Husar, I'm not saying we have had no influence on these places, but in the case of North Africa and the Levant the people there have spent most of their history quasi-autonomous under a distant "Imperial" government of one description or another and, in fact, Europe has had far less influence than the Turks in the preceding centuries.

At the end of the day you either treat these people like adults or you don't. If you aren't willing to treat them as adults then you either leave them to it until they grow up or you invade and take over to "parent" them.

Also, Kenya and Jordan DO frequently complain about the refugees flooding over their borders - but that's their problem unless they and we want to work on a common solution.

I repeat, the first duty of a government is to its own people, then we should look to helping outsiders.