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Framing oneself as the underdog is not equal to being the underdog or even believing oneself to be one. Downplaying one's strength advantage is the default posture of the strong (or those imagining themselves to be strong), rarely wholeheartedly believed. American posture in the «war on terror» and this current «strategic competition with China» is often painfully disingenuous too; cheap mop-up operations disguised as struggle for survival of the valiant minority standing up to some looming civilizational threat. Ministries of War have been renamed to Departments of Defense for a related reason.
Every autocrat, according to his PR, «stands up to the globalist West» as a valiant underdog, to build up a sieged castle mentality, even West-friendly ones like Erdogan. Or Orban. It's clear from his actions, though, that he does not believe the West to be actively invested in toppling Orban, and fights for real mainly with the domestic opposition, being very much the overdog there. Now we see that Putin, likewise, tawked a great deal about the Western threat – but genuinely thought that the West won't care enough to maintain support in the event that Ukraine doesn't fold rapidly, that his lobbying in Europe is reliable, that this is a low-stakes war on a cheeky backwater, in and out for 5 days; that Western politicians are tawking about their commitments only to dupe the plebs, like he does.
It's important to realize which fight exactly you are in.
I don't think this is generally true. The late 20th/early 21st century West has the heroic archetype of "plucky underdog who defeats superior force through extreme physical and moral courage, ingenuity, and luck" which causes Western overdogs to falsely claim to be plucky underdogs in order to make themselves feel heroic. It also has a set of egalitarian instincts (one of the other consequences of which is vulnerability to wokeness) which make underdogs more sympathetic, other things being equal, therefore creating another incentive to claim to be the underdog. Everywhere else, "the nail that stands up and is pounded down" is a strong anti-heroic archetype and third parties are most likely to choose the side which is more likely to win. So the incentive is to signal strength, and people did.
Incidentally, the fact that the most broadly popular media franchise in the early 21st century West is actually the MCU suggests that normies prefer heroes who don't falsely claim underdog status and Han Solo didn't actually succeed in changing the basic rules of Story.
Don't MCU characters, superhuman though they are, often fight Avenger Level Threats? It's one of the reasons I hate MCU, it's clear that their opponents are monsters of the week, but the presentation is exactly that Avengers are desperate underdogs. There are weak antagonists (Ivan and some old man from Iron Man 1-2 etc.) but Ultron is an AGI; Dormammu and Thanos are ontologically superior to the cast, even to relatively strong heroes (i.e. not Hawkseye); there usually are gimmicks that make heroes even bigger fish in theory, some artifact or cosmic energy or whatever that blonde butch has, but the stakes are high, and villains often gloat, and boast of being inevitable, crushing maggots or something. So it is congruent with the underdog aesthetics.
I concede that there's more power-worship in non-Western cultures. But it's inconsistent. Russia stronk big can destroy the world, but also is bullied by the decadent, rich, plotting West surrounding us with military bases. Crucially, Russians think of themselves as «weak and bullied» in the context of Ukraine, not trying to annex an (assumed to be weaker) neighbor but bravely standing up to the oppressive West, allegedly swinging the nuclear baton in self-defense. China has a similar but more verbally assertive and less actually aggressive posture («whoever tries to humiliate us will smash his head against the iron wall of 1.4 billion Chinese people», then allows Pelosi to land), and thus both countries abuse anticolonial rhetoric.
I think consistent affirmation of one's collective power may be characteristic of somewhat less developed groups with surviving honor culture – MENA, LatAm, Turkic and perhaps all/most Muslim countries. @2rafa, what's your impression?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_final_warning
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