A global survey found people in most countries see the United States as the biggest threat to the world, and prefer China over the US. These are the results of the EU-backed Democracy Perception Index
This global survey shows that across the Global South and many non-Western countries, China is increasingly seen as a representative of development, infrastructure, trade, industrial capacity, and a multipolar order. The United States, by contrast, is increasingly associated with war, sanctions, military bases, financial hegemony, Israel/Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, and other sources of instability.
But the more important question is: why are America’s instruments of hegemony losing legitimacy, and why are China’s industrial capacity, development financing, infrastructure capability, and state organizational capacity becoming another form of international attraction?
The reason is that the foundation of global political legitimacy is changing. In the past, legitimacy came from ideology, military protection, and the dollar system. Today, it increasingly comes from development capacity, industrial capacity, infrastructure capability, policy stability, and the principle of non-interference.
The United States still possesses enormous hard power. But it provides fewer and fewer public goods to the world, while generating more and more systemic risks. China’s appeal does not come from propaganda. It comes from its ability to provide trade, infrastructure, manufacturing, financing, and a development pathway.
Moreover, the United States promotes democracy abroad, but its domestic politics is increasingly controlled by capital, the military-industrial complex, finance, and technology oligarchs. This is also being recognized by more and more countries. The institutional superiority that America once claimed has indeed been significantly eroded and damaged.
THE HUMAN COST OF U.S. IMPERIALISM SINCE THE VIETNAM ERA
—MORE THAN 55 MILLION DEATHS
A recent study published in The Lancet Global Health estimated that sanctions imposed between 1971 and 2021 were associated with approximately 38 million excess deaths worldwide.
Separate from sanctions, U.S. wars, occupations, proxy conflicts, and support for allied dictatorships have resulted in tens of millions more deaths. While many of the figures below are estimates and some are contested, the overall scale of the destruction is not. Millions more undoubtedly died from the indirect consequences of war, famine, disease, displacement, economic collapse, and social devastation flowing from these conflicts and interventions.
U.S.-CAUSED DEATHS
—Sanctions, 1971–2021: approximately 38 million deaths.
—Vietnam: approximately 3.3 million deaths.
—Cambodia: approximately 1.5–3 million deaths.
—Laos: more than 200,000 deaths.
—Indonesia, 1965–66: approximately 500,000–1 million deaths.
—East Timor: approximately 100,000–200,000 deaths.
—Bangladesh, 1971: approximately 300,000–3 million deaths.
—Guatemala: approximately 200,000 deaths.
—El Salvador: approximately 75,000 deaths.
—Nicaragua, including the Somoza dictatorship and Contra war: approximately 80,000–100,000 deaths.
—Operation Condor and the military dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil: approximately 50,000–80,000 deaths and disappearances.
—The post-2001 "War on Terror": approximately 4.5–4.6 million deaths.
• Afghanistan: approximately 900,000–1.5 million deaths.
• Iraq: approximately 1–2.4 million deaths.
• Pakistan: approximately 200,000–500,000 deaths.
• Syria: approximately 500,000–700,000 deaths.
• Yemen: approximately 377,000 deaths.
• Libya: approximately 30,000–250,000 deaths.
• Somalia: approximately 300,000–700,000 deaths.
—Congo wars: approximately 5.4 million deaths.
—Southern Africa, including Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and apartheid destabilization campaigns: approximately 1–1.5 million deaths.
—Western Sahara: approximately 20,000–40,000 deaths.
Additional deaths occurred in the Philippines, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and other countries affected by U.S.-backed counterterrorism operations, drone campaigns, proxy wars, and military interventions.
Additional U.S.-supported dictatorships, occupations, and proxy conflicts include Haiti, Honduras, the Philippines, Iran under the Shah, Zaire under Mobutu, Liberia under Samuel Doe, Sudan, South Korea, Taiwan under Kuomintang rule, Iraq before 2003, Libya after 2011, and numerous Cold War client regimes throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Estimates for these cases range from hundreds of thousands to several million additional deaths.
Even using conservative assumptions, the cumulative toll of sanctions, wars, occupations, proxy forces, and regimes armed, financed, trained, protected, or politically sustained by Washington exceeds 55 million deaths.
This figure does not include the full mortality resulting from hunger, disease, underdevelopment, displacement, environmental destruction, and state collapse. Including the broader human consequences of U.S.-supported dictatorships, civil wars, sanctions, and economic coercion would raise the total substantially higher.
Nor does this accounting include the ongoing destruction of Gaza, carried out with U.S. weapons, military assistance, diplomatic protection, and financial support.
