Xinhua Commentary: Washington's imperialist ambition is running wild

BEIJING, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- One year into the current U.S. administration, Washington has officially dropped the pretense of upholding the global order -- it is now openly pursuing an imperial agenda.

There was a time when the United States still cloaked its ambitions of global dominance in the rhetoric of upholding a so-called "rules-based international order." Today, decision-makers in Washington operate on the assumption that raw power, rather than rules, determines international affairs.

Consider the U.S. strikes against Venezuela. Following the capture of the leader of this sovereign nation, leaders in Washington flatly abandoned the talk of regime change in the name of democracy, and bragged about their intention to "run" the Latin American nation, and exploit its vast oil resources for America's self-gains.

The escalating tensions concerning Greenland reveal another defining feature of the current U.S. administration's imperial expansion -- its readiness to seize anything it considers vital to its interests, even if it means taking it from its treaty allies.

To take over the island territory, the Trump administration is coercing Denmark, its NATO ally, to submit to a deal, and brandishing punitive tariffs, a handy tool of Washington, against those European countries rejecting America's Greenland attempt.

This is imperialism distilled to its predatory essence. Power has shed its fig leaf of justification; it is now a purely extractive superpower. The world map is no longer a political chart of alliances and sovereignties, but a crude inventory of assets. A country's status -- ally, rival or neutral -- is irrelevant beside the fundamental question of its utility.

This approach is no accident; it is now enshrined as Washington's official policy. The 2025 National Security Strategy explicitly calls for reviving the Monroe Doctrine, pledging to reassert U.S. dominance across the Western Hemisphere and to block external powers from gaining control over assets Washington deems strategically vital.

The message is unmistakable: security is defined as ownership; influence is assumed, not earned; and entire regions are treated less as communities of sovereign states than as territories to be claimed and policed.

Such a mindset, however, only reflects deep-seated anxiety in Washington. As sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein observed, hegemonic powers facing an erosion of economic and cultural influence often turn to unilateralist policies in an effort to sustain their standing -- a strategy that has tended to accelerate, rather than arrest, that decline.

Unlike the 19th century, when the world could be carved up by a handful of empires, today's global economy and the rise of multipolarity make such hegemonic ambitions both morally indefensible and strategically counterproductive for the United States.

Washington should know that any attempt to engage a 21st-century world of ever-deepening global interdependence, according to the logic of colonial era intervention, is a recipe for failure. ■