Failed States

The Need for a Realistic Transition in Afghanistan

Musa Khan Jalalzai

• Publisher: VIJ Books (India) Pty Ltd
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9789389620214
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Processi politici

Failed or failing states cause concern and spread chaos to their neighbors. They are an unquestionable and authentic source of terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking, violence, disease, and economic breakdown. Afghanistan is an example of such a troubled state, which collapsed in 1992. The Afghan state remained shattered and failed due to the inattention of the international coalition. In modern intellectual forums, most of the failed-state discourses are centered on the lack of a state's capacity to carry out the basic services for which it is responsible, such as the rule of law, good governance, and effective border control against external threats.This book is a collection of articles on various issues leading to the Failed States written by eminent scholars and researchers.

Chapter - 1

Weak States and Global Threats: Assessing
Evidence of “Spillovers”

Stewart Patrick

Abstract

A key motivation behind recent donor attention and financial resources devoted to developing countries is the presumed connection between weak and failing states, on the one hand, and a variety of transnational threats, on the other. Indeed, it has become conventional wisdom that poorly performing states generate multiple cross-border “spillovers”, including terrorism, weapons proliferation, organized crime, regional instability, global pandemics, and energy insecurity. What is striking is how little empirical evidence underpins such sweeping assertions.

A closer look suggests that the connection between state weakness and global threats is less clear and more variable than typically assumed. Both the type and extent of “spillovers” depend in part on whether the weakness in question is a function of state capacity, will, or a combination of the two. Moreover, a preliminary review suggests that some trans-border threats are more likely to emerge not from the weakest states but from stronger states that possess narrower but critical gaps in capacity and will. Crafting an effective U.S. and international strategy towards weak states and the cross-border spillovers they sometimes generate will depend on a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms linking these two sets of phenomena. The challenge for analysts and policymakers will be to get greater clarity about which states are responsible for which threats and design development and other external interventions accordingly. This paper represents an initial foray in this direction, suggesting avenues for future research and policy development.

1. Introduction

It has become commonplace to assert that the gravest dangers to U.S. and world security are no longer military threats from rival great powers but transnational threats emanating from the world’s most poorly governed countries. “Since the end of the Cold War, weak and failing states have arguably become the single most important problem for international order,” writes Francis Fukuyama.² Official Washington agrees. Nations that are incapable of exercising “responsible sovereignty,” says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have a “spillover effect” in the form of terrorism, weapons proliferation and other dangers.³ This new focus on weak and failing states represents an important shift in U.S. threat perceptions. Before 9/11, U.S. policymakers viewed states with sovereignty deficits primarily through a humanitarian lens: they piqued our moral conscience but possessed little strategic significance. Al Qaeda’s ability to act with impunity from Afghanistan changed this calculus, convincing the Bush Administration that “the United States today is threatened less by conquering states than we are by weak and failing ones.^”4

This new threat perception has quickly become conventional wisdom at home and abroad. Government officials, academics and the media have linked poorly performing developing countries to a vast array of threats to global security and well-being, from transnational terrorism to international crime, humanitarian catastrophes, regional instability, global pandemics, mass migration and environmental degradation.⁵

The New Conventional Wisdom

The attacks of September 11, 2001 reminded us that weak states can threaten our security as much as strong ones, by providing breeding grounds for extremism and havens for criminals, drug traffickers and terrorists. Such lawlessness abroad can bring devastation here at home.

-- Richard Haass, State Department Director of Policy Planning
(January 14, 2003)

When development and governance fail in a country, the consequences engulf entire regions and leap across the world. Terrorism, political violence, civil wars, organized crime, drug trafficking, infectious diseases, environmental crises, refugee flows and mass migration cascade across the borders of weak states more destructively than ever before.

