do you think we are going into ww3?

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Belt and roads is China's attempt to do exactly what we've been doing with the global south, invest for influence and put them on a debt treadmill. Build infrastructure, pressure them to take on more debt with new projects, say it's time for austerity, open up more foreign investments, use pressure to buy up raw resources, etc

It's worth mentioning Coca-Cola... You can get American products everywhere, opening them up as a new market isn't a different strategy, it's part of the process

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Is there actual evidence of these debt traps, or is that just an assumed motivation? Again, China's financial Capital is largely held by the State, not private entities. Big difference in motivation compared to, say, US finance Capital, which is largely Private.

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I think some would argue that class warfare is a cold war already happening.

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This war is about control, not by weapons but by controlling minds. It's fairly obvious. Social media forms opinions. It's also full of bubbles where people get reinforcement for their existing beliefs. What people believe doesn't matter so much, just that their beliefs are shaped by social media.

Social media platforms are controlled by big tech algorithms, so they in turn control what information should surface. On computers and phones, you have survellience apps running (called AI) that collects information about each users private life. This is all combined with other info to build an accurate profile of everyone having a device using social media or the web.

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This might be his exit strategy. This is how he can get a third term.

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I'm going to look at it more in terms of how long a European peace lasted.

The Napoleonic wars ended with the Concert of Europe, a peace that was able to last until World War I and depended on a balance of power that lasted for almost a century.

An equivalent system was set up after World War II with a peace anchored by the Allied Powers, decolonization, and the US-Soviet rivalry. That system has lasted for about 80 years and is showing significant strain.

I don't know how long this system will last, but it doesn't seem like it will last for much longer. Trump's election seems to be hastening that end.

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On average it takes ~21 years between world wars, so it's about the time since we're 60 years late on schedule

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An equivalent system was set up after World War II with a peace anchored by the Allied Powers, decolonization, and the US-Soviet rivalry. That system has lasted for about 80 years and is showing significant strain.

What? No it hasn't. The cold war ended by 1992 at the latest. At that point the US achieved total, unipolar hegemony over the world and began exercising it. Clinton's "interventions" in Kosovo, Africa, etc. The Bush era Neo-Cons, those were all results of a new era of unchallenged American power and hegemony. That marked a new era.

Right now the world, led by China and Russia as well as other members of BRICS are trying to buck that total dominance and hegemony of the US and set up a multi-polar world but the US is not letting go, it is not ceding power, it has replaced international law as set out in agreement with the victorious powers of WW2 with "rules based order" which means its way or the high-way, the rule of their might and their wants and nothing else matters. Trump is flexing that built up power, the fact they control SWIFT, the fact the dollar is world reserve currency, their incredible ability to do sanctions to anyone anywhere and put a big hurt on them for defying US interests and wants. He's unleashing the full might, threatening sanctions, tariffs, straight up invasion to take Greenland or the Panama Canal, etc. All to do what? To maintain US primacy, to prevent the emergence of a multi-polar world where the US doesn't dominate everyone else and set the terms and rules for the entire world.

So there are movements to try and strive towards a Westphalian (multi-polar) order led by China, Russia, and followed in those steps by other BRICS nations but they are cautious, they don't want to anger the US and even China still backs down if the threats of sanctions gets too big. So right now we're in a struggle to determine what kind of world we have either a continuation, a hardening of US empire and unipolar hegemony, unchallenged dominance of the world and its peoples to their dictates and benefits or else a multi-polar world structured around Westphalian principles of sovereignty of individual nations and cooperation and peace born out of multiple strong powers checking each other's ambitions against other weaker nations.

The US ended an era of struggle and some independence for nations on its own after it won the cold war, it chose to build up its power, to break international law (Yugoslavia, Iraq, war on terror, sanctions regimes galore, etc), to replace it with "rules based order" which no one can solidly define the rules of because they're ever shifted based on the wants and needs of the US.

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It has still been a relatively peaceful time in human history post fall of the Soviet Union even when you include Iraqi and Afghani deaths as a proportion to the world's population. Wars still happened in that relative time of peace, but those conflicts were relatively contained to not create a new great power war.

Great powers haven't entered in open conflict on the scale of World War II, which was chosen as a bench mark.

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I mean, unless there is no major global war from now until the heat death of the universe or some other extinction level event, aren't we just perpetually going towards WW3?

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Other countries decide to band together and stop the United States.

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Most arguments against a potential WW3 happening seemed to base the assumption that we were dealing with mentally competent world leaders, who were ultimately worried more about their money and comfortable life, so would not let it happen. Trump and Elon have grown up in such wealth, they are completely disconnected from reality and I believe are insane enough to think they are untouchable by anyone and anything, even Putin knows he is not invincible. This swing to the right in Western countries seems to be filled with similar people, with the common belief that they will never truly have to deal with the consequences of their actions.
People with this level of insanity, do not care if the poors get ground up in their wars and this, i think it is now just a matter of time.

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It has if you think only conflicts in western land matter. What's more, the US might launder its military operations within proxy organizations and banking institutions but it absolutely has wars going on even outside Iraq and Afghanistan. Whistleblowers have confirmed the CIA as being behind every major terrorist attack in Chechnya and Xinjiang, and financing paramilitaries all over the world, as well as dealing with narcos and creating huge waves of drug violence in México, Ecuador and Colombia just to name a few.

Millions are dead as a direct result of US intervention in Iraq alone.

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Still less than the dead of World War II

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This is bullshit projection.

The Atlantic, 2021: The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth
Geopolitical Economy Report, 2022: China forgives 23 loans for 17 African countries, expands ‘win-win’ trade and infrastructure projects

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Sure, but this isn't an "inordinately peaceful "time just because it isn't as deadly as the single biggest war in all of history.

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In the west I think it’s mostly used to sell ads, but in other countries like China and Russia, I think it’s more sinister.

Which social media algorithm caused you to form this opinion?

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Economic growth is optimized by beginning a proxy war with China.

But where? Taiwan seems the obvious candidate. Not sure if that would really lead to (quaterly) economic growth though.

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In the west I think it’s mostly used to sell ads

The Twitter Files showed us that this is not true. Though corporate social media didn’t invent propaganda. Previously.

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do you think we are going into ww3?