This is just dressed up authoritarianism. Every dictator in history believed, or at least claimed, that their mission was benevolent. That he wanted to liberate the people, not enslave them. Putin, right now, claims that he wants to free Ukraine from its fascist and Neo-Nazi leadership.

Of course, you'll balk at the comparison. You're just talking about good, Western values that are objectively superior to everybody else! And to be clear, I agree that they're superior. But they stop being superior immediately if we try to impose them by force. And we immediately fall foul of the question of how to decide which values we impose. Should we ban/allow abortion? Gay marriage? Should we outlaw Islam or require Christianity? We can't even figure out these questions for ourselves.

We, in the West, have always thought our values were superior. Yet you only have to go back in time 100 years to find a time where we were chemically castrating and improsioning homosexuals. When we were segregating black and white people. When women didn't have the right to vote and the law didn't recognise that a husband could rape his wife.

In 100 years time, if we haven't blown ourselves up, we'll look back on this time and shudder at how misguided we were. The arrogance inherent in the idea that we've figured out civilisation to the point where we can forcefully impose our vision on other societies, never mind in the name of "freedom" is incredibly dangerous.

As I said, I believe in the principle of international law. Human rights, as we understand them, are a good starting point for all societies. I think people who want to leave oppressive societies should be able to do so. We should do everything possible to promote tolerance throughout the world. But history is littered with examples, Afghanistan being a good, recent one, that trying to do this by force is a fools errand.