Failing Fixing States: The New Security
Agenda
by Pauline H. Baker
W
eak and failing states rank among the worlds greatest threats to international
peace and security today. While major threats to world peace used to come mainly
from ideological, military, or economic competition among competing states, in
modern times lethal threats are growing within states from communal tensions
among rival factions, extremists groups with radical political agendas, and faltering
regimes clinging to power and asserting militaristic ambitions. These are the driving
forces of a growing world disorder.1
Recent events highlight this paradigm shift in the strategic environment. North
Korea is a failing state with an inward-looking regime and a negative view of the
world. Its own insecurities, including its fear of a US invasion, are motivating it to
pursue nuclear capabilities that have increased its isolation further and exacerbated
tensions.2 Lebanon is a weak state that successfully cast off fifteen years of Syrian
military occupation, but was unable to assert its sovereignty and fill the vacuum left
behind. Hezbollah used that opportunity to assert itself as a state within a state,
with dual power bases in the government and in the south, where its autonomous
security forces launched a devastating war with Israel in July 2006. Then there is
Sudan, a country with the highest risk of internal violence that has stonewalled
effective international action to stop the continuing humanitarian crisis in Darfur,
described by the US State Department as genocide.3 Internal weaknesses within
these states have increased the threat of nuclear proliferation, precipitated an
interstate war, and worsened an ongoing humanitarian crisis, respectively.
Though the origins of state weakness go back decades, the curtain was raised on
the era of failing statesif one can call it thatby the tragedy of September 11,
2001. One year after the biggest terrorist attack on the US in history, the 2002 US
National Security Strategy stated that America is threatened more by failing states
than it is by conquering states, overturning decades of US national security thinking.
Overnight, we went from looking at security through a big power lens to seeing it
from a small power lens. Much of the rest of the world has come to see security
challenges from that perspective as well.
Dr. Pauline H. Baker is president of The Fund for Peace, an independent educational and
research organization based in Washington DC. She is also a professorial lecturer at The Johns
Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
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Terrorism brought the message home. However, other threats, such as
secession, religious extremism, organized crime, money laundering, drug trafficking,
and pandemics, also are linked to failing states. While negative forces can emerge in
strong states as well as in weak ones, the frequency of the occurrences, the
environment that facilitates their growth and the inability of many governments to
respond make such threats more difficult to contain in weak states than in strong
ones. The persistent violence in Iraq and in Afghanistan after the Baathist and
Taliban regimes were militarily overthrown by US-led coalition forces are also a
function of state weakness. Deadly terrorist attacks have taken place in many
countries worldwide: Kenya, Tanzania, Indonesia, Egypt, England, Spain, India,
Philippines, Lebanon, Israel, Algeria, and others. Restive minorities are pressing for
autonomy and resources in protracted armed conflicts, such as Nigerias Niger Delta.
Elections in transition states have resulted in militant movements, such as Hamas
and Hezbollah, coming to power, or hard line leaders being installed. This includes
Venezuelas President Hugo Chavez, who accused US President George Bush of
being a devil from a UN podium, and Irans President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who
denies the Holocaust took place and calls for the destruction of Israel. Animosity
from these two states is significant. They both have large oil reserves and promote
revolutionary change. Iran is emerging as the strongest power in the Persian Gulf,
expanding its influence in the region, and developing a nuclear program in defiance
of the UN.
Though the origins of state weakness go back decades,
the curtain was raised on the era of failing statesif one
can call it thatby the tragedy of September 11, 2001.
Not all weak and failing states are linked to security threats. Some analysts have
warned against over-generalizing, calling for further research identifying which states
are linked to specific threats.4 Clearly, tracing the lineage of such threats to their
source would be useful, but as a group, fragile states remain vulnerable to
exploitation by a wide range of outside groups, predatory elites, and internal
warlords, all of which may descend on ungoverned spaces for a variety of purposes
and at various times.
