a route where they could run telegraph wires and communications to their colonies. In fact, their Jules colony, which is India. Now today, the connection is via Pakistan, but their India was

26:01the goal and the telegraph wires to India and communication lines that continued into Afghanistan was absolutely important for the British, managing those colonies, managing that area. It is a highway. It is a node by which you can then pivot and control down. And McKendor saw that as well. So the British were looking at Persia for a long time. They negotiated to deal with the Persians for the oil. Once they found the oil and they began to drill. That became a British oil supplier, and which was required, especially as they transferred their navy from coal to oil. So like we see now, we're transferring a lot of our dependency and our defense and security into AI. We're going to need resources. So as the British were shifting from cold oil, they're going to need these resources. So looking at, excuse me, Iran, the British were very much involved in that. Now, as politics continued on, the World War II comes about and Iraq was now independent. It used to be part of the Ottoman Empire, but it's now independent. They moved into a bathist party, which was more aligned

27:03with the Axis. And the British, along with Assyrian Christians, just like Sargis and Gary, assisted the British in going up and defeating the bathist forces, putting Iraq into their pocket. And then they talked to the British, talked to the Soviet Union and said, you know what, I think Iran's going the same way. You guys invade from the north. We're going to invade from the south and we're going to split Iran. And they did. So you see that both Iran was jointly, for a time, jointly owned by the British and the Soviets. Now, the Soviets were being invaded by Nazi Germany. And so they had to move up. So the Britain took over administration for all of Iran and Britain, before America entered the war, Britain asked America for help and America agreed. We sent military folks over to the Persian quarter or to Iran. And they began to look at, okay, how are we going to move supplies up here? Because there's the Caspian Sea and the Volga River, which at the time went to Stalingrad. That was going to be the point where America built massive amounts of factories. We built tanks. We built planes. We built trucks, jeeps, spare parts,

28:07engines, tools, tool and dies. We had petroleum products, chemicals, everything. You name it. It was basically Michigan in the Middle East or Persia right there in Iran. And that was being, those equipment was being moved up, transferred over to the Soviets and then the Soviets would take it the rest of the way over to Stalingrad. So a lot of that movement in Stalingrad was a central importance in World War II in the Eastern Front for the Nazis was because they needed to knock that out because that was a massive supply port, a disembarkation for a lot of the American goods that lend lease that was giving life to the Soviet Union. And people forget that. That was a huge issue. And so of course, after that, the United States transferred most of that over to Iran. Iran became an ally of the United States. There was a massive, once the OSS went away after the war, the OSS went away. The CIA was formed and with Dulles and Iran became a central area for that, for that area. So huge, huge amount of United States cooperation with Iran just after World War II.

29:11Now, as everyone knows, Mosadeg took over in an election and he nationalized it. So the British called the Americans and go, yeah, he's not your friend anymore. And so the Americans said, okay, and as everyone knows now that everything's declassified, the United States overthrew Mosadeg and we installed the Shah, which in turn, in 1980, as everyone knows, that was then the Shah overthrew, it was overthrown by the Iatola. And it's pretty much the government that we have today. And so what we're doing is looking at a strategic situation where if we get Iran, if Iran becomes a Persian code or again, it looks to be very much, it would be a threat to, in some ways, to Russia, right? Because you're right there and there's the Kaspian Sea and you're looking up into Russia. Conversely, we have to understand that in this conflict, or you can't really degrade Iranian supplies, why? Because they can be, you know, as just as we were supplying Russia in World War II with materials made in Iran, Russia can supply Iran with materials made in Russia. So missiles, drones, replacement tech for air defense sensors, that sort of thing.

