By early April 2026, the image of the United States in the world is once again being assembled like a mosaic from the shards of wars, sanctions, the dollar and grand words about freedom. The US–Israel operation against Iran, which began on February 28, the subsequent two‑week pause in fighting, Donald Trump’s threats to “destroy a country in one night,” record federal debt, and anxious oil trading through the Strait of Hormuz — all of this has become the lens through which Beijing, Riyadh and Brasília are reassessing Washington. But more important than what America does is how local elites and public opinion perceive it — and the differences there are as interesting as the similarities.
The main international theme is the US and Israel’s war with Iran and the two‑week pause in hostilities announced on April 8. Chinese central media refer to the “two‑week truce” cautiously, asking whether it will be a “pause or a comma” in the conflict, and emphasize the destructive consequences for the regional economy and the security of the entire Middle East. (finance.sina.com.cn) In Saudi Arabia, the same ceasefire is presented as a hard‑won diplomatic success of mediation by Pakistan and the Gulf states; the kingdom’s foreign ministry in an official statement welcomed the agreement between the US and Iran and linked it to “hopes for sustainable de‑escalation and respect for the sovereignty of regional states.” (spa.gov.sa) In Brazil the war appears remote but important as a marker of how willing Washington is to take risks to preserve its influence and control over energy markets; Latin American commentary mixes criticism of “imperialism” with pragmatic interest in how the crisis will affect oil, the dollar and room for maneuver within BRICS. (sohu.com)
In China the US–Iran confrontation is primarily viewed as a symptom of broader instability in the system built by the United States. Major portals and newspapers both recount the chronology of fighting and discuss what a war in the Hormuz zone — through which up to a fifth of the world’s oil and a significant volume of LNG flows — means for Beijing. In one popular Chinese analytical column on “accelerated dedollarization,” based on a rethinking of the 1970s US–Saudi oil‑dollar arrangement, it is stated bluntly: wars like the current campaign against Iran “undermine confidence in the dollar as a safe haven” and push energy producers toward diversifying settlement currencies and foreign‑exchange reserves. (sohu.com)
Chinese authors also emphasize a point rarely discussed in the US: the weaker American control appears over the security of sea lanes and over Gulf allies, the greater the incentive for regional countries and the global South to seek alternative protective “umbrellas.” In an article analyzing market reactions to the escalation and the subsequent truce it is stated plainly: if at some point the US decides to drastically reduce its military presence in the region, “Israel’s voice will become unprecedentedly loud,” and countries like Saudi Arabia will be forced to rely even more either on Tel Aviv or on Beijing and Moscow. (wenxuecity.com) This perspective is typically Chinese: it inverts the American question “how to retain influence” into “how the power vacuum is being redistributed.”
The Saudi discourse treats the US–Israel war with Iran in a far less theoretical way: it is happening next door and involves Saudi bases, albeit formally within a broad security architecture. Local commentators openly admit that balancing between Washington and Tehran is no longer possible. A number of Arabic‑language analyses in recent weeks state that the “policy of equidistance from all” collapsed under the pressure of an “American ultimatum: either with us or against us,” backed by offers of huge investment and arms packages, as well as threats of sanctions and political isolation. (huxiu.com)
This motif is especially vivid among authors close to Gulf think tanks: they describe how step by step Saudi Arabia and the UAE moved away from the image of “neutral brokers” between Iran and the US and became “key support nodes of the American military machine.” One Saudi column states outright: in March 2026 Riyadh and Abu Dhabi “tore off the mask of neutrality,” which sharply increased the effectiveness of US Air Force strikes on Iranian territory, but at the same time increased the vulnerability of Gulf infrastructure to retaliatory attacks. (finance.sina.com.cn) The leitmotif here is compulsion: the US is portrayed less as a desirable patron than as an inevitable “structural factor” to which one must adapt.
Brazil offers a very different vantage point. In the Brazilian press the key to understanding the US war with Iran lies on another plane: it is not only a conflict for regional dominance but also a struggle over who sets the rules of the global economy, including the energy sector. Columns in major outlets discuss how a prolonged conflict would hit oil and food prices and, therefore, inflation and social moods in Brazil itself; alongside this comes the theme of BRICS as an alternative platform on which to contest Washington’s unipolarity. (sohu.com) Unlike in China, where the discourse is about technological and financial system‑to‑system rivalry, and unlike in Saudi Arabia, where the US is both guarantor and source of direct risks, in Brazil the motive is stronger: how to exploit a weakening of American dominance without entering into open confrontation.
A second major throughline is American domestic politics and Donald Trump’s leadership style, which outside the US are seen no longer as a show but as a source of global shocks. Spanish‑ and Portuguese‑language pieces on the war with Iran quote at length Trump’s statement that the US “could destroy a country in one night,” and his claim that Iranians allegedly “want to be bombed so they can live in freedom.” (elpais.com) In the Latin American context such phrases are read as demonstrations not only of strength but of contempt for the sovereignty of others — and inevitably evoke parallels with Washington’s history of interventions in the hemisphere, from 20th‑century coups to contemporary sanctions campaigns.