Measured over the past half century, the human cost of American imperial power is in the tens of millions of lives.
US politics under Trump looks unstable and unpredictable, damaging trust in its leadership. Allies question its reliability as policies shift with politics at home. This weakens America’s global standing. At the same time, the world is moving toward a multipolar system, with more power shifting to China, Russia, and regional blocs rather than one dominant US-led order.
Most Western people now do not want to live in a Chinese surveillance state. But we realise that the Chinese are not so stupid to try to bomb or blackmail the whole world into submission to enrich a handfull of crazy billionaires. The Chinese are a danger for the surounding countries, because they are also an empire who want to consolidate their power and influence and they are a power in search for resources and pose in that way a threat for western countries in their hunger for resources. But the USA has allways choose to use war and violent coups to protect their power and now you have a regime that does it without restraint and without respect for alliances. Scary and criminal
Capitalism teaches us its morals. Avarice is a good trait. Arrogance is a strong position. Ego-centricism is the best we can do so embrace Ayn Rand, cowardiceness is also built into the capitalist ideology. There is little courage to confront ones' own views or that of others. As for empathy, that went out the window with crass individualism born from egocentric thinking in a sociocentric culture. The values of capitalism or hucksterism are necessary for the economic system to work. The values and dispositions of the critical mind are receding and the result is confusion, bafflement, uncritical thought and self delusion.
Values of thinking like empathy, courage, humility, the ability to see the world from disparate points of view, giving and caring cannot exist in a toxic petri-dish like the capitalist system all based on 'self'. We do not learn these values in schools ut on the battle field and now more than ever for we are living behind enemy lines.
BRICS nations are deepening cooperation in agriculture focusing on climate resilience, fertilizer security, food-price stability, and digital traceability.
This is more than trade.
It is about control over food systems in an increasingly uncertain world.
As global volatility rises, countries are rethinking how food is produced, tracked, and distributed.
Agriculture is no longer just an economic sector.
It is becoming a strategic pillar of sovereignty.
The future of global trade will not only be shaped by energy and technology
but by who controls food, inputs, and supply chains.
So important what you wrote. For capitalism is dying. Now, it can be its own grave digger and go the way of Rome, for it will be far worse there are now 8 billion people on the planet, or we can come together and change it as you mentioned is happening.
But you are right the cocoon, the interregnum, is moving.
Those who prefer China to the USA have no idea of what they're doing. Trump is a short term danger to the USA itself and to their allies. But China is a long term danger to the entire world. China in Africa has replaced benign European colonialism with malignant Chinese occupation and economic destruction.
Valuable information, thank you. Questions: who got to determine which countries qualified as "democratic" versus "authoritarian", and what criteria were used? Why did you name Nicaragua's ruling party and no other? Why were certain major, important, populous countries not polled, such as Iran?
Great work, Ben breaking the study down for the average working man and woman for as you know, from Blackwater to Facebook, the corporations change their names to hide their true identities and crimes.
Yes, of course lobbying happens in states and Washington but I would bet more are settled at fancy restaurants, private clubs and golf courses. It is just a bribe.
As to language' this was fascinating for many reasons.
One, all of us use language thinking everyone has the same definition of the language we use. From Jews to Zionists, bribes to lobbying, take any concept and when asked most people have never even thought about such a question. Their perceptions have been managed and the definitions they can give when pressed as to what they mean by this or that they fail to even muster evidence, let alone have any. They generally react negatively for they have not thought about it themsleves.
OpEdNews Op Eds 12/31/2014 at 2:03 PM EST H4'ed 12/31/14
"The Social and Psychological Roots of Machiavellian Thinking and Sophistic Thought"
One very important lesson one can learn is to always ask people what they mean by what they say when discussing ideas that involve reasoning. This is true for healthy families, relationships, people, countries and life in general.
Sophists pervade every aspect of our lives (
It is an obligation and the critical thinking habit is called 'defining terms'.
Finally, Fukiyami and The End of History, a butt sitting read but again, perception management.
It just might be the end of history if we do not get off our butts for as the great German Economist, Rosa Luxenburg wrote, before her murdered body was found in 1919 in Germany:
This global survey shows that across the Global South and many non-Western countries, China is increasingly seen as a representative of development, infrastructure, trade, industrial capacity, and a multipolar order. The United States, by contrast, is increasingly associated with war, sanctions, military bases, financial hegemony, Israel/Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, and other sources of instability.
