For allies and adversaries alike, America at 250 is a solid global citizen gone rogue

Published 3 July 2026 · us

China: Confident rival hopes to eclipse US Amy Hawkins in Beijing On the shores of Beijing’s central lakes, elderly Beijingers relax under the shade of

China: Confident rival hopes to eclipse US Amy Hawkins in Beijing On the shores of Beijing’s central lakes, elderly Beijingers relax under the shade of willow trees. Some swim, some play mahjong, and one old man plays darts: US and Chinese-flagged arrows competing for the bullseye. The adversarial view of US-China relations is typical among people like these who lived through the cold war. Wen Feng, a 60-year-old retiree, described the US as a “troublemaker” – a viewpoint fanned by years of state propaganda casting Uncle Same as a villainous, hypocritical force on the world stage. Nevertheless, the US’s wealth and abundance has long attracted even the most ardent Chinese nationalists. For years, the political and business elites – including China’s president, Xi Jinping – have sent their children to study there. Across Chinese society, it used to be the case that everyone wanted a slice of the American dream. Dissidents flocked to the US for freedom and democracy, especially after the 1989 crackdown on protesters. Businesspeople sought out opportunities as China opened up in the 1990s and joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. For top students, studying in the US – where the schools outrank Chinese institutions and where academic freedom is encouraged – was the natural choice. In the past decade, all that has changed. View image in fullscreen A big screen shows a broadcast of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, meeting Donald Trump at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on 14 May 2026. Photograph: Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump has a lot to answer for. In both his administrations, he has weaponised the US economy to impose painful tariffs, punishing Chinese people for what many see as their own virtue: their ability to produce goods that US customers will buy. “Chinese people are very hardworking. We are willing to endure hardship to make money, unlike Americans,” said Liu Cheng, 47. But it’s not just Trump that has damaged the US’s reputation in China. Since the financial crisis in 2008, the default perspective that a life in the US would be better has shifted. Fed by propaganda social media accounts but also by their own personal experiences, more and more Chinese people look at the US and see gun violence, homelessness, police brutality and rampant populism. Chinese students are treated with increased suspicion that to many feels racist. In recent months, the term “kill line”, to describe the precariousness of life in the US, has been popular on Chinese social media. At the same time, China’s self-confidence has grown. Consumerism, once one of the major draws of the capitalist west, is the engine of China’s big cities. It’s hard to find a product that cannot be delivered to your door within days, if not hours. China’s own economy remains beset by problems: the hyper-convenience is the product of a relentlessly competitive ecosystem in which goods are cheap and quick, but profits minimal. Nevertheless, as the US reflects on its 250 years of supposed greatness, China is looking ahead to the next 250 years and seeing a different country on top. Mexico: So far from God, so close to the US Oscar Lopez in Mexico City A quote attributed to the late Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz encapsulates the complex and often fraught relationship between the nations: “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the US.” Mexico’s proximity to the US has meant constant entanglements over trade, immigration and territory, and in 1846, US forces invaded and occupied the country, eventually forcing it to cede more than half its territory. The Mexican-American war is still remembered bitterly in Mexico, and this year Donald Trump touched a nerve when he celebrated the conflict as “a triumphant victory for American sovereignty”. The comments were emblematic of his abrasive and often aggressive attitude towards Mexico. The relationship had been marked for decades by cordiality and cooperation, both on trade and security. During Trump’s second term, however, the US has become Mexico’s bully. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations, promising: “Mexico is not going to like it.” View image in fullscreen Tourists walk past the burnt wreckage of buses in Puerto Vallarta after a series of blockades and attacks by organized crime following a military operation in which a cartel boss was killed in the state of Jalisco on 23 February 2026. Photograph: Alfonso Lepe/Reuters Months later he began pressuring President Claudia Sheinbaum to allow US troops into Mexico to tackle the cartels, touching a political nerve in a country that has never forgotten the 1846 invasion. Unsurprisingly, views of the US have tumbled, with nearly seven out of 10 Mexicans seeing their northern neighbor unfavorably, compared with six out of 10 Mexicans who approved of the US under Joe Biden. Tensions between the two countries have become increasingly fraught, particularly after