no blog, no socialist professors taught me this. here is a good book for you to read. Spreading the American Dream by Emily S. Rosenberg.
Yes, we exploited countries and it was for the benefit of the American elites. It started with our conquest of Latin America and the Monroe Doctrine stating that European nations need to stay away from the Western Hemisphere as we are the sole country that should have any say in what happens over here. We paid off the “loans” that these countries had to Spain, England, France, etc. so that they would be under our power.
We expanded to the Pacific and Asia as we saw a new market to exploit and get cheap goods and labor from. This isn’t some for of abstract thinking here; this is common knowledge.