May I respectfully point out that for all intents and purposes, the West, as it has so quaintly been termed, does indeed consist of the USA and western Europe, and that many of the policies that Europeans like to point, hoot and holler about are simply continuations of old French, British and German policies?
Examples…
The Gulf War:
A direct result of British creation of the Nation of Kuwait, formerly the 39th province of Iraq. The goal was to remove Iraq’s access to both a deep sea port, and to the oil reserves, in the fear that Iraq would grow too powerful.
This support of British-French border creation can also be tagged as partly responsible for the attack on the US.
The Iran-Iraq War: A direct result of the creation of a border between these two nations by dividing a river in half, rather than the navigable channels of said river in half. The goal, to prevent either nation from effectively using said river to move goods to the gulf and international markets.
Kashmir: Created to cause conflict between the Muslims and Hindu. God save the Queen.
Libya and Chad: Created a disputed oil rich region. Thank France.
Namibia: Thank Germany and South Africa.
Israel: This is a personal pet peeve, because I hate US support for Israel. The creation of Israel was officially a UN action, and could not have taken place without UN support, but it hardly could have done so without the other European players as well. Even so, in 1922 it was the British who created the Predecessor to Israel, Palestine-Eretz-Israel.
I can go on and on. The roots of today’s conflicts are hardly “American” at all.
Hell, just about the only conflict that European policies c. WWI didn’t cause is the civil unrest in Rwanda and Burundi, and also Sri Lanka.
Personally, I think it’s high time the US stopped acting the World Cop, and let other people deal with their own problems.
Oh, but wait, then we’d get blamed for not doing anything. Too bad. When China and India are the superpowers, we’ll see how different things are.