Believe me I understand what you’re saying. No one is saying these nations are without problems, but

no faith that they'll become anything more than another economic imperialist force.

The biggest and most powerful nation in this block is China and very little is going to change that. That right there will stop most of those ambitions for the most part in my opinion. On top of that nuclear war is the other factor to consider and unlike the west these places for all their faults generally don’t want to die so really the only path forward is economic prosperity, which China incentivizes. So far everyone has said that these places will act just like the west without really thinking of all the ways acting like the west is just going to ostracize them from a clearly better future. Could it happen? Sure, but I doubt it.