In Classic Imperialism, Robert Kaplan describes a number of small humanitarian missions by U.S. Special Forces (and Marines) throughout Africa and Asia:
All of this — not military occupations, with their attendant proconsuls — is what constitutes classic imperialism: by, through, and with the ‘indigs,’ as the Special Forces phrase goes. Local alliances and the training of indigenous troops, since time immemorial, are what has allowed imperial powers to project their might at minimum risk and expense. It was true of Rome even in adjacent North Africa, to say nothing of its Near Eastern borderlands; and it was particularly true of imperial France and Great Britain, two-thirds of whose expeditions were composed of troops recruited in the colonies. Iraq, especially when the Coalition Provisional Authority was in control instead of the Iraqis, is a perversion, not an accurate expression, of traditional imperialism.