Teribus, I do think that the USA is the most feared country in the world at present, and is seen by a majority of people in the world as a rogue nation that is dangerous and out of control. I don't think there's really any doubt about it. And I don't think they truly protect anything but their own corporate mercantile interests.

Remember what Benito Juarez said?

"Poor Mexico. So far from God and so near the United States."

He was speaking from experience.

Walrus made a good point. National attitudes are not driven so much by fact as they are by perception. Perceptions are shaped by whatever mythology a government feeds to its people, in its schools and its media. North Korea teaches its kids to hate and fear the South Koreans and the USA. The USA teaches its kids to hate and fear North Korea, Iran, and various other such boogeymen. These things are not done to help anybody in the ordinary public, but to serve some grand and shadowy domestic or international purpose which is never clearly explained to those kids growing up. They are done to prepare people to go out and kill other people.

It's the ultimate game of competition, played out on the world stage, and it is founded upon lies, greed, and hypocrisy.

Great empires always do a lot of that...and yet, you can defend them by saying that they also establish order and bring various advancements (as the Romans did) (as the British did) (as the Americans have done in various cases too) (as still other empires have done). Well, yes, that's part of the picture. As you say, they (the Romans) brought "security, prosperity, order, good governance and improvement". I'd agree with that. Still, they were certainly resented, because they brought all of that at the point of a sword, and they came into other people's land and took it for their own...not because they loved other people or loved freedom and justice...no, because they loved conquest. They did it to satisfy their own appetites.

So again, it's a matter of perception, isn't it?

When Rome was governed well and wisely, then their subject peoples would have felt more respect for them. When Rome's rule deteriorated badly under a series of corrupt emperors, their subject peoples began to lose respect for them.

So, how wisely is America now being governed?

That again is a matter of perception, isn't it?