This establishes that USA will use their control of .com to further their interests and that if you are at odds with those interests you should prefer a ccTLD.
The .com TLD is under control of the US, so of course the US will leverage that in its own interests when it makes sense.
Can you explain where the surprise is exactly?
It's equivalent to proclaiming surprise that the US will leverage its natural resources to its own advantage, or physically seek to control its borders in relation to its economy for trade purposes, or use & abuse the USD global reserve currency to its advantage. The .com TLD is just another resource under control of the US.
The US, as with every country on the planet, seeks to leverage all manner of things to its advantage, politically and economically. The only difference between nations is how many points of leverage they have to utilize. The US, or China as another example, have many points of leverage to use; smaller or weaker countries do not.
Kind of like OPEC successfully leveraging its oil dominance in the 1970s. It's what countries tend to do, when they can.
It never has been and never will be. These seizures are simply a few in a long line of similar actions stretching all the way back to the beginning of the "war on terror" in 2001. Hell, even the "war on piracy" has seen a lot of domains being seized.
