You're right.
At the time the Whaling industry needed Japanese ports to refuel while they slaughtered whales (ironic now that Japan is the whaling country).
So Pres. Fillmore sent Commander Perry in and threatened the Japanese with bombarding their cities if they didn't sign a "friendship" agreement with us.
It wasn't really a "blockade" because the Japanese only had sailing ships and thought the U.S. Steam ships were "dragons". lol
By the way, Pres. Fillmore is constantly ranked in the bottom 10 of all U.S. Presidents. He only was President because Pres. Taylor died and he took over. His whole Presidency was scandal after scandal.
So I guess you could say that was an early example of the U.S. govt. using the military to bully another country and force them to obey.
It doesn't mean that the true IDEALS of which this country were founded in 1776 are part of that nonsense.
There are always BAD people in this world. And Fillmore was one of them.
At least back then, it seemed that there was some semblance of restraint. The govt. would get "cleaned up" for a while before the next would-be tyrant stepped in.
But goddamn...it seems that NOW, it just never ends.
We just openly invade any country we want to (as long as they don't have a military that can actually fight back), and then we occupy them for as long as we want to.