30:14All of that can be just simply sent down. And it's a longer line to be able to interdict those in the Kaspian Sea. And it runs the risk as we hit the Russian assets that then Russia gets dragged into it. They are an SCO Shanghai Cooperative Organization ally of Iran. And the CCP is also a Shanghai Cooperative Organization ally of Iran. There's also overland routes of supply from the CCP occupied Asia or China through into Iran. So there's a lot of supplies that can continue to be moved into Iran. And anybody that remembers Vietnam remembers the importance, and that was a much smaller area. Everybody remembers the importance of Cambodia and Lao upon the war in Vietnam, because no matter how much we bombed North Vietnam, the supply still kept coming in. It came in through Cambodia. There was also issues with Lao. All of these things, this calculation at that time, we should have taken, if we didn't, we should have taken that in consideration when we're operating here. Now, if Russia has to supply Iran, does that take away from their Ukrainian operation? Answer yes.

31:19Do they have the capacity to be able to flex out and produce enough for that to front war? A lot of people say no, but that's still up in the air. Can China do this without fuel? If the fuel is coming out, now we're going to transition over into Asia. And we're going to look at that calculation. Actually, let's put a pin in that. I'm going to go into McKinner a little bit here. We're going to talk McKinner first, and then we're going to go into Asia. But put a pin in that, and keep that in mind, that part of this is if Iran wants to stay alive, if the SIO allies of Iran, Russia, who doesn't want the United States or a friendly nation to the United States right there in its southern border, now kind of surrounding it more, just like the situation was earlier, when the United States was there in the 50s, how is that going to affect their production? Where are they going to prioritize sending equipment that they have problems with? With the CCP occupied Asia with China, how are they going to be able to supply Iran in that? Are they going to degrade their own supplies? How much are they going to be able to with the choke point in the hormones? If they're not able to get fuel, if they're not able to get

32:21healing them, if they're not able to get the materials they require, to even feed their own people. Don't forget fertilizers come from straighter hormones. If China's unable to get those, are they going to be able to maintain enough supply to keep Iran alive and viable? That's an issue. Is part of this calculation squeezing out the SEO allies, which eventually will make the CCP weaker, which may make them decide, okay, Taiwan this year, next year, maybe 10 years down the road, because we got to keep Iran alive right now, or they do both, and they degrade a little bit of their ability to hit Taiwan. Things we need to think about. But shifting over to MacKinder, favorite of those that remember the John Bachelor Radio Show, which I'm a tremendous fan of, you'll see that a lot of that in MacKinder is playing out today. Where it was theoretical, a long time ago, during the war on terror, it became theoretical. Really, we're looking at the same areas, and you're really playing in the periphery of MacKinder. You're playing in the land, the playground of MacKinder, as it were, and as a brief overview for those that don't know, MacKinder was an absolute, his name was Halford MacKinder, and he was an absolute much as

33:28as much as you can be. He was kind of a godfather to geostrategic thinking, and he influenced, especially in the West, England and America about geostrategic thinking about how do you treat the continent of Europe, and how do you treat the Middle East, and how do you look at these nations? And it was specifically within the bent of England, in other words, how could England maintain primacy by keeping a future competitor from the continent off? As everyone knows, of course, World War I was basically to knock out Germany in World War I by the British, but how do you kind of look at this situation? He created a radical idea, and that was the geography as the engine of history, and he shows how this same areas become, again and again and again, characters in this long story of history and conflict. The same actors, just with different names and different masks, but the same place, the same dynamic, who was MacKinder's theory. So we're going to look at that real quick and say, okay, is this some of this MacKinder, how does Asia fit into this? So the pivot area, which is known as the heartland,

34:29basically what you're looking at is Russia, up into some of the areas in the Baltics, but also down into Afghanistan, you have the stands, you have Crimea, you have those areas that are absolutely necessary Mongolia, that is the heartland. And according to MacKinder, if you were able to unify the heartland, that is that internal bread basket, that's no navy could reach it. So if all of your eggs or all of your production needs, your industrial centers, your food production, everything you need is in that pivot area, the heartland, then no navy can touch you, right? You can't get to it. Remember when the Germans in 1941-1941 began to invade the Soviet Union, Stalin, once he got out of his three-day surprise funk, began to grab those factories and just push him back as far as he could pass the Urals. Why? He's moving him into the heartland, he's moving them out of the reach of ability for people to get to him, if that makes sense. So that's the pivot areas, right? Because none of the rivers don't drain to any open oceans,