But the more important question is: why are America’s instruments of hegemony losing legitimacy, and why are China’s industrial capacity, development financing, infrastructure capability, and state organizational capacity becoming another form of international attraction?
The reason is that the foundation of global political legitimacy is changing. In the past, legitimacy came from ideology, military protection, and the dollar system. Today, it increasingly comes from development capacity, industrial capacity, infrastructure capability, policy stability, and the principle of non-interference.
The United States still possesses enormous hard power. But it provides fewer and fewer public goods to the world, while generating more and more systemic risks. China’s appeal does not come from propaganda. It comes from its ability to provide trade, infrastructure, manufacturing, financing, and a development pathway.
Moreover, the United States promotes democracy abroad, but its domestic politics is increasingly controlled by capital, the military-industrial complex, finance, and technology oligarchs. This is also being recognized by more and more countries. The institutional superiority that America once claimed has indeed been significantly eroded and damaged.
‘the new american century’ has not lasted 30 years and the rest of the world is sick of America and is banding together against it
well done
THE HUMAN COST OF U.S. IMPERIALISM SINCE THE VIETNAM ERA
—MORE THAN 55 MILLION DEATHS
A recent study published in The Lancet Global Health estimated that sanctions imposed between 1971 and 2021 were associated with approximately 38 million excess deaths worldwide.
Separate from sanctions, U.S. wars, occupations, proxy conflicts, and support for allied dictatorships have resulted in tens of millions more deaths. While many of the figures below are estimates and some are contested, the overall scale of the destruction is not. Millions more undoubtedly died from the indirect consequences of war, famine, disease, displacement, economic collapse, and social devastation flowing from these conflicts and interventions.
U.S.-CAUSED DEATHS
—Sanctions, 1971–2021: approximately 38 million deaths.
—Vietnam: approximately 3.3 million deaths.
—Cambodia: approximately 1.5–3 million deaths.
—Laos: more than 200,000 deaths.
—Indonesia, 1965–66: approximately 500,000–1 million deaths.
—East Timor: approximately 100,000–200,000 deaths.
—Bangladesh, 1971: approximately 300,000–3 million deaths.
—Guatemala: approximately 200,000 deaths.
—El Salvador: approximately 75,000 deaths.
—Nicaragua, including the Somoza dictatorship and Contra war: approximately 80,000–100,000 deaths.
—Operation Condor and the military dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil: approximately 50,000–80,000 deaths and disappearances.
—The post-2001 "War on Terror": approximately 4.5–4.6 million deaths.
• Afghanistan: approximately 900,000–1.5 million deaths.
• Iraq: approximately 1–2.4 million deaths.
• Pakistan: approximately 200,000–500,000 deaths.
• Syria: approximately 500,000–700,000 deaths.
• Yemen: approximately 377,000 deaths.
• Libya: approximately 30,000–250,000 deaths.
• Somalia: approximately 300,000–700,000 deaths.
—Congo wars: approximately 5.4 million deaths.
—Southern Africa, including Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and apartheid destabilization campaigns: approximately 1–1.5 million deaths.
—Western Sahara: approximately 20,000–40,000 deaths.
Additional deaths occurred in the Philippines, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and other countries affected by U.S.-backed counterterrorism operations, drone campaigns, proxy wars, and military interventions.
Additional U.S.-supported dictatorships, occupations, and proxy conflicts include Haiti, Honduras, the Philippines, Iran under the Shah, Zaire under Mobutu, Liberia under Samuel Doe, Sudan, South Korea, Taiwan under Kuomintang rule, Iraq before 2003, Libya after 2011, and numerous Cold War client regimes throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Estimates for these cases range from hundreds of thousands to several million additional deaths.
Even using conservative assumptions, the cumulative toll of sanctions, wars, occupations, proxy forces, and regimes armed, financed, trained, protected, or politically sustained by Washington exceeds 55 million deaths.
This figure does not include the full mortality resulting from hunger, disease, underdevelopment, displacement, environmental destruction, and state collapse. Including the broader human consequences of U.S.-supported dictatorships, civil wars, sanctions, and economic coercion would raise the total substantially higher.
Nor does this accounting include the ongoing destruction of Gaza, carried out with U.S. weapons, military assistance, diplomatic protection, and financial support.
Measured over the past half century, the human cost of American imperial power is in the tens of millions of lives.
US politics under Trump looks unstable and unpredictable, damaging trust in its leadership. Allies question its reliability as policies shift with politics at home. This weakens America’s global standing. At the same time, the world is moving toward a multipolar system, with more power shifting to China, Russia, and regional blocs rather than one dominant US-led order.
