Do Authoritarian States 'Nation-Build'?

Contemporary authoritarian regimes don’t engage in “nation-building” because they haven’t been in the business of overthrowing existing governments.

Patrick Wintour makes a very odd claim in this article on U.S. foreign policy after Afghanistan:

If democracies conclude military-backed liberal intervention in pursuit of democracy cannot work, will autocracies show the same self-restraint? In his speech describing the call for an end to “forever wars” as imbecilic, Tony Blair pointed out that Putin in …