The United States is struggling to retain its global primacy as China rises. Thus, it is constantly finding excuses to use trade as a weapon to respond to the challenge China poses. An obvious example is Huawei and the development of 5G. Now, the US is using the same tactics in Europe, trying to stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany. The rationale is the risk of Europe becoming dependent on Russian energy. Russia is not an enemy of the West and no threat to Europe. It is the West that has been squeezing Russia for decades though trade sanctions and military encroachment via the Baltic states. The last straw for Russia was the Maidan Revolution supported by the US to overthrow a pro-Russia government with a view to having Ukraine join Nato, bringing this outdated but dangerous transatlantic security alliance to the doorstep of Russia and depriving it of its Black Sea naval base. In fact, the US has been very active in interfering in other countries’ internal affairs, with the CIA involved in regime change in several countries. In Hong Kong, there was never any chance of the protesters’ five demands succeeding, but the mayhem the protests caused served America’s purpose of distracting and embarrassing China. To its credit, China did not fall into the trap of sending in its army to stop the riots, arson , destruction of infrastructure, disruption of transport and even loss of life , but instead introduced a long-delayed national security law which ended the mayhem. The US also uses human rights as an excuse to interfere in the internal affairs of countries. Thus, the alleged incarceration of a million Uygurs in Xinjiang has been turned into another cause for the US and its European minions to impose sanctions on China. Why doesn’t China sanction the US over the 2 million or more people incarcerated for mainly minor offences in a profit-making prison system? Lastly, the US maintains its power not so much by leading with ideas as by maintaining hundreds of military bases around the world. It was sad to see the misinformed youth of Hong Kong become the tool of such a mischievous state seeking to destabilise and almost destroy the highly successful, peaceful and prosperous city of Hong Kong. And now that the US has failed, it has the gall to punish the very people it claimed to be helping, the people of Hong Kong. George Forrai, Mid-Levels >>