Leaders of the South are conspiring against the US, as reflected in Trump’s statement.

A grand event, the 25th SCO meet, just concluded in Tianjin, China, where a galaxy of world leaders from the South, along with some European leaders, gathered for the Shanghai Coop-eration Organization conference. It was the first time that so many heads of state assembled to project the rising power of the South Bloc. Once taken lightly, the SCO has gradually so-lidified into a formidable force and expanded its reach. Besides its basic members, it now in-cludes observer states, with a total of 26 heads of state participating in this event.

This important gathering carried three dimensions—political, military and economic. Since World War-II, the world order has been dominated by the United States. The US dollar pro-vided Washington with unmatched leverage, both financially and geopolitically. Weak gov-ernance, corruption and mismanagement across many states enabled this dominance. Europe, recovering from the devastation of the war, remained dependent, while newly independent Asian and African nations became vulnerable to foreign interference. The demise of the So-viet Union in 1991 gave America the confidence to declare itself the sole superpower, assum-ing the role of both guardian and enforcer of global politics. Writers like Zbigniew Brzezinski even described it as the “end of history.” Yet, history proved otherwise.

The main pillar of US foreign policy has long been the projection of military power, coercion and sanctions. America maintains nearly 900 military bases worldwide, the largest network in human history........

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