[Emperor Palpatine]

"How long would it take for drug lords to settle down into to some sort of civilized place? Decades? A couple centuries? Bootleggers did it"



Well, in this case.....one generation from the rum-running to the White House.........

[heartwood]

Precisely. Maybe the thing to do with warlords or crime lords is let them domesticate - it takes some generations, but the Anglo-Saxon-Normans produced a fine civilization.

Some warlords, you can only kill or isolate - that would be the Afghanis.

And the Aztec-Conquistador types?