That reads like a description of the chatgpt start page. Just a prompt to start a conversation with a (mostly) helpful tool. But the moment they obtain absolute market dominance…

The northern elite also didn’t want to win at the start of the war: the union as it was, constitution as it is (with slavery that is). For the northern elite the south was a source of cheap cotton and an export market for finished goods, winning decisively would break that balance.

The end of slavery was truly a bottoms up movement, that forced the contradiction to be so great that it could not exist in one country.

John Dolan (aka the war nerd) has a great series on this subject on his podcast: Radio War Nerd.

To what extent is this different than what the US currently does?

This just reads like a guy that was frustrated by the fall of the Soviet Union and Americas following hegemony, and said: what if we did all that.

Especially the tactic of destabilizing rivals. For example: how sincere can Americas concern for a Muslim minority in China be, when they have directly caused the death of millions in all their illegal Middle-East adventures of the past decades.