Conclusion and policy implications

Abstract

This volume grapples with a broad spectrum of global challenges, ranging from civil conflicts and violent extremism to vulnerability to climate change and the spread of infectious diseases. Yet all the chapters converge on one point: poor states are often weak in critical areas of government responsibility, posing a risk not just to their own people, but also to regional and potentially American and global security. Poverty heightens the risk of civil war. Civil wars in turn have spillover effects, including serving as a conduit for transnational criminal enterprises, violent extremist ideologies, and deadly illnesses. Even when they are not in conflict, weak states may be vulnerable to violent extremist groups and may lack the capacity to implement effective, long-term counterterrorism strategies, or to prepare for or respond to the impacts of global climate change. Likewise, low income is in its own right an important factor in the prevalence of disease. The linkages among poverty, weak states, and transnational threats are not just theoretical nightmares but real human tragedies. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), these deadly and reinforcing ties have caused an estimated 5 million deaths and have kept a potentially rich nation simmering in conflict, even after the antagonists have made peace. In Sierra Leone, corruption, conflict, and the collapse of the state have allegedly been linked to financing for al Qaeda and possibly Hezbollah. Whether environmental stress caused war in Darfur may be open to question, but there is little doubt that land and water issues, exacerbated by the stress of climate change, must be a central concern in any sustainable solution to that crisis. In Haiti, poverty is also linked to deforestation, but how can so weak a state invest in fixing this environmental disaster? Disease outbreaks compound all these problems. And, of course, the impact of terrorism in Yemen upon U.S. national security could hardly have been more direct than the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. The examples of transnational threats to American security discussed in this volume-disease, conflict, terrorism, environmental tragedy-are a reminder of the perils of ignoring the links between them and with poverty and state weakness. Weak and failed states mired in poverty have ineffective government institutions, ultimately making the countries more vulnerable to global threats. When such states lack the capacity or willingness to provide for their citizens and maintain security over their territory, they pose a threat to the welfare and security of people across the planet, including those in the United States. The global financial crisis adds new urgency to the challenge of states that are both weak and poor, since the poorest countries are also the most vulnerable to the impact of the downturn. The overarching policy recommendation emerging from this book is the need to alleviate poverty and build capacity in weak states in order to break the vicious cycle of poverty, state weakness, and transnational threats. Strategies designed to prevent or respond to specific global threats in poor countries have been discussed elsewhere and in other chapters of this book.1 This chapter focuses on strategies to help break the relationship between poverty and state weakness. There is no simple way to unravel this relationship. But it is clear that tackling these threats without addressing poverty and weakness is unlikely to produce sustainable results. Furthermore, different types of states-whether their problems are associated with corruption, conflict, authoritarianism, ethnic intolerance, or exploitable natural resources-will require different solutions. In the following pages we offer a set of tools that can help achieve better results in diverse and challenging weak states. The main challenge in such countries is that they lack the effective national policies and leadership needed to attract investment and ensure that external assistance is well used. In addition, weak states typically lack the manpower, administrative structures, know-how, and resources to absorb large volumes of aid. Nor do they have the checks and balances to ensure that aid meets the needs of citizens and is not captured by special interests. Hence it is not surprising that donors, including the United States, tend to allocate most of their development funding to stronger states where aid works best.2 For weak states ranging from the DRC to Somalia, official development assistance (ODA) generally comes in the form of humanitarian assistance, largely food aid. Although humanitarian aid and one-shot disease prevention campaigns can help save lives, they fail to address the longer-term need to build state capacity. Needless to say, the best solutions for such weak states are those that involve them in setting the agenda, even if outside assistance is needed to implement it. Equally challenging, the downward cycle of poverty and weakness in developing countries has become more entrenched in the wake of the food crisis and current global economic downturn. Whatever gains emerging markets have achieved are being reversed as the earnings of commodity exporters-those hardest hit by the decline in global demand for their products-slide. Poor countries are among the world's most vulnerable to the impact of these crises. Policymakers should resist the temptation to see unfavorable budgetary conditions in the United States as a reason for complacency. Rather, as the new funding for development announced at the Group of Twenty (G-20) 2009 London Summit demonstrates, the current crisis is an opportunity to renew the commitments of rich and poor countries alike to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Should countries follow through on their commitments at the G-20, this would not only improve the plight of the world's poorest but would also be a worthy investment in the future security of people across the planet. © 2010 The Brookings Institution. All rights reserved.