But American foreign policy was designed--not perfectly, but in aspiration--to support Liberal values of freedom of expression, self government, and the opportunity to flourish that was first described in America's founding documents.
Do you guys not get world history in the US? What you're saying is laughably and demonstrably false.
You know why the Iranians hate America? It's because the US orchestrated the overthrow the democratically elected government to implement a dictator . . . who the Iranian people were forced to live under until the the Iranian revolution several decades later. This pattern repeats over and over through history.
1960 - Democratic Republic of Congo: Democratic president overthrown by the CIA to institute a dictator (Mobutu Sese Seko)
1964 - Brazil: Operation Brother Sam overthrew democratically elected government to institute a dictator (General Branco) who immediately arrested 50,000 political opponents
1967 - Indonesia: Aided in toppling democratically elected government to institute a military dictator (General Suharto). Aided and encouraged mass killings/genocide
1970 - Cambodia: Aided in toppling democratically elected government via coup, instituting years of unrest and civil war
1973 - Chile: Engineered the coup to topple democratically elected government to institute a military dictator (Augusto Pinochet)
1980s - Afghanistan: Provided weapons and training to mujaheddin jihadi guerrillas (Operation Cyclone) to fight soviets.
mid1980s - Nicaragua: Trained contras in techniques to bomb/terrorize civilians, assassinate judges, and blackmail ordinary citizens in an attempt to overthrow the government. The US directly caused many civilian deaths by mining Corinto harbour, and blowing up bridges.
1991 - Haiti: Trained the people involved, and set up the coup to depose democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Of course, there's the more recent stuff:
- Illegally (under international law, and the Geneva conventions) kidnapping and detaining (for decades) people accused of being terrorists . . . based on evidence so flimsy that none of the detainees has ever been convicted in a real court. Performing routine torture (waterboarding, beatings, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, rapes) and murders under the US flag.
- Illegally (under international law) executing civilians and suspecting enemy combatants alike via drone strike.
- Crushing the regime of Saddam . . . but then retreating from Iraq without establishing a strong government, allowing Saddam's old military leaders to create ISIS.
This list could go on, and on, and on with many more examples of the US doing things that have made lives around the world significantly worse.
George W. Bush enacted unwise policies, but he always described these values as a goal. Trump's foreign policy truly seems to be abandoning those values. You can argue that his choices are tactical or pragmatic, but a side effect of ceding the role as a global guarantor of security is that the influence will be picked up by the other Great Powers, which are fairly open in their distaste for these values.
The US foreign policy affects global security, but it also loses a moral dimension when not paired with these values.
US foreign policy has always had an effect on global security. It has
always been in US interests though . . . doing an awful lot of harm to the world in the process.