To understand the full dimension and scope of the problem, the Fund for Peace
and Foreign Policy magazine collaborated to create the first annual Failed States
Index.5 The Index revealed that roughly two billion people live in misgoverned or
insecure states. Approximately two thirds of the states in the world have a critical
(high), in danger (likely) or borderline (moderate) risk of violence. The great majority
of them are not currently failed states, but they exhibit serious attributes of risk
along a continuum. Even strong and stable states can contain pockets of failure.
Dysfunctionalities were exposed, for example, in the US by its failure to respond
adequately to citizens affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, an institutional
breakdown that stunned the world. France was rocked by violent riots in isolated and
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alienated communities that were cut off from the mainstream of society, exposing a
fault line in the polity that had been ignored for years.
Conflict risk is a function of the pressures on a state combined with the
institutional preparedness of that state to respond to such challenges. Some states
are able to contain and repair internal crises quickly; others are chronically unable to
cope with such pressures. Consider the ways countries have addressed election crises,
for example. Cote dIvoire, once considered among the most prosperous and stable
countries in Africa, descended into civil conflict following a rigged election and a
coup detat in 2000. It remains a divided land, cut in half by an unresolved civil war.
In contrast, the 2006 Mexican presidential election prompted street protests and
possible violence, but parliament and the courts kept the country from crossing that
threshold. Indias 2004 parliamentary election resulted in a victory by the National
Congress Party of Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of assassinated Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Popular protests against her taking power prompted her to
step aside for Manmohan Singh, a respected economist, to prevent the unrest that
her tenure was likely to spark. The 2000 US presidential election, though highly
controversial, never threatened violence and was settled in the courts. The variety of
responses to the same kind of high-stakes crises shows the variation in strong versus
weak states, with the latter coming much closer to open violence.
PERCEPTIONS OF THE PROBLEM
What are the root causes of weak and failing states? They are, in large part, a
legacy of unresolved historical inequities, including colonial rule, corrupt elites, and
the role of the superpowers, which propped up unpopular leaders during the Cold
War in quest of alliances and influence. Containment may have been successful in its
goal of keeping communism in check until it collapsed, but it had a negative impact
on large swaths of the world population whose needs were neglected throughout the
half-century of Cold War competition. Deep-seated grievances based on poverty and
neglect accumulated, leading to a profound sense of humiliation, xenophobia, and
opposition to Western foreign policy, which frequently reinforced, or was seen to
reinforce, local inequities.
Without meaningful change, it is not surprising that alienated populations are
embracing leaders who advocate violence, revenge, and moral absolutism to achieve
a new political order based on communal pride or religious fundamentalism. With
the end of the Cold War, the information revolution and globalization facilitated the
movement of extremists, who filled the political void in weak states. In this sense,
the struggle to fix failing states will be a long war not in the military sense of
the term, but rather in the sense that it will need to address basic societal issues. If
we are to resolve the root causes of terrorism, we must also address the historical
conditions that gave rise to extremism. This means reviving decaying institutions,
meeting basic human needs, understanding the long-standing grievances that give
rise to humiliation and anger, and addressing local inequities and social injustice.
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Some observers have argued that the problem of weak and failing states is not
all that serious. Not long ago, efforts to quell such conflicts, once termed teacup
wars, were derisively dismissed as social work that diverted troops and national
resources away from emerging peer competitors and rogue states.6 The military also
initially shunned such missions, calling them military operations other than war.7
One school of thought, paradoxically endorsed by figures from both the far Left and
the far Right, argues that small wars are not the central issue and that the real threat
to peace comes from the imperial ambitions of both the US and China, each fighting
for supremacy. At bottom, this is a simplistic interpretation that trivializes reality.
Even if hegemony was the central foreign policy goal of these two nations, they are
both constrained by threats from weaker states. The US is bogged down in two wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the deployment of hundreds of thousands of
troops and the investment of over $400 billion for stabilization and reconstruction.
It is leading a Global War on Terrorism and an international effort to contain the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Washington is also facing mounting
international opposition to its foreign policy goals, particularly since the US-led
invasion of Iraq in 2003.