35:34it's a landlocked basin to the Caspian that no navy can get in there. So that prevents the British from doing that because the British in those days was all about the navy. Now that calculation goes away with air power, but it still holds there. Now what does that have to do with Iran? Well, he had a thing called the five bodies of water, but one, basically the one arena, right? South and West of the heartland, there's five seas, and that's the most strategically charged region on Earth, right? It's the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, and anybody that studied history over the last 200, 300, 400, a thousand years, two thousand years, those areas always come up. You're talking Egypt, you're talking where Rome comes in there, you're talking all of the history with the Greeks, the Persians, you're talking the Assyrians, right? The Red Sea. Now we're talking that. So everything from the Seljuk Turks to, you know, Iranian Ayatollas, that's that playground. And again, Caspian Sea, Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, that's what we're looking at. And where are we playing right now? The same

36:36place. And that is the weakest spot in the world's girdle is named by the one commenter on it. And that's the most persistently unstable region. It's too dry, right? For any large population, but it's too central. And now with oil in it, it's absolutely valuable. Now with helium in it, with cutter, it's even more valuable, right? And so with fertilizers, nitrogen is fertilizers, fertilizers feeding two thirds of the world actually more. It's probably more like 80, 90% of the world depend upon nitrogenous fertilizers for their very sustenance that comes a lot of 20, 30% come out of this region. So it's even more important not just for geography, but for the materials it contains, and the routes that it takes for those resources to get out into the global economy. Absolutely there. And it's versus a land power versus a sea power, but that's absolutely critical for the war that we're seeing. So I would highly recommend that everyone go back and look at McKinder, the heartland theory, and specifically about the five bodies of water there, right? And so that's the one. And it's those five lakes or five seas,

37:39I should say. And that is that is the weak spot. That is the pivot, the hinge that then forces everything around it into sharp relief. And they basically you're fighting over routes and resources in that region in that area. And that's exactly what we're doing right now. So I would definitely say based upon that based upon economics, that this is a shift in that. Now the internal politics is probably sargous. We'll talk about when it comes back within the Middle East, there's even more internal politics than people see right now. Everybody's like, oh, it's Israel and Iran. And that's a large component of it. But there's also Saudi Arabia and Iran. Two competitors for the heart and minds of the Arab or the Muslim world, Shia Sunni, right? So they're in a competition that people don't even recognize sometimes. And there was another competition between Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. The Gulf states were draining this tremendous amount of potential investments in the development of the Gulf states. Everybody remembers every time he took a flight on air emirates or Qatar airways. There was huge pushing for you know, you can buy, you can set up your business here. There was tax benefits. I mean, it was just massive. And a lot of

38:42people went there for investments in business and there was a lot of advantages for that. People were off showing their money there. They had second apartments homes and things of that nature. And it was really developing. But that was taking away from Saudi Arabia who also wanted to be able to diversify in this area, especially with tech. And now with the kind of the deep population, because most of the expactors are fleeing the Gulf states, a lot of the infrastructure has been hit. And the illusion that it was secure because the American bases were there is gone. So if will they get the same amount of investment in development they did before the war hit, before the missiles were raiding down and Dubai and Qatar and elsewhere, probably not. And who benefits from that? Quibono is the old question. Well, that would be Saudi Arabia. Read. Because look up Saudi Arabia 2030 and their position now because the news didn't really show a lot of that. Saudi has big internal lines. They're a little more immune. They have a large area. They seem to be able to benefit from that shift in capital would go there. Because Israel and Tel Aviv, they're getting head Jerusalem's getting hit. So the big data centers that wanted to put up in Jerusalem kind of

