Its sad but that's a reality of the world. The idea that freedom and democracy mean some 100% fair and just system, where amoral actions just don't happen, or if they happen they are either very well justifiable or always punished are lovely, we all like that idea very much but... thats not the reality, not in 2024, not even with champions of western democracies.
Reality is extremely messy, mistakes, negligence, or sometimes outright evil behavior does and will happen.
There is the saying - the bigger dog f*ks all other dogs.
TBH such behavior massively feeds pro-russian propaganda and emotions in ie Europe or Middle east. Since they don't really have to invent massive fantasies just spin mildly actual history, if even needed and continue from there. I manage to see easily forest for the trees so to say, but I personally know quite a few smart people fail at that and lean more into anti-american sentiment, and with less educated minds its even easier.
It is, indeed, true that the dead-eyed psychotics who run the US view the world this way. As do many of the folks who have had that rule inflicted on them, inside the US and out.
Looking at the actual relations between, say, the Soviets and Korea or China or Vietnam and the picture of every state as a vassal of a larger state doesn't seem to hold- there are a lot of reasons the USSR was not as interventionist in various people in the US would like to believe. And there are a lot of reasons China and Iran are both viewed as monstrous threats by folks in the US (and their vassals) and thought of as benign (compared to the US) by much of the wider world: if you're not part of a multi-century colonialist project then "establishing world dominance" doesn't make sense.
If you see yourself as "the big dog" and you view a "dog-eat-dog world" as a historical necessity, then if you have enough resources you can create that reality.
Reality is extremely messy, mistakes, negligence, or sometimes outright evil behavior does and will happen.
There is the saying - the bigger dog f*ks all other dogs.
TBH such behavior massively feeds pro-russian propaganda and emotions in ie Europe or Middle east. Since they don't really have to invent massive fantasies just spin mildly actual history, if even needed and continue from there. I manage to see easily forest for the trees so to say, but I personally know quite a few smart people fail at that and lean more into anti-american sentiment, and with less educated minds its even easier.