Which is more condescending and neocolonial: To believe (hopefully) that a country may be able to hold onto a democracy, or to think they're incapable and will inevitably fall into chaos?

My only original point was simply that this chaos wasn't the aim of the West - nor does it benefit anyone. But I always find these arguments that the West is responsible deny agency to the actors on the ground. Surely these two men realize that house to house fighting is not good for the people they wish to rule, and they don't give a flying fuck. To say their "need" to wage war is just a secondary or tertiary result of Western interference is to say thay all their actions are merely reactions, and has overtones of the worst colonial racism. At least the American policy of promoting democracy relies on hope for a more prosperous life, which is powerful enough on an individual level to overcome fear.

To answer your question, a polity can only do its best to promote its position and try to gain friends and allies. The American revolutionary cry of "Liberty or Death" goes a fair way toward absolving us of hypocrisy in promoting popular revolution in service of self government. People don't have popular revolutions without believing in what they're fighting for; the North Vietnamese didn't, nor did the Potemkin sailors.

One of our most shameful hours was failing to defend the uprising we promoted in Hungary in 1956. Yet if we had, the narrative against us would have been that we intervened with arms against some wildly popular communism we had fomented some fascists to fight against. We get no credit for the ones we won, that are thriving in their independence, like South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, all of Western Europe.

Hah. I'm ranting.

Like your username btw.