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The future of failed states

United StatesConnor McLaren, Washington International School
April 27, 2011

NEWS

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has frequently asked, “Why should the United States government engage in so much nation-building abroad when it has a nation to build at home? It is a fair question. The US devotes substantial time, energy, and money to helping to mend broken states overseas at a time when we have troubled states at home, soaring federal deficits, mounting national debt, and a declining educational system and infrastructure. With political and fiscal pressure to make massive cuts in US government spending, members of Congress and the American public increasingly question the value of US foreign assistance for failing and failed states – or what one expert years ago described as “foreign policy as social work.” Why indeed? Ken Brill, the President of The Fund for Peace, an independent research and educational organization dedicated to helping to prevent conflict and state collapse, offered some answers in a wide-ranging interview.

“Failed states are like tooth decay: if they are not helped to improve, they infect states around them. Failed states afflict not only the people who live in them, but also neighboring states and even states thousands of miles away.” While there are no quick “fixes” for failed states, working to strengthen civil society over time and relying on steady outside pressure for improvement, particularly from neighboring states, can stimulate progress. Brill said that there is rarely a single point of failure for states. Instead, a combination of factors over time erode a state’s ability to perform essential functions, such as tribal, ethnic, and religious identity-based issues that lead to group grievances. These grievances can be exacerbated by uneven economic development, particularly when it favors one group over others.

Somalia is an example of the risks and dangers failed states pose for international peace and security. Its failure has sent thousands of refugees into neighboring states, burdened governments and populations already stressed by their own problems, sparked acts of terrorism in Kenya and Uganda, provided a haven for Al-Qaeda’s regional leaders and a training base for new recruits, and produced a generation of pirates who have disrupted international shipping around the Horn of Africa. Somalia has also directly affected the United States. For example, the US has taken in refugees from Somalia, many of whom live in New England and Minnesota. Young men from these communities have been recruited to fight in the ongoing civil war in Somalia, and some of them have become vulnerable to recruitment by Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups who wish to target them against the US. In addition, the impact of Somali piracy on international shipping has required the US to divert ships and resources from other missions to counter the piracy, which has been very expensive.

Brill acknowledged that it is often difficult to decide when and how the United States should get involved in conflict prevention. He offered a few guidelines. Outside mediation can only work when the parties to the dispute are open to such help. He added, “We should seek to help every weak state that wants and is committed to doing what is necessary to strengthen itself. It is pointless to seek to help a state that does not think it needs help, but we should never turn away from helping any state that wants to better meet its responsibilities to its people.” In order to do this, the US has both coercive and supportive tools they can use to strengthen these states. Coercive tools include sanctions on corrupt and despotic leaders, trade restrictions, and arms embargos. Supportive tools include economic assistance that is targeted on improving not just economic development, but also those areas that are contributing to state weakness.

Brill has recounted a couple of lessons he’s learned over the years in dealing with failed states, one of which is that “delay in dealing with the problems of state failure only compounds the problems such failures create and the difficulty of resolving them, and that outsiders can assist a state strengthen itself, but only if there is a critical mass of understanding within the state that change is needed and a willingness to act to support change.” He also said that it is usually better for conflict prevention and response to involve multiple states, general international support, and internal partners: “While the US has considerable political, economic and military power, there is rarely a good reason for us to take sole responsibility for engagements that can be costly economically, lead to casualties and strain resources that may be needed elsewhere.”

A last piece of advice Brill had was that “US leadership is essential to preventing and responding to conflict, but that leadership should be exercised at the head of a team in most cases, not unilaterally. Leading a team of sovereign states is always harder than acting alone, but the results of working with other states tend to be more sustainable than those achieved by unilateral action.” He also acknowledged that even though the list of failures is longer than the list of successes in terms of US intervention, Liberia and Sierra Leone are examples of states that are moving in the right direction.

Brill’s answers are compelling, but whether they will win over skeptics of nation building remain to be seen. America’s costly experiments in nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq have had a searing effect on the American psyche. Unless fixing a failed state can be directly linked to US national security, this may be a mission of choice that will have to be sacrificed in an era of fiscal austerity. It will also do well to remember that many grand and well-intentioned schemes to improve the human condition and to reshape the whole of society have frequently failed, especially when they are trying to be imposed from the outside.

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Tags: failed, states, brill, kenneth

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