Putin went to war for Russian sovereignty. He flew to Beijing this week hoping Xi will finalise a gas pipeline replacing the European market Russia destroyed. The act of independence produced the most comprehensive dependency in Russian history.
Bessent called China a funder of terrorism for buying Iranian oil. Then asked China to use those ties to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. In the same interview. Washington built this crisis on the premise that China's relationship with Iran was the problem. Now it needs that relationship to survive.
Iran built its oil infrastructure as an economic asset. The United States turned it into a vulnerability. With tanker traffic through Hormuz restricted and storage sites targeted, the weapon has turned around. Iran’s leverage over global energy markets has become a liability it cannot easily defend.
Environmental geopolitics studies how ecological change — resource scarcity, climate disruption, biodiversity collapse — reshapes state behaviour. It is not a niche field. It is the lens through which the most consequential foreign policy decisions of this century will be made.
Climate change is not an environmental issue that occasionally touches foreign policy. It is a foreign policy crisis occasionally discussed at environmental summits. The wrong framing produces the wrong response — and every year of delay makes the right response harder to find.
