It's disingenuous to pretend there were two alternative ways of doing this and we just picked the CIA one.
The EU provides direct aid to nogs, the Chinese just build ports and roads to get what they want.
It's like me building a road through your garden because I need to drive to my job, and then expecting you to be grateful for your new road.
The EU also tried the infrastructure way, like building water wells and hospitals. But most of the money went to the ruling families and ended in Swiss bank accounts.
The EU also invested in education, many of the brightest went to western universities - and stayed there, a brain drain. China did the same but then sent them back to maintain the Chinese built infrastructure.
That's just a resource issue, China can afford to send over 1,000's of Engineer to supervise nogs lifting rocks. Europe is really stuck with just sending the money to head-nogs and being naive enough to expect them to act in their own countries interests.
And when it did send people and materials, like solar panels, as soon as they left the village it all got stolen. That's probably why they keep digging wells, you can't steal a well (although nogs still surrounded it with militia to exhort money)
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