39:43that node for every intel agency and a lot of the AI that they wanted that doesn't look like a safe bet now. Right. So who benefits Saudi? And again, we'll see this could all change with calculus over time. We're speaking here in the third and last week of March. By early next week this could be a completely different situation. But that's what it looks like right now. So McKinner is playing out again. Who are some of the winners and losers in that? We'll kind of take a look at it. And we're going to go to another break. And when we come back, we'll finish this out with what does that mean for Asia? Okay, great. We've got it. There's a lot of materials. We've got helium. We've got liquid nitrogen gas and nitrogenous fertilizers require. We have phosphates coming out of there. We have fuel, you know, just basically keeping the cars and the factories running. We have an arms race in a transition between AI just like the coal to oil back in the navies in the early 20th century. We're shifting over to AI. They have power and material requirements with a lot of things that come from there. And the United States with the largest military is absolutely insolvent and needs routes and resources in its pocketbook to pay down this debt. Otherwise, it may have about

40:45a big, big problem and a lot of collapse. And in the middle of this, we do have to look at that this could collapse. There's a high likelihood that a lot of this may collapse and create a very large population, a depopulation event because of famines and other things that come because the fuel, the spring planting season is coming up. And that's what Asia is looking at right now. Is it spring? They're in, there are many of them are in planting seasons that you've got to get those nitrates in the in the soil. As they say, the molecules have to hit the dirt. Otherwise, those plants aren't going to grow. And there's going to be a few, there's going to be food shortages um wide in that area. And it will exacerbate already. There's tensions in that region which may go more because now they're not just fighting for a temple. They're not just fighting for honor. They're fighting for food. And that gets brutal. All right, we're going to take a break. And when we come back, we will hit Asia and go down the list of Asia looking at it through the lens of resources, routes, McKinner and United States that needs some money. In just two minutes per day, you can reclaim your health and vitality and cut your grocery bill in half with one simple

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44:03And welcome back to the third and final section of the National Security Hour with Sargasangari. I am your host Alfred Johnson standing in for Sargasangari as he continues to recover from injury sustained over his deployment. And we do wish him a speedy recovery so he can get back in and begin to look at this from his unique perspective coming from that region being in a Syrian Christian that was born and around with family that grew up there and coming as a refugee to America and then going back to that area. So he was he was playing in McKinters playground of the five seas areas for most of his adult life and understands that region very well. So we'll leave that to him for the analysis of those routes resources and ideologies. What we're going to do is we're going to shift over to Asia which is absolutely critical for because it is still the cauldron of technology and it's still the cauldron of much of America's requirements for materials you can't walk into a Walmart and probably 80 to 90% of the materials in there are not made in the United States and a large majority over 50 to 75% are made in Asia.

45:04Now what will this do? So the American economy is very much tied into Asia. We found that from from COVID. I mean just the just the impact the self and the self-induced wound of COVID demonstrated that the United States supply lines are incredibly vulnerable from everything from vitamin C nutrients to medicines to technology you know you name it there's there's card deficiencies tractors people can get new tractors just everything up and down the line was was interdicted because of simply a lockdown. Now we have some even a greater structural strain than a voluntary lockdown that everybody kind of went through with this kind of bass psychosis back in 2020. What are we looking at? We're looking at a shutdown of supplies we talked about the liquid nitrogen the fuel we talked about the fertilizers that come from it and we also talked about helium which is absolutely critical for silicon chips and even some medical things like imaging. So what are we looking at? We are looking at those three at how it impacts so we're going to start with going pretty much from west to east as we go away from Iran along the corridor

46:08and who needs what. So India right now India is about 50 to 60% crude imports and 90% of the liquid petroleum from Hormuz sources from nations around the Gulf that export through Hormuz. So think about that 90% of the liquid the LPG comes from there. So that's a tremendous amount. Now keep in mind LPG in some of these areas in Southeast Asia when I was there just a few years ago. They rely heavily upon LPG for a lot of things. So the houses will be heated up by it. They cook with it. A lot there are a lot more dependent upon some sources than the United States would be. So keep that in mind that this is a significant amount of reduction in the ability to not just plant the food cook the food move the food from point A to point B. Heat your houses. India does get incredibly cold pump water through purification you know you name it there's a massive amount of breakdown possible. So we'll go over that again 80% of 80% 80% of ammonium fertilizer inputs have been disrupted

