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Russia and China are two faces of the same beast, Communism. Russia pretends to have changed after the supposed fall of the USSR. They only went underground to transition to a more workable economic system, capitalism.

About the same time China started emulating them and converting some of their operations to free enterprise, in a sense. Both Russia and China are now in the same position. The key industries are still owned by the state or previous state apparatchiks although they seem to function as independents businesses.

The reason they made the transition was not philosophy, it was economics. Plainly, they went broke as Communists and had to change. However, they did not give up their power or goals. The same ones who controlled under Communism control under Capitalism. Their goal is still world domination.

Mutually assured destruction with nukes (MAD) has made unconditional war between nuclear armed countries obsolete but Communism has always advanced with lies and deception, fomenting discontent among "victim groups", and attempting to take over countries by coup or subversion, part of which is rigging elections.

When actually engaging in military conflict they prefer to use surrogates, preferably those on the opposite side of the world from the U.S. and close to them. There was Korea and then Vietnam and now it is the Islamists whom they began cultivating before, during, and after WWII.

Our weapon of subversion is free enterprise/capitalism. It cannot exist without freedom and free markets. A centrally run/managed economy is not free and, therefore, unworkable. (That is why they have been trying to transition us to them and them to us.)

Both Russia and China have seen in a short time the power of free enterprise, even the bastardized kind they have. It is now a race to see if their desire for wealth and freedom is as strong as their desire for power and control.

Eventually, power and control destroy the dynamics of human nature and bring about ruin. No matter how many people they kill along they way totalitarianism eventually collapses under its own weight.

Free enterprise on the other hand simply expands and grows more dynamic because it is in harmony with human nature. It is also self-correcting and self-perpetuating. R. Buckminster Fuller, of Bucky ball and the geodesic dome fame, said that free enterprise has the unique ability to transform the selfish desires of the individual into a good for the whole.

That is what the battle is about and that is why it is wise to open up and trade with Communist countries. Their distortions of the free market will hurt them more than us and they will eventually see that.

Who will win? Sooner or later human nature will. Is human nature survival of the fittest in the sense of the strong dominating the weak? At first blush it would seem so until you realize that the weak greatly outnumber the strong and that the strong need the weak in order to get what they, the strong, want. The previous example of how Communism killed millions but still crumbled is apt, as is Gandhi's success through pacifism in India.

It can easily be boiled down to which message will prevail, the one in the Koran or the one in the Bible. History has shown the strength of free enterprise over Communism and ree enterprise depends on freedom. We live in interesting times.