This piece involves a scenario, originally conceived of as a hypothetical thought experiment, where the Russian Federation declines to provide the EU with oil and natural gas, diverting it to the People's Republic of China instead through a newly opened pipeline. Faced with this calamity, as well as general mounting economic pressures, the EU is forced to dissolve. This in turn creates a chain reaction which causes the western or Slavic part of the RF to join with the eastern European countries such as Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Belarus, implementing Solzhenitsyn's call for a unified Slavic state. Western Europe (including Germany) and Great Britain form a separate union of their own, based on a combination of technological savvy and the moderate socialism of "The Third Way". Far-eastern regions contained within the RF on the border with PRC, such as Amur and Khabarovsk, join the PRC which needs the extra land mass to accommodate its huge population (legitimizing some existing illegal PRC settlements of RF territory). Some of the current Islamic regions contained within the RF, such as Dagestan and Chechnya, join former Soviet Republics such as Azerbaijan and Georgia. To compensate for the loss of its petro assets in these regions, the RF renews its efforts to establish an expanded Exclusive Economic Zone in the resource-rich Arctic, based on the contours of its northern contintental shelf.
One might consider this redolent of Giuseppe Mazzini's mid-19th century Revolutionary Nationalism, in that it would involve a re-shaping of borders and allegiances according to national identity and avocation, e.g. the RF as a Northern-facing Slavic petro state, the EU reverting to a small pre-war core of industrialized states, Chechnya and Dagestan joining the Arab spring etc. Mazzini was sufficiently prescient in the mid-19th century to forsee the eventual emergence of the push towards complete transparency in diplomatic negotiations (i.e. WikiLeaks). Furthermore, the current pan-Arab awakening has been considered by some to be more equivalent to the democratic nationalist uprisings in Europe in 1848 than to the revolt against the Soviet Union in 1989-91, so it is possible that we are entering a period of Revolutionary Nationalism a la Mazzini which would have profound consequences for the emerging new world order of the 21st century. Although the 1848 uprisings were unfortunately hijacked by dictators and strongmen such as Bismarck, modern 21st century social network technology, that facilitiates the transparency and mobilization necessary for democratic movements to flourish, will hopefully produce a different result.
