And the fact that people can assert otherwise without blushing kind of goes to show it's all right on track, including the psy ops aspect. If control of the hemisphere requires control of the planet, if modern communications mean control can only be maintained by controlling speech and thought in every nook and cranny -- then so be it. The people who don't want power at the expense of becoming a monster don't reach high echelons of power, they remain at the PR level.

To think in terms of countries, instead of interest groups within countries, is not even wrong. It's not countries vying for power, it's elites within a country using the elites in another country to suppress and exploit "their" populace. Two dictators in two neighboring countries might genuinely hate each other, but they still can use the other one as the perfect excuse to clamp down.

Soldiers are at best there to defend other soldiers. It's like having a debugger that can fix bugs only the debugger introduces, with the operative word being "can" -- so the net result is negative. What goes for soldiers goes for killer drones, and a white list approach, killing everyone on the planet who is not flagged for survival, would be already easier to make than, say, self-driving vehicles. We're already there, now all that remains is to sell it, and that is going butter smooth. We're still wide eyed and sleep walking, we absolutely need more powder in this keg so when it goes boom, nobody will even have time to ask anyone "what did you know, what did you choose to not learn, what did you do and what have you failed to do?".

I do think that politically, it would be a difficult change to make.

In your comment, you don't have a single statement that would actually compare US to any other government. I assume you understand the difference between absolute and relative value judgements?