> I have concluded that this is not the case; we would still see countries with Western values as economically more powerful

We have many examples of countries doing very well in science research and technology development without necessarily adopting liberal democratic values, such as USSR, Nazi Germany, China (which is catching up very quickly even on advanced research topics despite it was on the edge of famine not so long ago), even small countries are doing very well given their situation (Sanctions and wars) such as Cuba & Iran. Actually most of the advancement in the history of humans happened under non-liberal/democratic civilizations. And for fighting poverty China pulled a relative miracle by pulling hundreds of millions of people from poverty (recently they declared the success of getting rid of extreme poverty in China).

> an economic system with much worse incentives and individual freedoms for keeping the fruits of one's labor, will actually do equally well as Western ideals

Ok this is about the "free market" myth (in my opinion), if we looked carefully we can see that most of the advancements happened because of wars (especially WW2) and governments funded programs (example: Internet, Space programs), attributing the majority of the advancements to the free market need serious evidence. Also you're underestimating the importance of the cheap resources, cheap labor and open markets this makes most of the difference. It's not only about that, the success of the US to attach it's currency to the oil industry allowed it to make free money just by controlling and "protecting" the oil sources (especially in Middle east)
It's important to say that of course the colonial countries are for sure they should have some advancement to be able to colonize other countries but the bar is relatively low in comparison the profits that can be made, and the positive feedback loop that kicks in.

> NATO does not have ambitions of expansion

USSR begs to differ, US gave the falling USSR guarantees that it won't expand to the east but it did, and it was planning to do this again in Ukraine probably.

> countries threatened by Russia wish to join NATO for their security

That's the point about coups and wars, it allows the US to change the regime by means of force and/or disinformation campaigns (or alliance with terrorists, such as AL-Qaeda) and then install puppet regime with ruling class that's has deep interests with the west and viola, that regime will voluntarily want to join the NATO and do most of what the US wishes. That's the point of being the strongest empire in the history, you have thousands of playing cards that you can use, and you still get to look like the good guy.
Also note that for example Ukraine was almost invented by Lenin (Ukraine didn't exist at the time), also many of the territories of eastern Ukraine has majorities or big minorities of Russian people so things are more nuanced than the mainstream narrative.

> NATO does not have five hundred years of history as an expansionist empire

Yes they just colonize whole continents and practically exterminate the whole native citizens, if we're talking about history.
Also UK, France, Belgium... are in the NATO should I say exactly what this means in the last 500 years?

> The USA does not conquer other countries and ship their industrial surplus back home

They're doing this right now, even in small occupied territories in eastern Syria (and you guessed it, it's the oil and wheat rich territories). Sure US doesn't always steal like that, but they protect the regimes in the Persian Gulf and they sell them weapons, they burn whole countries to the ground (Iraq, Korea, Vietnam), they force the economical structures on the countries (If you're in the orbit of the US, you can't sign meaningful deals with China, they use the UN organisations to force certain structure on the economies even for big countries), they sanction whole countries for decades (Iraq, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Nkorea...). They support apartheid regimes (S. Africa, Israel) and the list goes on. Actually any comparison of the US and any random Tyranny will almost always be in favor of the tyranny.