Should Russia and US or Nato fight, we will all be affected

The world is on the brink of World War III – if not in Ukraine between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), it could break out between the United States and China over Taiwan.

As things stand, the US and its allies in Europe are seized with assisting Ukraine in its fight with Russia and Moscow is not about to give up. Instead, Russia is intensifying the bombardments of Ukraine.

It is said that when two elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers and that is true for us should the US or Nato directly attack Russia or vice versa.

Right now, there is a proxy war between them – it’s a situation where Ukrainian soldiers are on the battle front against the Russian Army but being armed by the US and its allies with tanks and other weapons.

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At the end of the day, it’s the Western weaponry being used against Russia, one of the most resilient fighting nations in the world. For sure the training on the use of those weapons has to be provided by the West. That is another area of conflict and source of increased tensions between the West and Russia.

There is no real guarantee that the soldiers from the same countries are not actually involved in direct attacks against the Russians. But it needs one trigger that would result in World War III in the process – and should that happen we are all doomed.

There is no doubt that the next war would be a nuclear war, as each side would try to finish the other. Both sides have complicated weapons of mass destruction. When that confrontation happens, which no one should wish for, then the elephant fight-effect would kick in.

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Without any shadow of doubt, should Russia and US or Nato fight, we will all be affected. As has been shown in the initial debates around the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February last year, Africa would be divided between the two sides in the battle.

Even as a non-aligned country, like South Africa, you still get perceived as siding with the enemy, Russia, even when you actually want peace.

Despite South Africa’s call for dialogue to end the conflict in Ukraine, the West does not want to listen. Instead, Pretoria is seen outside and inside its borders as not doing the right thing by remaining neutral.

Again, there is another development in East Asia that could also land us in World War III. Any confrontation between China and the US would result in a dangerous and most fatal war for all of us.

The tension between the two powers over Taiwan is high. Some argue that the tension is not about Taiwan or China reclaiming its territorial island, but the US geopolitical interests that include stopping China possibly overtaking it as the World’s biggest economy by 2030, a possibility that all experts talk about.

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China is bragging about it on every platform and Washington is worried every time the matter comes under discussion.

The danger of the whole matter is that the entire East Asian region is arming itself. Whether you talk about Japan, the two Koreas, Taiwan, China and even India, they are accumulating weapons and training for war.

Each with its own geopolitical reasons to get armed – but the US, as a policeman of the world, is there to police each of those conflicts for its own interests. But there is no doubt that their main idea was to fight China and Russia wherever they are.

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It’s a vicious cycle of power dominance, which has brought the Cold War back. But we should pray that both in Russia and the Taiwan Strait, nothing should trigger a war, for we all would perish in a war that could have been avoided…