Can a benevolent system be inwardly focused? How benevolent is it to ignore your neighbor?
If we say that it's not a pretend virtue to care about democracy and freedom around the world, then wouldn't it would be a reasonable imperative to interact with the world?
If the US is simply better at it, isn't that relevant?
It's not like other (former) superpowers didn't do the exact same things:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_involvement_in_regime_c...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_involvement_in_regime_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Third_World_relations