World War III is here today

The world is undergoing greater changes than have occurred in the past two millennia as a result of the internet. How we shop, how we drive our cars, how we generate power, and many other things have already undergone sea changes in a short patch of time.

It would seem that the nature of war, too, has undergone fundamental change. World Wars I and II seem to have taught Europeans a lesson — maybe even the U.S. World War III is a modern war. Military confrontations have become passé among advanced industrialized nations because their economies are so intertwined. China and Japan seem to have had their fill of military combat, too.

All indications point to the World War III being a political-economic war, using economic strategies and the internet as weapons. The reason for this conclusion is that we are already experiencing the initial battles in such a war.

But who are the combatants in this war? Capitalist countries versus socialist countries as in the past, or Democracies versus autocracies right now? While some U.S. politicians continue to believe it is between capitalism and socialism, Jan. 6 taught a few Democrats that it is, in fact, between democracies and autocracies.

So, while World War III will be between economic systems, the question has shifted to which type of political system is better for conducting an economic war? This ongoing war is between the democracies of America and its allies, and the autocracies China and hers.

China is fighting an economic war with America, with its weakest of all democracies, for world leadership. I say “weakest” for it has only two parties. Other democracies have more: The UK has four, France has seven, and a coalition of eight viable parties in Israel just ousted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from office.

The two parties in the U.S. are split over whose side America will be on in this war. The Democrats on the side of democracy, and, as the insurrection on Jan. 6 revealed, the Republicans favoring minority rule, an autocracy!

The Republican Party is showing its favoritism for autocracy in all Republican controlled states by hundreds of voter suppression laws, and their continued support for the Big Lie, that a presumptive autocrat, Donald Trump, won the election. They are trying to corrupt the democratic election process by intimidating election officials to the point that many are resigning out of fear.

The kind of gridlock suffered by Congress for the past 30 years is unknown in China and its ally in Russia. For at least 30 years the U.S. has been falling behind other democracies and China, with no universal health care. Not only do we not have free college, but graduates emerge from college with huge amounts of indebtedness. We have no free childcare for working mothers, a degenerating infrastructure, etc., etc.

China has the second largest GDP after America ($13.4 trillion to $20.48 trillion in 2019) but is closing the gap fast. It has three times the population of the U.S. That means three times the number of computer scientists, medical researchers, and geniuses in general. The backbone of any economy, the middle class, is growing in China, while the U.S. middle class is dwindling.

China has spent a trillion dollars in Africa, South and Central America, and is in the middle of it Road & Beltway Program that is lending another trillion dollars for building infrastructure around the world. The U.S. has radically reduced its foreign aid over the past few decades. This means that the Chinese international influence is growing while ours shrinks.

China and Russia are pointing out our failures to third world countries and capturing their favor the U.S. once enjoyed. They have seen success with our old allies Turkey and the Philippines, where presidents have already assumed autocratic powers. We are losing the war because we have lost one of our only two political parties.

Some us are frightened that we will lose this new kind of war for leadership of the world because of our misconception of its new kind of danger.

(Sunbury Daily Item, June 29, 2021)