The Great Western
Encirclement
Two Strategies, One Target. How the West’s competing visions for containing China and Russia are reshaping the global order, and why Beijing sees them as two faces of the same threat.
西方双重包围：两种战略，同一个目标
一种寻求以印度为支点、加固北约东翼的陆权包围。另一种要斩断霍尔木兹海峡、以能源绞杀中国工业。北京认为，这是同一场战争的两条战线。
- India as southern anchor: population larger than China’s, third largest economy trajectory, tying down Beijing in South Asia
- Network not alliance: defence pacts with Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, a “first island chain on steroids” into the Indian Ocean
- NATO India dialogue: Atlantic Council urged ad hoc issue-by-issue dialogue, overlapping concerns on China
- Russian front: hardened buffer Baltic to Black Sea to Caucasus, Poland and Baltics as frontline
- Hormuz gambit: 27% of maritime oil and 20% of LNG transit the strait, overwhelmingly to Asia
- 2026 Iran war as template: strikes on Iran, strait closure, energy shock whose real target analysts say was China
- China exposure: bought over 80% of Iran’s shipped oil in 2025, significant Hormuz dependence
- Petrostate vs electrostate: US LNG coercion and renewable cuts vs China’s two decade solar, battery and EV dominance
A multi-theater containment built by a divided West
There is a strategic logic emerging in Western capitals that Beijing and Moscow have come to understand, even if Western policymakers rarely articulate it in full: a multi-theater containment architecture designed to limit continental power across Eurasia, in favor of the maritime powers. What makes this moment different from Cold War containment is that the West itself is divided on how to execute it.
Broadly, two competing visions have crystallized. One, the Eurasian Land Strategy, seeks to build up India as a southern counterweight to China while hardening NATO’s eastern frontier against Russia. The other, the Maritime-Energy Strategy, aims to decapitate Iran’s regime, seize control of the Strait of Hormuz, and weaponize energy flows to throttle China’s industrial machine. Both target the same adversary. Neither trusts the other to get it right.
The Left’s Eurasian Land Strategy
This vision treats the problem as fundamentally territorial and alliance based. Its logic runs through the map of Eurasia: if China is to be contained, it must be contained on land as well as at sea. And if Russia is to be rolled back, it must be confronted from the Baltic to the Black Sea to the Caucasus.
The centerpiece is India. With a population now larger than China’s and an economy on track to become the world’s third largest, India represents the only plausible continental counterweight to Chinese power in Asia.
The architecture is already taking shape. Modi’s government has stitched together cooperative defence agreements with Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Japan, and Vietnam, not a formal alliance, but a “first island chain on steroids” that extends China’s containment from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean.
NATO, for its part, has been explicit. An Atlantic Council report urged the Alliance to explore “an ad hoc, issue-by-issue dialogue with India,” noting that New Delhi “shares overlapping concerns regarding Chinese actions and intentions” even if it has not sought deeper formal partnership.
“If India fails, it could seriously jeopardize the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy” and even raise “the possibility of war between two nuclear-armed powers.”
Simultaneously, this strategy treats Russia as a problem to be solved through forward defence. The war in Ukraine is not merely about Ukrainian sovereignty, it is about whether NATO can establish a hardened buffer along Russia’s entire western periphery. Poland and the Baltic states have become the new frontline, while the Caucasus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, represents the southern hinge of the containment arc.
Norwegian intelligence assessed in early 2025 that “Russia and China are seeking a geopolitical division into spheres of influence,” viewing the transatlantic partnership as fracturing. The response, from this perspective, is to ensure it does not fracture, by making the eastern flank impregnable.
Hardened buffer, Baltic states and Poland as new frontline. NATO forward presence tripwired.
Test case for whether the buffer holds. Sovereignty and strategic depth in one.
Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the southern hinge where European and Asian theatres meet.