47:09by this right. So roughly they had a urea production it's 800 thousand tons a month that's down. There's a huge inflation spike the rupees already gone there. They asked as of a week ago they were asking the CCP they asked China to to import more phosphates China said no right they asked for extra some some relief from China for their limitations that China put on their last year and China went no and they doubled down and said we're not going to release anything to you guys until August and to some other nations as well Burma they said no we're not going to give you we're not going to give you resources China is beginning to bunker their resources so even within Asia most people don't realize there was a huge trade network right it's not a one for one so a lot of times it would go materials would go to China China would process it and then they would export that to other places like India and then India in turn for example when they're when they're doing their urea processing that 800 800 tons a month a lot of that 800 thousand tons a month I'm sorry 800 thousand tons a month that was then being re-exported out right so they

48:10were selling those other nations which had a dependency model on it surprisingly Thailand which will get to in a minute is also dependent upon external sources so there's a tremendous amount of pressure there's long lines of these fuel at these fuel pumps there's already a lot of anybody it's been to India there's already a lot of strains within India there's a lot of potential for violence breaking out and these will exacerbate those pressures so could we see civil unrest in India yeah absolutely if this continues on it represents a security problem for India now India has of course a massive issue with Pakistan that's an unresolved conflict they also have an issue with a CCP even though they trade with them for a lot of the territory that the CCP claims that India claims as its own so there is a potential even then for will nations you know use this as opportunistic to move forward to distract their own groups to to be able to grab resources and other things so keep that in mind that that may be a flashpoint India Pakistan India CCP might come back up in there and of course Bangladesh looking down they're going to keep going Myanmar Burma it was a net oil importer right

49:14very very high Gulf dependence it's very hard to get details out of Burma mainly because it's a it's still a HUNTA it's still tightly controlled information but they don't do a lot of exports right so Thailand isn't isn't bringing anything from Burma so Burma pretty much needed now Burma will probably even though publicly was denied by a CCP CCP probably will continue to supply Burma most people don't realize that there is a linkage there between the military and the CCP General Yang who did his depopulation over there the Arakon region he was pretty much a CCP puppet right and he was he was depopulating the Rohingya that ended up in Thailand where I was and why were they doing that because there was a fuel oil pipeline that they were building from Arakon from a port there all the way up into eventually into China right so there was they didn't have to go through the streets of Balaka to ports they could just dock it there in Burma and then pump the oil into pipelines it would then go into China so Burma might be propped up but that would see then potential for political changes in the CCP would have an even greater effect upon that and

50:14there's a number of freedom fighters up in Northeast Burma with the the karens and the kachin groups that are still fighting Burma and China may become involved to stabilize that area so that they can maintain that that relationship so look for a potential flashpoint there there are so our tensions increasing between Burma and Thailand historically Burma was always seen as kind of the the invading army periodically would would move into Thailand until they got Burma got taken over by the British so that border is not as peaceful as people would think there have been flashpoints up and down in the area I talked to a friend that's a long term friend and Renong in Long area which is kind of down there by Victoria Point between Thailand and Burma and there was a lot of a gun fire so they were very unnerved they're the BPP and they were concerned because there's a lot of gunfire occurring over in Burma and they don't know if it's criminal if it's you know related to the hunt if it's if it's a beginnings of a civil war in the provinces and that sort of thing or you know of course when economic downturns happen black marketing goes up there's a lot of

51:15illegal activities that occur and that there are beginnings of fights and basically mafia comes up right so there's a lot of things that can occur that will exacerbate violence that may not be government directed itself and not related to collapsing but it to new power lines that are forming a new power bases that are forming because of this economic disruption Thailand it is a very very high LNG and border relief so it's 85% crude from the Middle East Thailand relies on the LNG is 64% of power generation right and it's probably going to be one of the hardest hits besides Australia right they have a fuel queues right now again same friends in Thailand are reporting back up that the diesel they're just putting signs on these diesel pumps nope no diesel no diesel no diesel they've reduced flight cancellation so knock air and tie air and Bangkok air they're gone I mean they're reducing flights not gone but they're reducing flights a lot the tourism agriculture that's a big part of Thailand's future right it's it's revenue and those are down right because it's you can't you can't move around right mobility is what the you have to fly in there you have to

