>it’s fine for the US to use it’s cultural and economic hegemonic power to crush those states for making the wrong friends or choosing the wrong ideology

There's making different choices and there's 'being friendly to the Soviets which were also very much into overthrowing the US' or 'Driving double digit percentage of your own population out to the point you're a foreign policy problem' or 'undermining neighbouring states due to your 'wrong' ideology'.