The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted roughly one-fifth of the world's seaborne oil supply and turned overland energy routes across Eurasia into the most contested real estate on the planet. Ken Moriyasu, a Hudson Institute senior fellow, argues that eight countries now sit at the center of this new geography of power - and Washington is barely paying attention.
Moriyasu, a former correspondent for the Japanese newspaper Nikkei, outlined the argument in The Washington Post.
The eight states - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan - straddle the major corridors linking Asia and Europe. Many possess significant reserves of oil, gas, or critical minerals. Moriyasu calls them Eurasia's swing states, drawing a parallel with the handful of US states that decide presidential elections.
What makes this group distinctive is not just geography. These countries effectively selected themselves by sending leaders to both Xi Jinping's military parade in Beijing last September and Donald Trump's Board of Peace launch in Davos in January. Indonesia and Bulgaria have since pulled back, leaving the core eight.
Several of these nations occupy what British geographer Halford Mackinder called the Eurasian Heartland - the vast interior between the Volga and Yangtze rivers. Mackinder argued that whoever controls this zone commands the combined landmass of Africa, Asia, and Europe. With the Hormuz chokepoint shut and maritime routes under strain, the Heartland thesis looks less like Victorian-era theory and more like an operating manual.
Kazakhstan's ambassador to the US, Magzhan Ilyassov, told a Caspian Policy Center seminar in March that Central Asia is watching Iran's strategic position closely. The corridor linking the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf via railways, pipelines, and oil-swap routes represents the shortest path for landlocked Central Asian states to reach global markets.
Earlier, "Hvylya" reported on how the Iran war has prompted Gulf states to rethink the value of hosting American military bases.