Most Western people now do not want to live in a Chinese surveillance state. But we realise that the Chinese are not so stupid to try to bomb or blackmail the whole world into submission to enrich a handfull of crazy billionaires. The Chinese are a danger for the surounding countries, because they are also an empire who want to consolidate their power and influence and they are a power in search for resources and pose in that way a threat for western countries in their hunger for resources. But the USA has allways choose to use war and violent coups to protect their power and now you have a regime that does it without restraint and without respect for alliances. Scary and criminal
Capitalism teaches us its morals. Avarice is a good trait. Arrogance is a strong position. Ego-centricism is the best we can do so embrace Ayn Rand, cowardiceness is also built into the capitalist ideology. There is little courage to confront ones' own views or that of others. As for empathy, that went out the window with crass individualism born from egocentric thinking in a sociocentric culture. The values of capitalism or hucksterism are necessary for the economic system to work. The values and dispositions of the critical mind are receding and the result is confusion, bafflement, uncritical thought and self delusion.
Values of thinking like empathy, courage, humility, the ability to see the world from disparate points of view, giving and caring cannot exist in a toxic petri-dish like the capitalist system all based on 'self'. We do not learn these values in schools ut on the battle field and now more than ever for we are living behind enemy lines.
A quiet but powerful shift is underway.
BRICS nations are deepening cooperation in agriculture focusing on climate resilience, fertilizer security, food-price stability, and digital traceability.
This is more than trade.
It is about control over food systems in an increasingly uncertain world.
As global volatility rises, countries are rethinking how food is produced, tracked, and distributed.
Agriculture is no longer just an economic sector.
It is becoming a strategic pillar of sovereignty.
The future of global trade will not only be shaped by energy and technology
but by who controls food, inputs, and supply chains.
So important what you wrote. For capitalism is dying. Now, it can be its own grave digger and go the way of Rome, for it will be far worse there are now 8 billion people on the planet, or we can come together and change it as you mentioned is happening.
But you are right the cocoon, the interregnum, is moving.
No surprises here. I wouldn't trust the US--and I live here!
Those who prefer China to the USA have no idea of what they're doing. Trump is a short term danger to the USA itself and to their allies. But China is a long term danger to the entire world. China in Africa has replaced benign European colonialism with malignant Chinese occupation and economic destruction.
China is tightening the noose on Taiwan, the epicenter of the worlds AI manufacturing.
Valuable information, thank you. Questions: who got to determine which countries qualified as "democratic" versus "authoritarian", and what criteria were used? Why did you name Nicaragua's ruling party and no other? Why were certain major, important, populous countries not polled, such as Iran?
needn't a major study said for that.. only looks at what USUK OTAN EU do in Ucraine, Palestine or Iran.. more than sufficient.
Godfree Roberts 🤔
The ISA seem to be the most racist of all of them. Who thinks the USA is the future?
The world's population obviously has their eyes open. The US is sinking & China rising, and it's totally understandable.
Great work, Ben breaking the study down for the average working man and woman for as you know, from Blackwater to Facebook, the corporations change their names to hide their true identities and crimes.
Yes, of course lobbying happens in states and Washington but I would bet more are settled at fancy restaurants, private clubs and golf courses. It is just a bribe.
As to language' this was fascinating for many reasons.
One, all of us use language thinking everyone has the same definition of the language we use. From Jews to Zionists, bribes to lobbying, take any concept and when asked most people have never even thought about such a question. Their perceptions have been managed and the definitions they can give when pressed as to what they mean by this or that they fail to even muster evidence, let alone have any. They generally react negatively for they have not thought about it themsleves.
OpEdNews Op Eds 12/31/2014 at 2:03 PM EST H4'ed 12/31/14
"The Social and Psychological Roots of Machiavellian Thinking and Sophistic Thought"
https://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?f=The-Social-and-Psychologic-by-Danny-Weil-Belief_Beliefs_Deception_Delusion-141231-996.html
One very important lesson one can learn is to always ask people what they mean by what they say when discussing ideas that involve reasoning. This is true for healthy families, relationships, people, countries and life in general.
Sophists pervade every aspect of our lives (
It is an obligation and the critical thinking habit is called 'defining terms'.
Finally, Fukiyami and The End of History, a butt sitting read but again, perception management.
It just might be the end of history if we do not get off our butts for as the great German Economist, Rosa Luxenburg wrote, before her murdered body was found in 1919 in Germany:
"It is either socialism or barbarism."