How is that even legal in a country where the free market is basically God? Free market as long as it's in the American interest?
Clearly some other countries are still sovereign anyways and have gone against the US's wishes.
No true free market exists.
Economic growth is for national security, specifically to fund and produce supplies for our armies. This is why we talk about economies in the context of nations. This is why nations frequently subsidize businesses or full-industries. This is why Alexander Hamilton sent spies to Britain to steal factory blueprints, or why Xi Jinping subsidizes Huawei, or why the PRC exists at all.
America wrote the playbook that china's following. That's why you can trust what America says about China. That's why it's good if america does something but bad if another country does it. Nations are all just horses in the same race. You're supposed to pick one.
Things in the last 200 years have changed greatly and I don't know if the ideology holds up anymore. The American Civil War, WWI and WWII showed that nation populations are greater than any transportation system can physically move to the battlefield, so improving the wellbeing of humans has taken a backseat to improving technology since the bottleneck of war isn't how many soldiers you have, it's how fast you can move and how fast you can kill off the other side.
The other bottleneck during the last couple major wars (aside from transportation) was the supply of raw materials. If America wasn't mineral rich and shipping ammunition to both sides during WWI the war would've ended a lot sooner. Today I wonder what war would be like because there's a near infinite supply of people, and raw materials.
Also there's a seemingly infinite supply of money currently in circulation. Everything seems to be getting bought and sold as global investors frantically try to find enough things to invest in. It's an absurd world we live in and I agree that the meaning of it all has completely broken down.