--USAID, Foreign Aid in the National Interest: Promoting
Freedom, Security and Opportunity (2003)

Failed and failing states and those emerging from conflict pose one of today’s greatest security challenges. They are breeding grounds for terrorism, crime, trafficking, and humanitarian catastrophes, and can destabilize an entire region. Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, U.S. Department of State (2005) The idea that weak states can compromise security--most obviously by providing havens for terrorists but also by incubating organized crime, spurring waves of migrants, and undermining global efforts to control environmental threats and disease--is no longer much contested. Washington Post, June 9. 2004 Successful international actions to battle poverty, fight infectious disease, stop transnational crime, rebuild after civil war, reduce terrorism and halt the spread of dangerous materials all require capable, responsible States as partners. Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, Our Secure World (2004)

If states are fragile, the peoples of the world will not enjoy the security, development, and justice that are their right. Therefore, one of the great challenges of the new millennium is to ensure that all states are strong enough to meet the many challenges that they face. Kofi Annan, In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All (2005). Failed or failing states are among the great challenges of our age…They spread chaos to their neighbors and beyond. They are unquestionable and authentic sources of terrorism, organized crime, drugs, disease, and refugees…Something needs to be done. Yet nobody quite knows what. Mark Turner and Martin Wolf, “The Dilemma of Fragile States,” Financial Times, February 18, 2005

This new strategic orientation has already begun to have policy and institutional consequences. At home, it has informed recent U.S. defence, intelligence, diplomatic, development and even trade initiatives. The latest National Defense Strategy departs from a traditional focus on interstate war by calling on the U.S. military to strengthen the sovereign capacities of weak states to control their territories and combat the internal threats of terrorism, insurgency and organized crime.⁶ Beyond expanded training of foreign security forces, the Pentagon is seeking interagency buy-in for a comprehensive U.S. strategy to address the world’s “ungoverned areas.”⁷

The Central Intelligence Agency which has identified 50 such zones globally, is devoting new collection assets to long-neglected parts of the world.⁸ The National Intelligence Council is helping the State Department’s new Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization identify states at risk of collapse, so that the office can launch conflict prevention and mitigation efforts.⁹ Not to be outdone, the US Agency for International Development has formulated its own “Fragile States Strategy” to bolster countries that may otherwise breed terror, crime, instability and disease.¹⁰

The Bush administration has even justified trade liberalization initiatives like the Central American Free Trade Area as a means to prevent state failure and its associated transnational threats.¹¹ This new preoccupation with weak states is not limited to the United States. In Great Britain, the Prime Minister’s strategy unit has advocated a government-wide approach to stabilizing fragile countries that might otherwise generate global ills ranging from uncontrolled migration to organized crime.¹² Governments in Canada and Australia are following suit. The United Nations has been likewise engaged. The unifying theme of the past year’s UN reform proposals was the need for effective sovereign states to deal with today’s global security agenda.¹³ “Whether the threat is terror or AIDS, a threat to one is a threat to all,” Kofi Annan has stressed. “Our defenses are only as strong as their weakest link.”¹⁴ Sharing this concern, UN member states in September 2005 endorsed the creation of a new Peace-building Commission to help war-torn states recover.¹⁵ The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD has been similarly seized, launching a “Fragile States” initiative in cooperation with the Low-income Countries under Stress (LICUS) program at the World Bank.¹⁶

The underlying message of all these efforts, as former Congressman Lee Hamilton notes, is that “our collective security depends on the security of the world’s most vulnerable places.”¹⁷ What is striking is how little empirical evidence underpins these assertions and policy developments. Analysts and policymakers alike have simply presumed the existence of a blanket connection between state weakness and threats to the national security of developed countries and have begun to recommend and implement policy responses.

They have rarely stopped to distinguish among categories of weak and failing states or to ask whether particular types of developing countries are linked to distinct threats. Nor have scholars or policymakers seriously considered or measured reverse causality: the prospect that transnational forces may weaken governance capacities in the developing world -- a subject that merits extensive study in its own right.¹⁸ Answering these questions will be essential for donors seeking to design effective policy interventions aimed at building state capacity and advancing global collective security. Too often, it appears that the entire range of Western policies toward poorly governed states is being animated by anecdotal evidence and isolated examples, like al Qaeda’s operations in Afghanistan or cocaine trafficking in Colombia, rather than by a deeper understanding of global patterns and of causal connections across a range of case studies.