China has mounting vulnerabilities as well, as it pursues economic
modernization at a break-neck speed and confronts growing dangers of nuclear
proliferation in its own neighborhood. It lives in a volatile region that contains
several weak and failing states, including North Korea, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh
and Burma. North Korea, one of the most closed and controlled societies in the
world, and Pakistan, which lacks effective control over roughly half its territory, are
particularly dangerous and insecure states that have nuclear capabilities and unstable
and/or unpredictable leadership.
Not all weak and failing states are linked to security
threats. Some analysts have warned against overgeneralizing, calling for further research identifying which
states are linked to specific threats.
China also exhibits internal weaknesses. It is one of the most unequal countries
in the world, with an average annual growth of 10 percent and 150 million people
living on one dollar a day. This contributes to widespread corruption and eroding
state legitimacy, especially in the countryside. In 2005, China experienced 87,000
protests from more than 4 million people complaining about arbitrary fees, taxes,
land grabs by local officials and deteriorating social services. Some Chinese scholars
have pointed out the short time that China has had to build a modern state, dating
from the market-oriented reforms announced by Deng Xiaoping in 1992; one
scholar described the country as a teenager or adolescent in this regard.8 China
is also becoming highly dependent on oil supplies from countries with high political
risk, exposing Beijings potential vulnerability to supply interruptions should civil
unrest break out. China tends to disregard human rights and internal conflict
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conditions in the states it depends upon for oil. Beijing offers large loans and grants
to corrupt and unstable governments, a policy that could deepen the host countrys
political risk by undermining reforms. Eventually, disregarding local concerns may
trigger a backlash from Africans, despite the benefits they are currently receiving.
Europe is also struggling with the problem of weak states, especially in
Southeast Europe. The Balkans erupted into civil conflict a decade ago and
continues to seethe with ethnic hostilities. In 1995, NATO conducted its first out
of area military mission in Bosnia, noting at the time that this was not a precedent
for such missions in the future. Yet, in 2006, NATO took full responsibility for
stabilizing the entire country of Afghanistan to contain the reemergence of the
Taliban. Other regional and sub-regional organizations are likewise taking a larger
role, though they differ widely on the desirability and legitimacy of humanitarian
intervention.9
With the end of the Cold War, the information revolution
and globalization facilitated the movement of extremists,
who filled the political void in weak states.
Significantly, the African Union (AU), whose members have traditionally been
staunchly opposed to outside interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states,
has moved in a new direction. In its charter, the AU authorized humanitarian
intervention under certain conditions and it deployed a military mission of 7,000
troops in Darfur, Sudan, the first large-scale mission of this type.10 The African
Union force has not succeeded in stopping the violence due to its limited mandate,
poor funding, and insufficient equipment, but its presence is deemed preferable to
having no international presence at all and efforts have been made to convert it into
a UN force.11 At the time of this writing, the African Union is trying to mobilize
another peacekeeping force to deploy in Somalia under a UN mandate to replace
departing Ethiopian troops, who invaded the country to overthrow the Islamic
Courts.
While not as effective as hoped, the deployment of AU forces is a sign of the
growing acceptance of the principle of a responsibility to protect, which was
adopted by the United Nations in 2006.12 Security Council Resolution 1674 states
that the international community has a responsibility to protect civilians in armed
conflict if their government cannot, or does not, do so itself. In addition to the
adoption of this principle, the UN is once again fielding a record number of
peacekeepers, from Lebanon to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In
August 2006, the Security Council adopted resolutions that are likely to increase UN
peacekeeping levels by approximately 50 percent and could increase the overall cost
of such operations from the projected 20062007 $4.7 billion level to $8 billion.13
Not every humanitarian emergency or failing state needs an international
military response. Precipitous military responses without prior peaceful efforts at
conflict resolution could make matters much worse. Diplomacy, economic tools, and
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cultural exchanges play equally important roles in preventing and mitigating conflict.
Policymakers have been understandably cautious about peace enforcement missions
and armed humanitarian interventions, in which good intensions can turn bad, as
happened in Somalia in 1993. Yet overly cautious responses can be equally
devastating, as was illustrated when the international community failed to intervene
in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It went on for four months, killing 800,000 people.
Once again, massacres are occurring in Darfur, with timid responses from the
international community.
