All of what you describe is the honest attempt at moving forward. I don't really know how you can describe intervention by massive Democrat supporter movements and consistently successful legal & congressional challenges at the highest levels of American governance as anything but an honest liberal democratic attempt at moving forward.

You described media bias and media campaigns. Liberal democracy isn't a guarantee against bias nor does it ban organized campaigns against what you consider to be morally good, it's a guarantee that people can freely inform themselves and openly debate opposite point of views both privately and in their government. It is not the intelligence services that sanctions anti-Israel voices, it is the overwhelmingly pro-Israel sentiment amongst citizens that has only grown under an objectively free media, any cancelling effect is enacted by citizens and democratic institutions because free citizens agree with them. That one side is more dominant and likely better equipped does not categorically delegitimize American democracy. You describe financial advantage. Liberal democracy is vulnerable to such exploitation, but as your own accounts indicate, it has not categorically surrendered to autocratic edict.

Why do you think the Afghanistan withdrawal was a "political win"? A political win means that withdrawing for Afghanistan is a popular move supported by the electorate. Why do you think it's popular? The second Iraq war has largely dampened any enthusiasm and support for any similar ME interventions.

How do you square your recognition of a sliding scale of abuse & corruption with hyperbolic categorical claims that US governance lacks "any credibility" and is merely "an illusion"? You condemn the West for not being good enough to your satisfaction more than openly expansionist totalitarian regimes that mock the very principles by which you judge the West.

What's your point exactly? Are you telling me that until the West improves to your satisfaction, no one in the West should call out China? It doesn't seem like even you believe that the West is as bad as China, yet for some reason you've divebombed into this thread with common domestic criticisms as if they are at all relevant to China's misbehavior.

> You think these countries are that stupid that they will be easily conned by China?

Yes. In fact, we know they have been conned. Pakistan, considered one of China's strategic allies, has been pressured by its immense Chinese debt to fork over exclusive port rights with predatory revenue shares. Sri-Lanka has done the same with its ports and land, Laos has done it with their entire national power grid, Tajikistan has done it with large tracts of strategic land as well as mining rights [1].

We also know that these are not benevolent aid loans because the loan rates are practically identical to private sector market-rate loans that extract higher rates the more dire the country's financial situation, which stands in contrast to typical infrastructure aid loans like those of Japan that have comparably very low rates for developing countries. Aside from rates, the terms are unusually onerous and asymmetric (even in the world of loans), banning unusual things like loan restructuring and explicitly spell out requirements for foreign policy alignment. These loan agreements also force the government to keep the terms or even the existence of the loan confidential, which prevents any democratic or public accountability for these national loans.

These are sovereignty-ending concessions. It's a total non-sequitur to claim that historical oppression by the West means that their pivot to China is a rational decision. I can be sympathetic to their attitudes towards the West while pointing out that China is actively abusing them.

[1] https://thehill.com/opinion/international/551337-chinas-debt...