Difficulty understanding a phrase

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At 7:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, the day after the 2020 presidential elections, the results of the presidential race, as well as control of the Senate, are very much in doubt and in chaos. Watched by rest of the world — deeply affected by who rules the still-imperialist superpower — the U.S. struggles and stumbles and staggers to engage in a simple task mastered by countless other less powerful and poorer countries: counting votes.
Glenn Greenwald on Substack

I find this quote online and is having a hard time digesting what seems to be an awkward sentence, "deeply affected by who rules the still imperialist superpower". Is the world the subject? The world is deeply affected?
USA is the object? USA is the one who rules the still imperialist superpower? What does that even mean?

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"deeply affected ..." modifies "the rest of the world" -- ie, the rest of the world is deeply affected. "still-imperialist superpower" is presumably referring to the US.
And note that "deeply affected ... superpower" is a "parenthetical" and can be omitted when analyzing the syntax of the sentence.
(And I agree with Pkjmm that the writing is tedious at best.)

Difficulty understanding a phrase

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