You are probably correct that the Trump government is returning to the "good old days", so I concede that point around their current policies.

The predominant strategy from the US and China has been to leverage corruption in regional governments to obtain control of strategic assest like ports, transport hubs, mineral resouces etc, and then place those assets under the control of a few party adjacent corporations. Thus they extract those resources over local companies in the region. After making sure that the local politcal elite gets their miniscule cut of course.

Economic neocolonialism. Far less shooting and a lot more wealth extraction from a country.