Undertones?!

Oh, Really? When did you find out? Too bad you weren't listening to the orange dictator!

Undertones? The word they’re looking for is just imperialism.

If these are undertones, what do overtones look like?

Imperialist undertones is when you jeopardize several negotations, enact and maintain sanctions, station military outposts that encircle the "enemy state", take out 100+ school girls and not-just-any leader of a state, all halfway across the globe.

Just very lowkey stuff, quite hard to miss.