US Empire-Building Ensures China's Rise, The Independent Wonders Why
While The Independent points fingers at Trump's 'America First' rhetoric for making China 'stronger in the world’s eyes,' the convenient amnesia regarding US interventionism is striking. Has US global approval ever truly recovered from the invasions of Iraq (2003)? Or the consistent funding of 'friendly' dictatorships since the Cold War? One might wonder if nations prefer economic partnership to
drone strikes and regime change. Perhaps the 'shift in global opinion' isn't just about one president's temperament, but about a consistent foreign policy favoring corporate interests and endless wars, bankrolled by US taxpayers, rather than genuine international cooperation. The erosion of trust isn't a Trump innovation; it's a bipartisan legacy, merely accelerated by a particularly blunt
instrument. The 'free world' has been wondering about America's intentions long before 2016.