Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can steal your way to the top. It worked for the greeks. It worked for the mongols. Arguably it worked for the spanish and british. I dont see the free market holding back authoritarian takeovers. At some point the west will wake up but when they do, is it too late?
And it worked and is working for the US.
What makes empires different is that they extracted the riches from lamds abroad, thru violence (stealing) which often meant war, murder, and pillaging. Usually this was followed by slavery. Slavery itself was often transactional consequence between to original human traffiker and the idiot buyer.
The US was a global power before it went on military adventurism. It can be argued whether the US could have become a world power without slavery, but that line of question can be leveled to any other country with significant power today.
The US became a global power and incredibly rich , in spite of its government only deciding to stick its nose abroad starting around the 1960s.
The US may have done pretty dark things abroad in the last 50-60 years. But thats when it really starts. And by that time, we had already a monopoly on world power.
If anything, the US has proven that it's technique for stealing to keep its advantage has been incredibly ineffective and downright inept (cuba, vietnam, arguably Afghanistan)
This is unlike china, that steals as a matter of national policy, and its stealing its way to the top