[danudey]

I would argue (as a not-American and not really US fan) that the US is motivated by the same sort of ideology. In this case, it's the oft-repeated American nationalism ('America is the best nation on earth') to the denigration of other countries. As a Canadian, you often see this attitude of 'America is the best, you should be glad to be around us', and an attitude towards other countries of 'they should be glad they get to do business with us'.

Americans aren't interested in your land or people, because then they would have to manage them. Dirt-farming peasants in some filthy third-world country can have their crappy lives, as long as the despots that we deal with (and, often, installed) give us a fair price for the goods they take from you.

The 'better approach for the smaller guys' is probably true in your area of the world, where the US hasn't been able to effect serious political change due to proximity towards European and Soviet (now Russian) powers; in South America, on the other hand, the US has been known to help overthrow elected governments in favour of dictators with more favourable relationships (as they also did in Iran, for example); in that case, I think it's much worse for the little guys vs. a well-run occupation.

Monty Python said it pretty well: 'Apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?'

[oblio]

I actually wanted to throw Guatemala up there, next to Iraq, as an counter-example. The USA has from the absolutist point of view an awful track record. But the competition was so bad that from a relative point of view it's like purgatory versus hell. Canadians or Mexicans might not like the US, but there's no neighbor of Russia that did well because of Russia. Any sane citizen which has no vested interest in Russian occupation or is actually Russian (Russia and the USSR have displaced a lot of populations, have colonized large areas and have russified huge populations) will agree.

Meanwhile Canada and Mexico are doing quite fine - those borders have been stable for over 100 years and there's been no major "abuse", as I called it before, that I know of.

Also, arrogance is not a capital offense, discrimination based on it is. From many points of view the US discriminates less than those mentioned previously.