Actually the US did exactly that, reasonably effectively, in the Philippines during their colonial enterprise there. Given that the American "sepoys" in the Philippines never staged an equivalent of the sepoy rebellion (though of course they weren't around as long) you could argue that the US did it more effectively. Of course the US didn't pursue that strategy on as wide a scale, because they didn't have as many colonies. It's not a strategy that translates accurately to the post-colonial proxy wars, in which the role was largely taken over by the national armed forces of our proxies.
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