Breaking the Failed-State Cycle

Abstract

Insecurity in the 21st century appears to come less from the collisions of powerful states than from the debris of imploding ones. Failed states present a variety of dangers: religious and ethnic violence; trafficking of drugs, weapons, blood diamonds, and humans; transnational crime and piracy; uncontrolled territory, borders, and waters; terrorist breeding grounds and sanctuaries; refugee overflows; communicable diseases; environmental degradation; and warlords and stateless armies. Regions with failed states are at risk of becoming failed regions, like the vast triangle from Sudan to the Congo to Sierra Leone. For security, material, and moral reasons, leading states cannot ignore failed ones. While no two failed states are alike, all typically suffer from cycles of violence, economic breakdown, and unfit government, rendering them unable to relieve the suffering of their people, much less empower them. This paper aims to improve the understanding and treatment of failed states by offering an integrated approach based on two ideas: that certain critical challenges at the intersections between security, economics, and politics must be met if the cycle is to be broken and that, in meeting those critical challenges, the guiding goal should be to lift local populations from the status of victims of failure to agents of recovery. Introduction -- Understanding failed states -- Policy failures -- Developing an integrated approach -- Reframing the failed-state challenge -- Identifying and meeting critical challenges -- Dismantling the instruments of violence -- Critical challenge 1: Reintegrating excombatants -- Critical challenge 2: Building effective, legitimate state security structures -- Removing incentives for violence -- Critical challenge 3: Fairly and appropriately distributing assistance -- Critical challenge 4: Building an inclusive and representative political system -- Establishing security for economic recovery -- Critical challenge 5: Securing the nation's productive assets -- Critical challenge 6: Providing security for foreign direct investment -- Creating conditions for empowering the population -- Government provision of essential public services -- Safe drinking water and basic sanitation -- Accessible public health and health care services -- Accessible primary education -- Sustained human development -- Secondary and postsecondary schools and training centers -- Accessible, safe marketplaces -- Trade facilitation and control -- Other economic development efforts -- Conclusion : Institutions and Leadership -- Appendix: Countries in alert zone.