it was revealed that CIA agents had been involved in a counter-narcotics operation in Mexico without the federal government’s knowledge. Weeks later, the US justice department indicted 10 Mexican officials, including the Sinaloa governor, Rubén Rocha, of the ruling Morena party, for alleged ties to drug trafficking. The indictment went off like a bomb, prompting Sheinbaum to angrily double down on calls to protect national sovereignty. Trump “has used Mexico as a political-electoral piñata, has vilified Mexican immigrants, weaponized interdependence and threatened to unilaterally resort to force”, said Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to Washington. This is “the worst moment in Mexico-US ties in modern history”. Meanwhile, Trump’s domestic policy has also tainted the idea of the US as a “land of the free” thanks to a brutal immigration crackdown in which tens of thousands of migrants have been detained. Luis Roberto García, 63, emigrated to the US from Mexico in 2006, seeing it as “a country filled with opportunity”. He built a life in Austin, Texas, working as a carpenter and cleaner. But a few months ago, he was abruptly detained and deported back to Mexico. For him, and many other immigrants in the United States, the promise of the American dream has disintegrated. “Little by little it falls apart,” he said. “It vanishes.” Iran: Admiration, anger and grief Deepa Parent covers Iran for the Guardian “I often think about Central Park,” says Ali, a student in Tehran. “How heavenly it must feel to jog where families gather for picnics, puppies play fetch, and lovers meet for the first time.” He pauses. “Then I compare it with Tehran. How lucky to have all that without fear of internet blackouts or armed checkpoints.” Ali feels betrayed by Trump, who promised Iranian protesters “help is on its way”, and then appeared to lose interest in their cause as he unleashed a conflict which killed more than 3,300 people in the country, and sent aftershocks around the world. But like many Iranians – whatever their views of the government – Ali still consumes American pop culture and entertainment. “The betrayal I feel has nothing to do with the hip-hop I dance to or the sitcoms I watch,” he adds. In Iran, attitudes towards the US have become more complex and less predictable. People describe being caught between a repressive state at home and a superpower abroad. “I have had a journey when it comes to my view of the US,” said Soroush (not his real name), a business owner from Tehran. Before Trump, he said he believed diplomacy could deliver lasting peace, building on the 2015 agreement to put limits on Iran’s nuclear progamme. View image in fullscreen People drive past an anti-US billboard depicting Donald Trump and the strait of Hormuz, in Tehran, Iran, on 17 May 2026. Photograph: Majid Asgaripour/WANA via Reuters Now he believes that Trump was right to leave that agreement. “This regime took every dollar of sanctions relief and poured it into missiles and drones, with zero regard for its own people,” he said. For activist and former political prisoner Pouran Nazemi, the issue is not of ideology but of survival. Iranians are increasingly trapped between internal repression and external pressure, with civilians bearing the consequences, said Nazemi, pointing to recent strikes on two water facilities in southern Iran. “Whatever the political disputes, civilians should never pay the price.” If one event laid bare the human cost of the US-Israeli war on Iran, it was the strike on the Minab school, which killed more than a hundred children. The father of one of the victims had a message not for Trump but for all Americans: “Ask him – at night when he goes to sleep or when he sees his children and grandchildren – does he feel any guilt?” Such views suggest an image of the United States in Iran that is neither coherent nor singular, embracing admiration for its culture, anger at its policies, and grief tied to the consequences of conflict. Ukraine: A strange kind of ally Shaun Walker in Kyiv On a surprise visit to Kyiv in 2023, Joe Bidenembraced his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the shadow of its golden domes. The visit, as Russia’s brutal air and land assault entered its second year, seemed to confirm that Ukraine – which since the collapse of the Soviet Union had fluctuated between west and east – was finally firmly in the western camp. For years, the country’s population had been split on whether to look to the United States as a beacon of democracy and economic prosperity, like other post-communist neighbours, or remain oriented towards Moscow. US officials who served in Kyiv in the 1990s remember a political elite that paid lip service to western aspirations but was still rooted in the Soviet legacy. Later, many Ukrainians wanted something in the middle: good relations with both east and west. But that equation became very different after 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and sparked conflict in the Donbas. The full-scale invasion of 2022 solidified things further, forging a much stronger sense of Ukrainian national identity, with the US as the prime ally – even if many in Kyiv complained that the White House, fearful of escalation, delayed weapons transfers.