Relationships between countries and their heads of government are not so much different from relationships between individuals. Those who enter into a co-dependency, such as alcoholics and their spouses, for example, feed this co-dependency through a rescuer and to-be-rescued principle. The non-alcoholic partner pretends wanting to save the addict, while the addict willingly exposes himself to this. Both profit from this alliance because they feel confirmed in their roles.

One wants to be pitied and cared for like a baby, the other wants to suffer along and perceive himself as a nurturing parental figure. He is dependent on being needed. Of course, both are weak and insecure personalities who are largely guided by the victim-perpetrator mentality.

This is a mutual exploitation of weakness and therefore the opposite of encouragement to take responsibility for one's own life. A compassionate counterpart would advise the addict to do more of the same and drink themselves to death, or they would ask: What would you have to do to make your situation absolutely worse? And would not provide the answer. He would continue to ask wonder-questions, like: "If you'd be sober by tomorrow through a fairy tales magic action, what would you do with your life? Who'd benefit from this in your family? Who'd be stripped off of the benefit? Who else? What might your dead father think of it? What would your colleague/neighbor/doctor say?" etc.

Such questions aim towards the insight, that becoming sober from one day to the next can strip the alcoholic from what was profitable to be an addict. If he does not receive any sympathy being an addict but receiving it through his virtues, when his existence as a poor addict no longer takes up the main part of his daily life, he has to ask himself what could replace this hitherto pleasantly experienced profit instead. And devote himself to more constructive tasks. However, as long as the co-dependent environment reinforces the alcoholic as a petty victim and everyone else reaps the same benefits from unhealthy peoples, everything remains the same.

A nation with such helpers-syndrome meets the immature part of a populace which welcomes victim status and feeds the syndrome, expressed in slogans "bringing democracy", "feeding the poor", "helping the sick" and thinking of its aid-programs as un-selfish. Since such attitude often also comes with strings attached (I fulfill your need, therefore you fulfill mine) two nations may become addict buddies, not letting the other become free of such co-dependency.

That would be my psychological take on it.

Sorry, if I do bother you with too much comments, I am having a flow. LoL