The Right’s Maritime-Energy Strategy
The second vision is less interested in land alliances and more interested in chokepoints. Its proponents argue that China’s power is not primarily military but industrial, and industry runs on energy. Cut the energy, and you do not need to contain China, you weaken it from within.
Its focal point is Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. Roughly 27% of global maritime oil trade and 20% of world LNG shipments transit this narrow waterway, with the overwhelming majority directed to Asian markets.
The 2026 Iran war brought this theory into practice. U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader and effectively closed the strait, sending global energy markets into crisis. But the strategic target was never just Tehran. As one analysis put it: “All flashpoints are connected dots in a strategy that aims to concentrate all efforts on China and the Indo-Pacific.”
China, after all, purchased over 80% of Iran’s shipped oil in 2025 and relied on Hormuz transited supplies for a significant portion of its energy imports.
“China built a stranglehold over critical supply chains to deter the US. But the Gulf war may have given the US a reciprocal lever over China’s supply chain.”
There is a deeper geoeconomic dimension. The Trump administration’s approach, coercing allies to buy American LNG while cutting federal renewable funding, reflects a bet on the “petrostate” model. Meanwhile, China has spent two decades building an “electrostate,” dominating solar, batteries, and EVs.
Two strategies in tension, not in concert
These two strategies are not complementary. They are in tension.
The Eurasian Land Strategy requires stability in the Middle East. A war in Iran that closes Hormuz disrupts global energy markets, alienates partners like India (which depends on Gulf oil), and risks pushing energy importing nations deeper into China’s arms, precisely what we saw when the Philippines, a U.S. ally, accelerated renewable projects that deepened its dependence on Chinese technology.
Conversely, the Maritime-Energy Strategy undermines the Eurasian Land Strategy by diverting resources and attention away from Europe and India. If the U.S. is bogged down in the Persian Gulf, it cannot adequately reinforce NATO’s eastern flank or the Indo-Pacific simultaneously.
Chinese state media has condemned “attempts to push for NATO-like alliances in the Asia-Pacific” as “kidnapping regional countries,” while deepening ties with Russia, Iran, and North Korea to ensure pressure in one theatre can be met with resistance in another.
Two prongs, one assault on multipolarity
To Beijing and Moscow, these are not two separate strategies. They are two prongs of the same Western assault on the emerging multipolar order.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission documents how China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly coordinate, not as a formal bloc, but as a network where conflict in one theatre creates openings in another.
Russia does not want to be seen fomenting an Iran war, given defence ties with Tehran and commercial relationships with Gulf states, but Moscow understands Hormuz disruptions would make Russian energy exports “much more desired.”
Systematically reduced fossil dependence, oil and gas through Hormuz now roughly 6% of total energy, down sharply, while building alternative routes through North Africa and Central Asia. The electrostate is the exit ramp.
From Beijing’s perspective the division is visible and exploitable. Any Western pressure in one theatre can be met with resistance in another, precisely the “opportunistic aggression” the West fears in reverse.
Who is the West when it tries to encircle?
The great western encirclement, whether conceived as a land based alliance architecture or a maritime energy blockade, faces a single insurmountable problem: the West is no longer unified enough to execute either strategy cleanly.
Norwegian intelligence noted that Russia and China “share the view that the West in general, and the transatlantic partnership in particular, are fracturing.”
The “left” strategy requires long term alliance building and patient investment in partners like India. The “right” strategy requires short term coercion, unilateral military action, and a willingness to tolerate global economic disruption. They demand different Americas, one that leads through institutions, and one that leads through energy markets and carrier strike groups.
Until the West chooses, or finds a way to synthesize these approaches, the encirclement will remain half built. And Beijing, watching from the outside, will continue to exploit the gap.
Until the West chooses, the encirclement remains half built.
The land arc needs decades. The energy arc needs a crisis. One demands a steady hand, the other a closed fist. Beijing’s wager is that the West cannot be both at once.
陆权需数十年，海权需一场危机。一个要稳手，一个要紧拳。北京赌的是，西方无法同时做到。
