The thing about Pax Americana is that the brain trust behind sustaining it decides which regimes are good and which are evil based on their utility to the United States. This is classic empire building, and it's an effective strategy, but the moralizing about it is exhausting and hollow. Nobody with three brain cells thinks that one petrostate is more moral than another because it's backed by the US. I'm glad to live in the USA and benefit immensely from living at the heart of the modern Mongol or Ottoman Empire, but I have few illusions about the cost.