@kentwillard Yes. “Failed states” very often are better characterized as sabotaged than failed. Standing up and maintaining a legitimate state is genuinely hard under the best of circumstances. When neighbors arm militias or rivals encourage subgroups to become restive, that makes it much, much harder. Proxy wars between fully sovereign states are rare, I think. More powerful allies have a hard time persuading suicide. Usually a state is broken before its role as proxy begins in earnest. 1/

@kentwillard My hope here is that we can become more explicit and intentional about enforcing respect for Westphalian states as an international norm. This would supercede and proscribe a lot of Western human-rights advocacy and “international law”. It would also proscribe Iran-style militia-building and Russia-style frozen conflicts and use of Russian speakers as pretexts for intervention. /fin