This is a much more reasonable comparison, but I think the big difference is that the mad imperial dash already happened. (Also, nuclear weapons, but let's leav

This is a much more reasonable comparison, but I think the big difference is that the mad imperial dash already happened. (Also, nuclear weapons, but let's leave that aside for now.) Some like to call initiatives like Belt and Road "soft colonialism" but doing so completely undersells the massive brutality and enormous wealth extraction of what these people would presumably call "hard colonialism." In other words, I don't think there's enough to fight over for major powers to go to war.