And that is a good way of seeing them, Dylan. Russia is a large empire still. Not only are most of its people sheep in light of being politically empowered, there are many among them in that nation that do not even want to be part of Russia.

The WW III article uses large brush strokes to tell a story about global conflicts among nations. Influences are being a democracy or not, having full representation/partial representation/elitist representation, and from another perspective about top-down control/directives versus bottom-up control/directives.

It is also about winners and losers and about how some nations (foremost the UK and then the USA not far behind) competing for the sake of competition. In other words, some nations undermine standards for the sake of undermining them because it benefits one particular group. Winner-take-all leads to giving more to the elite (and to foreign investors) than proportional voting does.

Once the UK becomes a better democracy, its current example that reverberates particularly with the Russian elite will be eliminated. The selfish people in the world do not look for Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain as the examples; these nations are working on more egalitarian societies than the elite desires. The elite is looking for nations where they can solidly invest and receive the greatest benefit for their investments.

Once the United States becomes a better democracy (and the US Constitution actually shows a good way how to do that), we put less strains on the rest of the world because we have to take care of our own better than we do now, and then give less to the (domestic and foreign) elites.