I’m not talking about philosophically, I’m talking about China paying off my country’s politicians to build massive infrastructure projects benefiting only China, from money lent from China, by companies from China. Or the same deal happening with overpriced rail cars bought from Russia, that are not performing even comparably better than the French ones we could have bought for much, much cheaper.

My country mostly faces no US pressure except when it’s blocking NATO or EU proceedings, to the chagrin of all the other member states. Even then, the government could do what it wanted, no matter how stupid. Worst thing they did was pay less of the free money that they were paying to help us grow in the first place.