These days, it seems the United States is always apologizing for something.

This week it’s over a bungled nato air strike early Saturday morning that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, including two officers. Whoops—sorry about that.

The fallout from the incident could be severe. Here is a short list: more damage to the already shaky U.S.-Pakistan relationship; a major hit to America’s supply chain to troops in Afghanistan; the loss of an airbase used by American drones; a blow to America’s hopes to pacify Afghanistan—not to mention to its tattered prestige; strategic openings for both Russia and China.

This has become so typical for cursed America. It suffers from a series of gaffes, miscalculations, setbacks and rotten breaks—while anti-American forces take advantage at its expense.

In this case, in a sense it is remarkable that Pakistan isn’t the one apologizing. But that’s just not the way things go anymore.

It has been a rough year for this awkward alliance. In May, America finally found and killed Osama bin Laden—in Abbottabad, right under the noses of Pakistan’s military and government. It didn’t forewarn the Pakistani government about its raid because—the cia said, with good cause—it didn’t want to “jeopardize the mission.” Pakistan “apologized” for harboring bin Laden by scolding America for failing to get permission, and then warning that it would repel future American raids with “full force.” The U.S., rather than hold Pakistan’s military to account for sheltering its most-wanted enemy, sought only to soothe Islamabad for having breached its airspace.

In September, the American Embassy and nato headquarters in Kabul were attacked, killing 16 people. The strike was carried out by the al Qaeda-allied Haqqani network, a deadly insurgent group fighting allied forces in Afghanistan. This group’s leaders openly operate in Pakistan—even since bin Laden’s killing. In fact, after the attack, in a clarifying moment, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, called Haqqani a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. Before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Admiral Mullen “went further than any other American official in blaming the isi for undermining the United States-led effort in Afghanistan,” the New York Times reported.

It’s an explosive charge—yet not difficult to prove. Evidence abounds that Pakistani authorities directly back forces that U.S.-led forces are battling, and are responsible for hundreds of coalition casualties. But the White House is so eager to bring the Afghan war to a close, and so convinced that Pakistan’s help is needed to do so, that it must ignore reality.

The Obama administration distanced itself from Mullen’s remarks. Then at the end of October, it went a step further: Senior administration officials visited Pakistan to ask the isi for help—help in convincing the Haqqani network and the Taliban to negotiate an end to the war.

What a tangled web. And again, America—even as its embassy lay smoldering—emerged the supplicant.

Another setback to U.S.-Pakistan relations occurred over the past month. A memo emerged apparently revealing Pakistan’s government asking for America’s help to curb the military’s power after bin Laden’s death. Though it was probably faked, trumped-up allegations of treason created such a national scandal that last week, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, was forced to resign. It was yet another illustration of how hostile the Pakistani public is to having any real dealings with the U.S.

These incidents supplied the stormy backdrop for the tragedy of last Saturday morning.

Preliminary U.S. military reports say the Taliban attacked American soldiers in Afghanistan and fled across the Pakistan border to purposefully lure them into a firefight against a Pakistani troop outpost.

Pakistan isn’t buying it. Yesterday a top Pakistani army general called the deadly strike “a deliberate act of aggression.” A Pakistani journalist said many of his countrymen view it as “an act of state terrorism by the U.S.”

Once the sun rose on Saturday, Pakistan forcefully retaliated. Its Defense Committee of the Cabinet (ddc) met in Islamabad, chaired by Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani. It gave the U.S. two weeks to vacate Shamsi airbase—jeopardizing the drone operations the U.S. has come to rely on so heavily. (“Future U.S. drone operations may have to be conducted factoring in the possibility that Pakistan might regard them as violations of its air space,” wrote the Asia Times.) The ddc said it would completely review all its “programs, activities and cooperative arrangements” with the U.S., nato and isaf, the International Security Assistance Force. Scheduled visits of Pakistani military delegations to the U.S. were canceled, and Washington was told that its military officials are no longer welcome in Pakistan.

The ddc also immediately closed the two crossings on Pakistan’s western border to trucks carrying fuel, food and vehicles to nato troops. It has done this in the past, but this time, it says, the closure is permanent. This eliminates routes that deliver nearly half of supplies for U.S.-led foreign troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. downplayed the significance of the closure, saying it has developed an alternative supply route. Trouble is, that route depends on cooperation from Russia, another hostile nation America hardly wants to give greater leverage to.

To top everything off, Islamabad announced it would boycott a U.S.-attended international conference on December 2 that is meant to discuss Afghanistan’s future.

Pakistan is now within a hair’s breadth of ending its cooperation with the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

That is certainly the will of the people. At rallies throughout the country this past Sunday, Pakistanis took to the streets shouting anti-American slogans, carrying placards and burning nato and American flags. At one demonstration, activists burned an effigy of Barack Obama.

None of it looks good for America, nor its ability to steer events to favor its own interests.

These events, however, do play nicely into the hands of the nation Pakistan increasingly considers its best friend: China.

Beijing’s move to fill the void America is leaving behind—a trend we have reported on before—is growing more aggressive. It is stepping up its activities in the seaport it constructed at Gwadar in Pakistan. It has deployed 11,000 soldiers to southern Kashmir (“Ostensibly the Chinese are there to secure high-speed road rail links between the Chinese-built ports on Pakistan’s coast and Western China,” Spengler reports, “but their presence also reinforces Pakistan’s control over a rebellious region”). For its part, Pakistan is seeking to become a full member of the Chinese-dominated security alliance, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. At the Istanbul conference this month, “Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran [shared] a platform of opposition to the U.S. bases in Afghanistan in the post-2014 period,” said the Asia Times.

Pakistan has accepted more than $18 billion in military aid from the U.S. since its relationship of convenience began after 9/11, and it would miss that flow of funds should it dry up. But China is proving itself a generous alternative, one that, in Pakistan’s eyes, doesn’t come with so many drawbacks.

An errant American airstrike on Pakistani soldiers provides Islamabad yet another reason to cut ties with the U.S. and embrace the behemoth from the east.

Biblical prophecy, in addition to explicitly forecasting the rapid decline in American power we see today, strongly suggests that Pakistan will align itself with China in the time ahead, playing an important role in the march of what the Bible terms “the kings of the east.”

Think on that as you see Pakistan fuming, China moving in, and America, yet again, apologizing.