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I go with USA, Europe, and China.

Have you paid attention to what's been going on with most of the European countries? They are practicing economic and demographic suicide.
Even Germany. When the 2016 Cologne New Year events happened I said "Well, the German men are going to take care of that problem!" But they didn't.



I'm not sure that a "last 3 standing" discussion is the best way to look at the world, but I agree Russia might not be one to make the cut, being #9 in both GDP and population.

I don't know about Russia. The first thing to keep in mind is "Everything is a lie." Everything. From everybody.

As Winston Churchill said about Russia,. "It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."

We visited St. Petersburg in 2013 and Moscow & St P in 2018. Our 25-something year old tour guide in 2018 spoke good (not perfect) English. She said that in high school they had to learn another language, their choices were English and another which I forget--maybe German. She said about 3/4 picked English. None of the young people have known the Soviet Union.
Russia is not the USSR.

Lufthansa screwed up our boarding pass on the flight back to the US. Aeroflot to Frankfurt, then Lufthansa to Houston. The Russians went out of their way to straighten it out and to help up. (Lufthansa changed the Confirmation # without telling us, so when I gave them the # we had, it wasn't valid in their system. We almost got stranded in Frankfurt.)

I remarked to my wife that there was no longer any reason for us to treat Russia as an enemy. IMHO, a big part of the reason for a lot of the ongoing troubles is that we (the West) kept poking at Russia as if it was still the USSR.

They have a lot of land and a lot of bullets and a lot of ire, but the economy is about the size of Canada or of Italy, and only a little bigger than the GDP of Tokyo.

I have read counter-arguments that GDP, etc. is an incorrect way to measure the Russian economy. But who knows? Everything is a lie.

And little Ukraine's army is on the outskirts of Moscow.



So, anyway, USA, somebody, and China. Which countries would be the candidates to be that "somebody"? Europe isn't a country and neither is the EU.

I think we are closer to "weeks where decades happen" than "decades where nothing happens". What a time to be alive.