> We can seen where the policing has broken down, because the states trying to maintain democracy and the Post-WWII world order have tried appeasement or failed to police.
We’ve also seen where it succeeded in its real goals, which are often not democracy or any rules based order, but the parochial security and economic interests of the powers doing the “policing".
We've also seen that the power that holds itself up as the primary architect and enforcer of a “rules-based international order” particularly refuses (often with histrionic gestures, like the act nicknamed the Hague Invasion Act) to subject itself to the the rules and institutions of that order.
> It is endless war crimes, cities reduced to rubble,
Yes, we've seen that caused by the active engagement, not merely the restraint, of the “policing” powers.
> So, if you are going to throw accusations that the US, UK, FR, NATO, attempting to maintain whatever peaceful world order is some kind of problem or is illegitimate,
What I said was the suggestion that powrful countries policing the behavior of others is not imperialism but something categorically different is self-delusion.
Its others making the implicit claim that imperialism is illegitimate and what is legitimate is some other order that exists only in fantasy.
(I can certainly conceive if something that would be legitimate in a way that the imperialist order is not, but as I see no obvious pass yo achieving it, its not worth advocating.) But in the meantime, without a route out, the best way to mitigate the worst potential harms of the imperialist order starts with recognizing the nature of that order for what it is, and understanding where it is prone, by nature, to oroduce bad outcomes.