That's actually a really interesting point. South Korea was actually steamrolled by the north, because the US made sure they had no independent way of defending

That's actually a really interesting point. South Korea was actually steamrolled by the north, because the US made sure they had no independent way of defending themselves. The US pulled in the UNSC to fight on their own in Korea, while the Soviets had built up a strong local military in the North. Taiwan is now incapable to protect its own borders. They even had a nuclear weapons program in response to mainland China which the CIA infiltrated and shut down. Another example of a local military that was just steamrolled by an insurgency was the Iraqi military. The US has a pretty good track record when it comes to building insurgencies though, remember that the Taliban were built and trained by ISI and the CIA. Iran had islamic groups that the Shah used to silence opposition forces. There's no way their training and equipment wasn't done in coordination with their US partners given how much of a puppet the Shah was. Or take a look at a lot of the groups that were part of the opposition in Syria. I wonder if there's any analysis why the US has been so good at building and training insurgency groups, but so bad at making local armies to protect their own territorial borders.