By pressing Sri Lanka and the Maldives to be on guard against what he claimed is predatory lending and investment by China during his visits to the two countries on Tuesday and Wednesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made clear what was meant by the "difficult but necessary" choice they were encouraged to consider ahead of his trip.

He presented the United States as a "friend and partner" for "transparent and sustainable economic development" in contrast to the "discriminatory and opaque practices" of China.

Ironically, it is exactly the transparent and sustainable economic development they have achieved in their mutually beneficial cooperation with China that has prompted this tireless country-hopping peddler of China threats to turn his attention to the two island nations, seeking to embroil them in discriminatory and opaque practices aimed at arresting China's rise.

Rather than being "a beacon" for freedom and democracy in the region as Pompeo claimed, the US is resorting to cash-for-sovereignty offers in its bid to get countries to make common cause against China.

While China and other emerging market economies, including Sri Lanka and the Maldives, are pursuing shared development dividends through cooperation to boost policy, infrastructure, trade, and financial and people-to-people connectivity, the US administration is now trying to bribe developing countries into taking its side.

The money the US promised Brazil earlier this month to buy non-Chinese telecommunications equipment highlighted which country engages in "bad deals, violations of sovereignty and lawlessness"－a charge that Pompeo tried to lay at China's door.

In his lecturing to his hosts in the two countries on the dangers of their development choices, Pompeo simply drove home the message that the US administration's interest in the two countries is determined by the extent to which they are willing to side with it against China.

Yet in its bid to recruit mercenaries to build a "coalition" against China, the US administration risks miring itself and those it has enticed to gather under its banner "in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong enemy". Countries know this.

They also know that no matter how much it tries to sweeten it, the US administration is trying to sell a zero-sum Cold War mentality that stinks of putrefaction. Thanks, but no thanks has been the polite response.

Nonetheless, Pompeo has a thick skin and despite being repeatedly rebuffed, he continues to indefatigably travel the world, grandstanding his attacks on China's integrity.

The next stop is Indonesia where no doubt he will utter more passé Cold War clichés.