This article reads like a China/ Russia propaganda greatest hits album. What does a Y2K worker revolt have to do with WW3? What does some hedge fund selling rare earth mining have to do with the price of tea in China?

NATO didn't allow Russia into NATO because Russia had been the one who invaded the Eastern Block (huh, sounds oddly prescient what with them invading Ukraine nowadays). Maybe if Russia had gone through “shock therapy” and not given all of their state owned assets to a few oligarchs, who then installed who they thought was going to be a weak president, who then provoked a false flag attack on his own people to incite a war, which eventually culminated in that president becoming dictator for life…perhaps then Russia would have transformed into a healthy capitalist state with less corrupt politicians, and perhaps then NATO would have included them. But alas, change is hard and it is easy fall into such traps along the way.

China on the other hand. For one, TPP for the US didn’t happen, so it’s fairly toothless. The author seems to argue that the US sending some of its manufacturing to China was a bad thing, but I’d argue that it helped to form the Chinese middle class. Shanghai was a little more than a backwater in the 80s, Hong Kong was the crown jewel of East Asia. Those manufacture jobs made China what it is today.

So far as including the US in belt and road, it could have been great idea, but there were some concerns with that. For one, China continues to steal US businesses IP, they don’t seem to value the concept of IP in their country, especially of the foreign type. Without IP protections, fewer people are encouraged to innovate or share their knowledge with the public. Secondly, the US already has the World Bank and IMF for such initiatives. The money comes with strings attached to incentivize countries towards the path of democracy, probably why China went a different path.

And that’s the rub isn’t it? Democracy scares the hell out of countries with centralized government (and the dictators as well.) Can’t be putting all of that political power in the people’s hands can we? (Oh the irony).

To close, I’ll ask you this. Is any of this really worth fighting WWIII for!? Chinas butthurt, Russias butthurt, the US, also butthurt. But ultimately my take is that we’re all here to give a better life to our citizens. Is WW3 really going to deliver on that?