We unfortunately have not found a way to turn our kleptokratic dictatorship neighbor into one.

The greatest failure of the past 20 years was the belief that if we open up trade and grow rich together, rational self-interest will lead to liberalization and peace. Instead, it just gave our enemies more resources to spend on self-destructive imperialist ambitions.

The "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention" has been broken 4 times:

- NATO v Yugoslavia 1999 - India v Pakistan 1999 - Russia v Georgia 2008 - Russia v Ukraine 2014, 2022

Only with rational actors. But do not underestimate the stupidity of leaders who thought it would be easy.

So is the US not democratic enough, not rich enough or not free market enough?

This might have to be put into the context that they do in fact move the conflict over resources to economic wars. They also actively engage in wars over ressources when they think they can win outside of MAD, see U. S. vs Iran.

Economic warfare also does in fact kill people. Denying a population, e. g., Cuba, the ability to access medicine/food kills humans just as well as a bullet in the long term.

There are various other ways this causes suffering. Different forms of warfare are still warfare, even if you don't to hold a gun for all of them.

Being "rich" also requires someone else to be "poor".

Now we just need to figure out how to stop rich free market democracies from invading and bombing poorer countries