Just substitute Washington for Rome

Below is a passsage from Tom Holland's Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic. I thought it was a little chilling how, as Americans, we closely resemble this.

"...Provinces, it was assumed were burdensome to run. There were subtler ways of fleecing foreigners than by imposing direct rule on them. The Senate's preferred policy, practiced throughout the East, had always been to maintain a delicate balance between exploitation and disengagement. Now, it seemed, that the balance of power was in danger of being upset.
So, initially, the Senate- aside from colluding in Tiberius's murder- did nothing. Only when the kingdom's collapse into anarchy threatened the stability of the entire region was an army finally dispatched to Pergamum, and even the then it took several years of desultory campaigning before the Republic's new subjects were brought to heel. Still the Senate refrained from establishing Rome's first province in Asia. Instead, the commissioners sent to regulate the kingdom were carefully instructed to uphold the regulations of the kings they were replacing. As was invariably the Roman way, the emphasis lay on pretending that nothing much had changed.
So it was that a governing class that had been responsible for guiding its city to a position of power of unparalleled world power, bringing the entire Mediterranean under its effective control, and annihilating anyone who dared to oppose it, still clung to its instinctive isolationism. As far as Roman magistrates were concerned , abroad remained what it had always been: a field for the winning of glory. While plunder was never to be sniffed at, honor remained the truest measure of both a city and a man. By holding to this ideal, the members of the Roman aristocracy could reassure themselves that they remained true to the traditions of their rugged forefathers, even as they reveled in the sway of their command. As long as the effete monarchs of Asia sent their embassies crawling to learn the every whim of the Senate, as long as the desert nomads of Africa reined in their savagery at the merest frown of a legionary commander, as long as the wild barbarians of Gaul dreaded to challenge the unconquerable might of the Republic, then Rome was content. Respect was all the tribute she demanded and required.
But if the senatorial elite, confident already in their own wealth and status, could afford to believe this, then businessmen and financiers, to say nothing of the vast mass of poor, had very different ideas. The Romans had always associated the East with gold. Now, with the settlement of Pergamum, came the opportunity to start looting it systematically. Ironically, it was the Senate's insistence that the traditional Governance of Pergamum be respected that pointed the way."

Don't we still associate the East with gold, Black Gold!