“When you’re right, you’re right. He’s still expansionist but his ‘story’ sells well.”
The US has deployed troops globally in states that represented no realistic threat to the homeland since 1945. Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Somalia, Iraq, Kosovo, Panama, Dominican Republic, and Grenada. We’ve also deployed air power to bomb other nations in order to effect regime change. Would that be considered “expansionist”? It seems the US is in a poor position to assume a position of moral superiority versus Putin.
In the meantime, with the exception of attacking Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, we have consistently failed to project force when the homeland was threatened. We allowed Castro to hold onto power 90 miles from our shoreline. We took no action against the Saudi Arabian oil boycotts of the 1970’s. We did not use force when our embassy was seized by Iran. We have allowed Mexico and Central American nations to send millions of their citizens across our southern border and settle in the US. We have encouraged radicalized Muslims to settle inside the US. We’ve done nothing to shut down the mosques and Islamic terrorist training centers inside our own country.
Unlike our last four presidents (Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama) who have facilitated the invasion of the homeland across the southern border, Putin does put the interests of his nation, and its citizens, above the desires of other nations and the global elites.
I don’t believe the intentions of the former soviet union are anything but expansionist. They are not built on the principles of freedom but are, currently, a cowed version of totalitarianism. Yes - I believe we can claim moral superiority because I believe the goal in much if not all of what you listed is founded in the principles of freedom and our own national best interest.