There are many voices targeting China in this forum. Below, I will share an article from an American media outlet. This is Western media propaganda, claiming that any mistake is China’s fault.
This is an article published on April 6, 2026, by the well-known American magazine Foreign Policy.
The article, titled 'China's Absence Draws the U.S. Deeper into Dangerous Wars,' mainly contains the following points:
1. Core viewpoint: The author of the article (Jo Ingvar Bekvold, a researcher at the Norwegian Defence Research Institute) believes that it is precisely because China lacks a military presence in the Middle East (unlike the Soviet Union at the time, which conducted military balancing) that the U.S. was 'tempted' or 'encouraged' to rashly start wars.
2. Robber logic: They claim that if China had troops stationed in the Middle East, the U.S. would be cautious due to concerns over great power confrontation; but because China only engages economically and not militarily, the U.S. felt 'no one can stop me,' thereby falling into a quagmire of war. This argument implies that the responsibility for the U.S. initiating wars does not lie with itself, but with China for not 'stopping' it.
My understanding: If China were to establish military bases in the Middle East, the U.S. and Western countries would accuse China of destabilizing the region and escalating confrontation. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union had a military presence in the Middle East, yet the U.S. still launched several military operations (such as the 1991 Gulf War). This shows that whether the U.S. takes military action depends on its own strategic intentions, not on whether there is an opposing force. In any case, China is still considered to be at fault. As netizens abroad sarcastically put it: 'Guess what: Whose fault is America’s global belligerence and massacres? That’s right, it’s China’s.'