It is no accident that in one Chinese publication, relying on surveys of the Latin American press, the formula appears: “Washington’s policy toward the Middle East today extends to the Western Hemisphere.” The same piece emphasizes that for Latin America the current Trump is not an abstract figure “across the ocean” but a direct factor influencing credit ratings, access to dollar liquidity and migration dynamics. (paper.people.com.cn) Brazilian authors, often writing from a left‑critical perspective, see in the combination of militarism and fiscal irresponsibility — US federal debt exceeded $39 trillion shortly after the campaign against Iran began — confirmation that the model of “war on credit at the expense of the rest of the world” is running out of steam. (sohu.com)
In China the figure of Trump appears in two roles. The first — architect of escalation toward Iran, having revived a “maximum pressure” policy and laid the groundwork for the current conflict in earlier years. The second — a domestic political actor who, in Chinese interpretations, uses external crises to consolidate his base ahead of midterm congressional elections. On Chinese official briefings the US State Department is mentioned far less often than Trump himself; Beijing, in effect, personifies American foreign policy, which allows it to criticize it as “adventurous and irresponsible” without breaking the rhetoric of “people to people” ties. (bi.china-embassy.gov.cn)
Beijing, Riyadh and Brasília assess the American role in the world economy differently, but all three discourses show a common nerve: the resilience of the dollar‑centric system and the shadow of war looming over it. Chinese economic and political commentators actively discuss the “dollar–oil–Treasuries” nexus that since the 1970s has relied on the US–Saudi alliance. One recent Chinese analysis directly links Trump’s march into the region, including multibillion‑dollar investment and arms packages for Riyadh, to a renewal of this informal “petrodollar deal.” But it also warns: the longer the war with Iran lasts, the stronger the incentive for Gulf countries to expand settlements in yuan and other currencies to reduce dependence on Federal Reserve decisions and US sanction policy. (sohu.com)
In Saudi Arabia the theme of the dollar and the US takes on a more pragmatic hue. Official discourse, including statements by the Saudi foreign ministry and interviews of the Chinese ambassador to the kingdom with Arab media, emphasizes that US trade and sanction practices, especially the imposition of unilateral tariffs, “create uncertainty and instability for the global economy, affecting the interests of developing countries, including Middle Eastern states.” (mfa.gov.cn) Here the US is no longer only a military guarantor but also a source of risk to the investment climate. At the same time local economic commentators discuss how the war and oil price swings could push the kingdom to diversify its economy faster so that national security is less tightly bound to a volatile oil market controlled by the dollar.
The Brazilian perspective adds a social layer. Analysts link American decisions — from the Fed funds rate to sanctions and Middle Eastern wars — to the ability to carry out domestic reforms: how to shorten the workweek without losing productivity, how to keep the exchange rate stable without excessive reliance on external dollar‑denominated debt. One study discussed in Brazilian media poses the question directly: what productivity must Brazil deliver to reduce working hours without falling prey to external shocks, and how should global crises provoked by major powers be accounted for in these calculations. (arxiv.org) In this context the US appears not only as a military superpower but as the chief generator of macroeconomic “tsunamis” to which Latin American countries must adapt.
Another notable line, more often heard in Chinese and Brazilian discourse than in the Saudi, concerns the state of American democracy and society. Chinese state media carefully cite FBI reports on rising cybercrime and fraud, especially schemes involving people impersonating government officials: in 2025 such scams, by official figures, cost American citizens nearly $800 million, and the number of complaints rose almost 50% year on year. (news.cn) This storyline fits a broader Chinese line: to portray the US as a country riven by internal problems — from crime to political radicalization — thereby calling into question Washington’s moral right to lecture others.
Brazilian columns, less tied to a state agenda but sensitive to populism, draw parallels between Trump’s America and their own experience of right‑ and left‑wing waves. For them the US is a laboratory where symptoms of the crisis of liberal democracy appear earlier than elsewhere: polarization, media bubbles, a sharp conflict between metropolitan and peripheral electorates. In Trump’s threats to Iran and blunt judgments toward allies — from Spain to certain NATO members — they see the continuation of the same logic: foreign policy becoming an extension of domestic campaigning rather than the other way around. (bi.china-embassy.gov.cn)
A special layer is attitudes toward American technologies and, more broadly, US–China competition in AI. For Beijing this is a natural continuation of the discourse on a “systemic clash”: recent scientific papers by Chinese research groups directly compare Chinese and American large language models, stressing that “the world’s ten leading LLM developers remain concentrated in two countries” and that AI is becoming a field not only of commercial but also of value competition. (arxiv.org) Chinese commentators also point to the wave of disinformation around the US‑Iran war — from fakes alleging US AI platforms’ role in eliminating Iranian leaders to an avalanche of AI‑generated “retractions” — as an example of how US technological leadership can translate into chaos in the information space. (westca.com)
In Saudi Arabia the theme of American technological leadership is more often woven into discussions of investment deals and modernization projects: becoming a hub for AI and high tech while preserving sovereignty over data and critical infrastructure. In this narrative the US is a key supplier of technology and arms, but also a competitor for influence over digital platforms through which public opinion is shaped. Hence the interest in alternatives, including Chinese solutions, and caution on content and data regulation.
Finally, all three countries show a tendency to embed America in a broader narrative of an epochal shift. In China this is done through the thesis of an “unstable world that needs a stable China,” offered in response to questions about how Beijing reacts to the US–Iran war and the confrontation with Washington. (bi.china-embassy.gov.cn) In the Saudi discourse it appears in talks about the need for a “multipolar Middle East,” where the US will remain an important player but not the sole security guarantor. In Brazil it takes the form of the global South no longer wanting to be merely the object of decisions made in Washington.
The picture that emerges from Chinese, Saudi and Brazilian voices is far from black‑and‑white. The US is simultaneously perceived as threat and support, as guarantor of the status quo and its destroyer, as a necessary partner and a system to be guarded against. But there is one common denominator: almost nowhere is Washington any longer seen as the default center of the world. The war with Iran, the dollar, AI, internal crises — these are all elements of the same process in which China, Saudi Arabia and Brazil are not just reacting to the US but increasingly reshaping their own strategies around it. For Americans themselves this shift in perspective may still be barely visible, but in Beijing, Riyadh and Brasília it has already become everyday newspaper reality.
