Historically, when the US has effectively taken ownership of a failed or failing state, we have tried to fix the problems by throwing huge amounts of resources into the creation of a liberal democratic state. The results, to put it kindly, have not been very impressive.
Trump doesn’t believe in “nation-building.” If he is confronted with the need to take military action against a country that harbors terrorists, his plan of action is likely to look like this:
- Engage in massive and indiscriminate bombing in order to turn the offending nation into an ash heap.
- Give the keys to whatever is left to a local strong man, give him a little bit of moral and material support, and walk away.
In other words, we will be following Putin’s example in Chechnya.