President Barack Obama has been soundly denounced for destroying the U.S. image globally. Ambassador Chas Freeman granted an interview to Sputnik, in which he said the U.S. is less safe and more hated globally as the result of policies pursued since 9/11.

“The United States is less safe than it was when it began its ill-considered military campaigns in Asia and Africa. The discredit this has brought to American democracy has greatly diminished its appeal abroad.” Freeman continued, “It kicked off an American-led war on militant Islam that has spawned contempt for the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law both at home and abroad, and justified the curtailment of the freedoms and the erosion of the personal security of Americans that it is ostensibly directed at protecting.” He linked the war policies of Bush and Obama to the collapse of the U.S. economy, telling Sputnik, “The diversion of American resources to foreign adventures rather than to meeting domestic human and infrastructure needs has made America a shabbier, less competitive society.” Freeman cited Obama’s drone wars for having “spread anti-Western terrorism with global reach to new corners of the globe.”

Freeman’s comments were further echoed by Martin Sieff, writing for UPI, who denounced Obama’s behavior at the G20 meeting as sowing the seeds for an economic disaster and thermonuclear war.

“At the G20 he jumped deep into the pit of strategic overextension, committing the United States to ongoing dangerous confrontations with the other greatest global powers—Russia and China… Weak men bluster and bluff, then imagine they are strong. That is what Obama did at the Group of 20 meeting… Where he saw himself as a proud man standing tall on the world stage, others saw a blustering phony, who boasts of a Nobel Prize he never deserved, never earned. Obama stood up — in his own imagination — to Russia and China. In reality, he just plunged ahead on a course toward U.S. economic collapse through an endless clash with China. Even worse, he took another step on the road toward thermonuclear confrontation and world war with Russia. Obama’s conduct at Hangzhou will not be scrutinized or even criticized by the worshipful U.S. media, but it plunges the United States and the American people far further down the road towards global war and existential crisis under his successor.”

Philippines President Duterte continues his clear-headed dismantling of Obama’s military impositions on his country, implemented under the willing tool President Aquino. Following Duterte’s declaration on Monday that all remaining U.S. Special Forces in Mindanao must leave (the U.S. has not yet received such an official order), he has now announced the cancellation of Obama’s deal with Aquino to carry out provocative joint naval patrols of “contested waters” in the South China Sea.

“We will not join any expedition or patrolling the sea. I will not allow it, because I do not want my country to be in involved in a hostile act,” Duterte said in a speech during the 48th anniversary of the 250th Philippine Airlift Wing at the Villamor Air Base in Pasay City, as reported in the Philippines Inquirer.

“I just want to patrol our territorial waters,” he said. “We do not go into a patrol or join any other army from now, because I do not want trouble,” Duterte said. “I do not want to ride gung-ho style there with China or with America. I just want to patrol our territorial waters. Territory is limited to the 12-mile limit. That is ours.”

Bloomberg reported that Duterte, in a televised speech Tuesday before military officers in Manila, said that two unidentified countries had agreed to give the Philippines a 25-year soft loan to buy military equipment. But he also announced that Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and technical people in the armed forces would visit China and Russia “and see what’s best.”

Reiterating his insistence that the Philippines would not engage in military provocations with the U.S. against China, he said the Philippines needs propeller-driven planes that it can use against insurgents and to fight terrorists in Mindanao. He said he wanted to buy arms “where they are cheap and where there are no strings attached, and it is transparent. I don’t need jets, F-16 — that’s of no use to us. We don’t intend to fight any country.”