A lot of American liberals just want to turn the clock back 20 years, when they were still doing military interventions everywhere in the world but at least the political class would get on TV and pretend to feel bad for it.

In a world where technology has made gentle imperialism untenable, your system has chosen honest imperialism. Wishing you didn't have to deal with this contradiction won't work. You will have to choose between getting rid of the "autocracy" and keeping the empire.