The us uses economic engagement as a disguise to hide their colonialist efforts towards Latin America

Imperialism Ethical

Imperialism breeds democratic self rule

Kurtz 03 (Stanley, Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, A just empire? Democratic Imperialism: A Blueprint, April 1, 2003, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6426)
Our commitment to political autonomy sets up a moral paradox. Even the mildest imperialism will be experienced by many as a humiliation. Yet imperialism as the midwife of democratic self-rule is an undeniable good. Liberal imperialism is thus a moral and logical scandal, a simultaneous denial and affirmation of self-rule that is impossible either to fully accept or repudiate. The counterfactual offers a way out. If democracy did not depend on colonialism, we could confidently forswear empire. But in contrast to early modern colonial history, we do know the answer to the counterfactual in the case of Iraq. After many decades of independence, there is still no democracy in Iraq. Those who attribute this fact to American policy are not persuasive, since autocracy is pervasive in the Arab world, and since America has encouraged and accepted democracies in many other regions. So the reality of Iraqi dictatorship tilts an admittedly precarious moral balance in favor of liberal imperialism.

American imperialism K2 world peace

Elshtain 03 (Jean Bethke, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School, “Just War Against Terrorism” pg. 169)
The heavy burden being imposed on the United States does not require that the United States remain on hair-trigger alert at every moment. But it does oblige the United States to evaluate all claims and to make a determination as to whether it can intervene effectively and in a way that does more good than harm—with the primary objective of interdiction so that democratic civil society can be built or rebuilt. This approach is better by far than those strategies of evasion and denial of the sort visible in Rwanda, in Bosnia, or in the sort of "advice" given to Americans by some of our European critics. At this point in time the possibility of international peace and stability premised on equal regard for all rests largely, though not exclusively, on American power. Many persons and powers do not like this fact, but it is inescapable. As Michael Ignatieff puts it, the "most carefree and confident empire in history now grimly confronts the question of whether it can escape Rome's ultimate fate."9 Furthermore, America's fate is tied inextricably to the fates of states and societies around the world. If large pockets of the globe start to go bad—here, there, everywhere (the infamous "failed state" syndrome)—the drain on American power and treasure will reach a point where it can no longer be borne.

Intervention protects basic human rights

Nardin and Pritcharal 90 (Terry- professor and head of the Political Science Department at the National University of Singapore, Kathleen D- director of community impact product development for the United Way of America, “ETHICS AND INTERVENTION: THE UNITED STATES IN GRENADA, 1983” 1990, pg 9)
A second major argument in favor of intervention is based on a concern for human rights. This argument rests on the idea that a country that values democracy and individual rights should be pre-pared to act when those values are threatened, not only at home but abroad. According to this view, it is simply intolerable for a free nation to stand on the sidelines while foreign tyrants like Idi Amin and Pal Pat enslave and massacre their own unfortunate subjects. At least in extreme cases like these. unilateral intervention should be permitted if other means fall. A nation that is not in a position to intervene Itself should support those governments (like Tanzania in the case of Idi Amin) that are able to act.

Imperialism Inevitable

Imperialism can’t be blamed solely on the imperialist

Said 94 (Edward W., was a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, a literary theorist, and a public intellectual, “Culture and Imperialism” May 31, 1994, pg. 19)

Domination and inequities of power and wealth are perennial facts of human society. But in today's global setting they are also interpretable as having something to do with imperialism, its history, its new forms. The nations of contemporary Asia, Latin America, and Africa are politically independent but in many ways are as dominated and dependent as they were 'when ruled directly by European powers. On the one hand, this is the consequence of self-inflicted wounds, critics like V. S. Naipaul are wont to say: they (everyone knows that "they" means coloreds, wogs, niggers) are to blame for what "they" are, and it's no use droning on about the legacy of imperialism. On the other hand, blaming the Europeans sweepingly for the misfortunes of the present is not much of an alternative. What we need to do is to look at these Matters as a network of interdependent histories that it would be inaccurate and senseless to repress, useful and interesting to understand.¶ The point here is not complicated. If while sitting in Oxford, Paris, or New York you tell Arabs or Africans that they belong to a basically sick or unregenerate culture, you are unlikely to convince them. Even if you prevail over them, they are not going to concede to you your essential superiority or your right to rule them despite your evident wealth and power. The history of this standoff is manifest throughout colonies where white masters were once unchallenged but finally driven out. Conversely, the triumphant natives soon enough found that they needed the West and that the idea of fatal independence was a nationalist fiction designed mainly for what Fanon calls the "nationalist bourgeoisie," who in turn often ran the new countries with a callous, exploitative tyranny reminiscent of the departed masters.