> Many do not want democracy and the alternative for the U.S. is frequently to topple regimes and attempt to stand up completely new governments (i.e. nation-building). This is an extraordinarily costly endeavor with a high failure rate.

Yes, and this is one of the stupidest things about American foreign policy. Every european democracy spent hundreds of years as an authoritarian regime first, while it developed the underlying infrastructure of state and civil society. America repeatedly trying to short-circuit that process by toppling authoritarian regimes is in the long run bad for the people in those countries. Those countries are not ready for democracy and the fledgling democracies that the U.S. has tried to install, like in Iraq, have led to horrors.