52:18get on these these trucks these trains you go all over the place that's going to be reduced and the farmers the farmers are getting hit because they can't get fuel in their trucks almost every every truck in in Thailand the little Toyota Hilux Revos they drive around which is the basis of all farms almost those can't get diesel they run off a diesel and the fact that they're shutting down some diesel that's a that's a pretty pretty tough sell now something happened two days ago very interesting on the geopolitical that may have salvaged Thailand Iran said we will not forget your friendship and they allowed to tie oil tankers to leave no one of them was hit and Iran claimed it didn't do it and it was it it was a tie tanker or a tie cargo ship they got hit very early in the war and lately they said we don't we don't we don't forget our friends and that was from Iran to Thailand and they've allowed tight to tie ships to go through there so it raises some questions you know will this continue and if so then can Thailand kind of recover and would it then be kind of an economic powerhouse in that area if not if it does continue as it is if the conflict increases if they're not able to get those fertilizers Thailand even though it is one

53:21of the best rice producing if not the best rice producing in in the southeast Asia is highly dependent upon foreign fertilizer and if that goes away Thailand will be in famine condition they will not be able to feed their own people and it's very difficult and that's and they export tie rice goes all over the place and in southeast Asia so it will be a big big issue of Thailand's not able to do that both internally and externally there's a lot of political shifts going on within Thailand it has been since probably Rama Tentukover there have been a number of rumors the god and rumors being rumors but there are significant difficulties in the the the ability of Thailand to maintain cohesion as they would have before say under Rama 9 during a very stressful time that would be caused by massive famine so will the rice farmers be able to continue rice planting during the season will they be able to continue forward with that we don't know we'll wait and see what is able to kind of get out of the Gulf so if the Gulf escalates a little bit in the tie container

54:23or excuse me the tile oil tankers get hit it may disrupt a lot of what's going on within Thailand and then there'll be pressure from Thailand to be able to sell to places like India and elsewhere South Korea Japan because of that issue right so sometimes nations governments will sell outside rather than give it internal so union was famous for that during holdemore in the Ukraine they would sell the wheat that was harvested in Ukraine rather than give it to the Ukrainians themselves so you always have to realize that there's a lot of bad things that happen during periods of famine so keep an eye on Thailand that would be an indicator of either it's stable or it's getting worse in Southeast Asia they're kind of a break water if you will for what's going to happen in that region they've still got tensions with Cambodia that it's getting worse again and a total information but coming in that was very interesting from a friend about the the Cambodian workers now in Thailand the tourists come up and they mistake them for Thai and they start talking Thai the Cambodians in English will then lecture them how horrible the Thai are that's never when I was there for probably over 12 years I never saw that I never saw

55:26Cambodians bad talking the Thai's loud and and Cambodians that used to be a part where you could kind of come together now older Khmer Rouge yeah they didn't like the ties because the ties were very vicious anti-communist fighters and so they had that but it was kind of a grudging respect but you didn't see that among the younger they kind of enjoyed going over to Thailand however it seems that there is some rhetoric now between Cambodia and Thailand over the recent conflict flare-ups again for the temples and that region and that will be important and that may play out in the future that these increased tensions may cause another flare-up between Cambodia and Thailand which would then become in effect a many proxy war between the CCP and the United States because Cambodia is very very solidly into the CCP lines of control even though it has some it wants to lean America right now we've not focused well enough on it to be able to move it out of the CCP Thailand still despite all of our efforts due to kind of tank that relationship Thailand is still very much within the United States orbit ally if that if you will and even though they do have a lot

56:27of economic relationships with the CCP with China if China is bunkering up and they're unable to have kind of what they had before which is the slargest in their donations and money and gifts thank you very much be safe out there and hopefully you'll have Sargasongari next week coming back here at National Security Hour thank you have a great weekend