The risk in this approach is that scarce energy and resources may be squandered in a diffuse and unfocused effort to attack state weakness wherever it arises, without appropriate attention to setting priorities and individualizing responses to state failure and its attendant specific spillovers. Before embracing a new strategic vision and investing in new initiatives, the United States and other donors should submit such sweeping claims of conventional wisdom to sober, detailed analysis. The ultimate goal of this fine-grained approach should be to determine which states are associated with which dangers. Such a line of inquiry would also help to integrate two separate streams of policy-relevant research: on state-building and on “new” security threats.

In recent years scholars have explored the causes and consequences of state weakness and failure,¹⁹ emphasizing the importance of building capable states and legitimate structures of governance to prevent the collapse into conflict and facilitate sustainable recovery from violence.²⁰ At the same time, few experts have explored the relationship between state weakness and cross-border spillovers. Moreover, most state-building research focuses on supporting generic state structures, rather than on building capacities most relevant to stemming and transforming those transnational threats.²¹ Similarly, analysts and policymakers have become preoccupied by the rise of non-traditional security threats, from terrorism to organized crime, global pandemics, energy insecurity, and even threats to “human security,” and by the practical challenges of managing such problems at the global level^.22. They have also sought to identify long-term drivers of global instability like demographic pressures, economic dislocation and inequality, health crises, environmental degradation, and to better understand how these might undermine development, breed conflict, and threaten U.S. and global security.²³ Yet few scholars have analyzed how these emerging threats relate to poor state performance.²⁴

Clarifying the connection between these two sets of phenomena is critical not only to advancing collective security but also to promoting global development. It is the inhabitants of the developing world, above all, that bear the main brunt of state weakness and its attendant spillovers. Many low-income countries simply do not possess the institutional capacity and/or will to deliver the basic political goods required to achieve sustainable development. Lacking even minimal levels of resilience, they are more vulnerable than rich nations to illicit networks of terrorists or criminals, cross-border conflict, and devastating pandemics. For the inhabitants of these countries, the route out of poverty must include the creation of states capable of performing basic functions, including arresting or transforming transnational forces. This working paper seeks to initiate such a conversation. It concludes that weak states do often incubate and generate global threats, but that this correlation is far from universal. Crafting a more effective U.S. and international strategy towards state weakness in the developing world and the cross-border spillovers it sometimes generates will depend on a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms linking these two sets of phenomena.

Defining Weak and Failing States

The initial task is to identify the population of weak and failing states. State strength is a relative concept. It can be measured by the state’s ability and willingness to provide fundamental political goods associated with statehood, notably: physical security, legitimate political institutions, economic management, and social welfare. Around the world many states have critical capacity gaps in one or more of these four areas of governance, broadly conceived. In effect, they possess legal but not empirical sovereignty.²⁵ In the security realm; they struggle to maintain a monopoly on the use of force, provide security from external and internal threats, control borders and territory, ensure public order and provide safety from crime. In the political realm, they lack legitimate governing institutions that provide checks on political power, protect basic rights and freedoms, hold leaders accountable, deliver impartial justice and efficient administration, and permit broad citizen participation. In the economic realm, they strain to carry out basic macroeconomic and fiscal policies and lack a legal and regulatory climate conducive to entrepreneurship, private enterprise, open trade, natural resource management, foreign investment and economic growth.

Finally, they are unable or unwilling to meet the basic needs of their populations by making even minimal investments in health, education and other social services.²⁶ But not all weak states look alike far from it. They range along a spectrum from collapsed states, such as Somalia, which have gaps in all four capacities, to fragile “good performers,” like Senegal. In between we find a number of states that are struggling on many fronts or muddling through. Not by coincidence...