History, thus, has made a U-turn. In the 20th century, the dominant threat to
world peace came from powerful states; today they come from weak states.
Aggressors of the 20th century conquered territories; todays aggressors are mostly
interested in shaping international attitudes toward their political causes.14 Clashes in
the past occurred between large state armies, using conventional military equipment,
backed up with the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Most wars today are
fought within states, with non-state militias playing a primary role. Their weapons of
choice are improvised explosive devices, small arms, suicide bombings, and other
attacks on civilians using unconventional means, such as converting commercial
aircraft into missiles. Groups committed to catastrophic violence have already
threatened the nightmare scenario: the use of nuclear, chemical, and biological
weapons of mass destruction. As the New York Times opined, we live in an age in
which fighting on the ground to rescue failed states and isolate terrorists has become
the Pentagons most urgent and vital military mission.15 Increasingly, it is becoming
the primary mission of other agencies of government, and a major concern of
international organizations and alliances as well.
WHAT ARE WEAK AND FAILING STATES AND HOW DO WE RECOGNIZE
THEM?
While there is no universal definition of a weak and failing state, most scholars
agree that they have common attributes. These include loss of physical control over
territory, lack of a monopoly on the use of force, declining legitimacy to make
authoritative decisions for the majority of the community, an inability to provide
security or social services to its people, and, frequently, a lack of capacity to act as a
full member of the international community. The terms failed, failing, or
collapsed states are controversial, but they have become the most commonly used
terms. Some agencies and think tanks use other terms, such as fragile states or
low income countries under stress. However, these terms might suggest that state
weakness is confined to poor countries (it is not) and that all low-income countries
are weak, fragile or failing (they are not).
How can the seriousness of those vulnerabilities be determined? The Fund for
Peace has developed an approach, called the Conflict Assessment System Tool
(CAST) to accomplish this. It conducts a careful assessment of twelve conflict
indicators or drivers (pressures on the states) coupled with an evaluation of five key
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state institutions necessary to manage those pressures (police, military, civil service,
system of justice, and executive/legislative leadership).16 In this way, level the of
sustainable securitydefined as the ability of a state to resolve its internal
problems peacefully without an external military or sustainable presence is
determined. In the Failed States Index, which is based on CAST, all the pressures on
states are assessed by the same indicators and institutional criteria to ensure that risk
levels, wherever they may appear, are not biased in favor of one class of states over
others.
Since 2001, the FFP has been refining a computerized version of CAST that
processes over 12,000 international, regional and national media sources in print,
electronic and broadcast form. This includes news outlets, government reports, think
tank studies, commercial information, statistical sources, polling results and any
other relevant public source information. Using Boolean phrases for content
analysis, CAST scores the indicators based on data that are scanned, sorted, and
indexed according to the indicators and their measures. The final scores are internally
checked and reviewed by experts.
This method exposes a popular misperception about weak and failing states. It
is often thought that strong states are those with large populations, considerable
military assets, and an advanced economy, the traditional indices for gauging relative
power internationally. However, these factors do not always reveal how strong a state
is internally. Observers often confuse strong states with strongman states.
Stability in strongman states rests on one person or group of leaders, such as Kim
Jong Il in North Korea or Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In reality, while they can be
dangerous, such states are only as stable as their leadership. In 2003, Iraq was said to
have the fourth largest army in the world and weapons of mass destruction; in reality,
it was already a failing state due to a decade of sanctions, mismanagement, and
oppression. The army did not put up a stiff resistance to the 2003 US-led invasion,
and other Iraqi institutions also imploded immediately after Saddam was
overthrown.17
In contrast, strong states have governing institutions that are legitimate,
representative, and competent. They enable these states to weather internal political,
economic, and social crises without resorting to violence or needing a foreign
military or administrative presence.
FINDINGS FROM THE FAILED STATES INDEX (FSI)
What did we find from our recent research on the Failed States Index and other
investigations?
The problem of weak and failing states is far more extensive than previously
thought. Roughly two billion people live in insecure states, which have a
borderline to moderate or critical risk of civil violence.18
Most organizations and scholars estimate twenty-five to fifty states have
moderate to high risk of political violence. The Index identified at least sixty
that raise significant concern.
