Not gratuitous at all toadfrog. We live in a world recently dominated by Britain, now dominated by the US, both of which got rich by behaviour we would now regard as criminal. If these countries were moving heaven and earth to restore some balance in the world, fine, but they're trying (successfully in the USA's case) to maintain their ill-gotten advantage. In the circumstances, gloating about "superior overwhelming force" was a crassly unilateral take on a global concern.