WWIII already started with the Russian-sponsored riot in Tallinn against the removal of the Soviet monument, the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, escalated with the seizure of Crimea and the phony separatist war launched by Russian agents Gubarev and Girkin in 2014 and Russia's entry at Obama's invitation into the Syrian civil war in 2015 and finally, its state-on-state kinetic version when Putin launched the full scale invasion of Ukraine on my birthday, 24/02/22. Europe then partially removed its blinders, though not yet fully absorbing Trotsky's lesson: "you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."

The Baltic states have known this since 2014 and their Nordic NATO partners finally get it when they see the Chinese ship's anchor demolishing Baltic telecom infrastructure.

It's a binary choice of bad vs worse about which empire do you prefer. As usual, good isn't on history's menu. I'll take the modern world the Dutch invented and the English and Americans copied over neo-Stalinist Tsar Putin, Emperor Xi's and Iranian ayatollahs and IRGC any day of the week.