I've been grappling with this idea for quite some time now, which is the notion that the American foreign policy paradigm is a manifestation of white man's burden. Our country, according to this idea, believes that we have a moral obligation to prevent "lesser" nations from making mistakes. This results in a slew of military interventions (i.e. Kosovo, Libya, or Somalia) and economic assistance (i.e. USAID), because we believe that they are incapable of finding a solution themselves. I'm not entirely sure if I believe this, but what do you think? If our foreign policy really is a nationalistic offshoot of white man's burden, is it bad? I mean, we are only helping to develop stability in order to prevent the deaths of more people and open up markets for American businesses. Of course, that can easily be misconstrued as civilizing the savages, can't it? EDIT: I forgot to add in economic reasoning