US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says China has recently acted “more aggressively abroad” and was behaving “increasingly in adversarial ways”. He has previously said the same or similar thing about Russia and Iran. In all three cases, though, it has been Washington that is committing the most aggressive and provocative acts that amount to existential threats or at least threats against the core security and territorial interests of its three main adversaries. The pattern of American aggression is too unmistakable to be denied. Nothing wrong there; that’s what you do to your enemy. But at least American leaders such as Blinken could spare us the holier-than-thou propaganda. As revealed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week, the Kremlin sought rapprochement with the United States as soon as Joe Biden became president. “If it only depended on us, we would return to normal relations,” he told Russian journalist Dmitry Kiselyov. “We offered this to President Biden’s administration as soon as he took all the necessary oaths and assumed power. I mentioned this to Secretary of State Blinken.” Likewise, Beijing has been trying to play nice with Biden from day one. In his latest article published in People’s Daily , China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, has practically bent over backwards to reassure Washington. He said Beijing had no intention to promote its own political system or economic development model overseas, and would not work to undermine the democratic systems of the United States or other countries. But Yang laid down a red line for the US not to “challenge the Chinese Communist Party or China’s political system and leadership.” That’s reasonable enough; what political regime would accept its own overthrow? Of course, American leaders have made no bones about wanting to bring down the Chinese communist state if they could, or contain and roll back its global influence if they must. Likewise, while warning the West against crossing Russia’s “red lines”, President Vladimir Putin said he wanted cooperation, not confrontation, before the Russian parliament last month. “We don’t want to burn bridges,” he said. Meanwhile, from the first day of Biden’s presidency, Iran had offered to renegotiate the multinational nuclear treaty that Washington broke, oh sorry, withdrew from. While the two sides have resumed talks, Washington has turned a blind eye to Israel as the latter continues its shadow war against Iran, a “good cop, bad cop” routine that dates back many years. Consider how extraordinary that Tehran would want to talk at all. The US military assassinated a top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, in January 2020. In November, a top Iranian physicist believed to be in charge of the country’s nuclear programme was assassinated. At least five other Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated since 2007. China acting ‘more aggressively abroad’: Blinken Meanwhile, the US has imposed a chokehold on Iran with the most extreme economic sanctions possible, having toughened them last year, deliberately during the worst period of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country. Who is it that really wants to improve relations, lower tensions and avoid conflicts? Okay, I fancy myself a political realist. As they say, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. But spare me the sanctimony. America does not want peace, it wants dominance.