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Africa has the largest number of weak and failing states.
Other states with borderline to high risk are located in Asia, Eastern Europe,
Latin America, and the Middle East. The territorial expanse stretches from
Moscow to Mexico City and is not limited to the Muslim world.19
Large states (with populations of fifty million or more) are increasingly
vulnerable, from Indonesia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(DRC). This raises the possibility of significant spillover effects from
refugees, economic linkages, ethnic affinity, and resource exploitation. In
some areas, such as the Horn of Africa, there are clusters of failed states
that are spiraling into failed regions.
Large defense budgets do not correlate with the risk of failure. Comparing the
Index rankings to state spending on the military, weak states have various
magnitudes of defense spending. Nor is the opposite true: military
expenditures do not necessarily correlate with stability. Five of the worlds
top military spenders (as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product) are
conflict vulnerable states: Eritrea, Angola, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and
Bahrain.
The risk of failure does not necessarily match comparable media coverage.
Events in the most at-risk states, such as Cote dIvoire, Somalia, and DRC
were barely noted in the international press.
Countries with the greatest risk of failure do not necessarily receive the largest
amount of aid. Foreign aid per capita compared to the FSI revealed that
high-risk countries get minimum aid, except for those in which there has
been military intervention. Among those, Bosnia got the most while Cote
dIvoire got the least.
The top drivers of violence included demographic pressures (especially a youth
bulge and natural disasters), economic inequality (not merely poverty),
criminalization and de-legitimization of the state (most often based on
corruption, coups, and rigged elections), and a legacy of vengeance-seeking
group grievance (from religious and ethnic divisions).
Corruption correlates highly with instability. Eight of the ten most stable
countries also appeared among the ten least corrupt countries in
Transparency Internationals perception of corruption scores.20 Chile, one
of the most stable countries in Latin America, is recognized as among the
least corrupt in the region.
As many as fifty million people in at-risk states voted in elections in 2005, but
that did not translate automatically into stability. Results were mixed. The
2004 elections in Indonesia improved that nations indicators in 2005, and
Liberia reached a milestone with the 2005 election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf,
following years of brutal war. In both countries, elections strengthened
legitimization of the state. However, a number of states also misused
elections to exacerbate ethnic conflict and reinforce authoritarian rule,
including Ethiopia, Iran, Tajikistan, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe,
the latter exhibiting a sharp and constant downward spiral.
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FIXING FAILING STATES
How can failing states be fixed? This is a central question of our time. Until
recently, most solutions were based on stopgap measures and short-term
responses revolving around inappropriate notions of creating societies that were
reflections of those in the West. The problem with this approach is that sustainable
security cannot be transplanted easily nor be accomplished as a cookie cutter
approach, with uniform activities in all states. It must come from within the society.
Unless and until state-building takes root in the indigenous society and with
committed local leadership, no amount of external training, reconstruction,
constitution-making, or elections will make it stick.
Fixing failing states basically requires a two-track policy: building core state
institutions while, at the same time, reducing the conflict drivers. It is a long, costly,
and difficult process that requires ample resources, leadership, commitment,
patience, and multilateral cooperation. Some states, such as East Timor and Haiti,
were once considered successes, only to descend into violence or coups a short time
after the premature withdrawal of peacekeeping forces. Backsliding is a constant risk
of bad timing, poor funding, and quick exits.
There have been examples of failing states that have successfully pulled
themselves back from the brink. The two most notable examples that made the
transition to stability are South Africa and India, both taking decades to do it. Most
significantly, their transitions were accomplished without external military
intervention. Their processes were driven by local forces, not imported from the
outside. In the 1970s, India was widely deemed to be heading for a Malthusian
catastrophe, with famine, overpopulation, poverty, the caste system, and religious
conflict undermining efforts to develop and progress as a unified state. Today, while
it contains many unresolved issues, India is thriving. Its problems are real, but they
are much less serious than the apocalyptic forecast made years ago. India is the
worlds largest multiparty democracy with one of the fastest growing economies in
the world.
Similarly, in the 1980s, apartheid South Africa had widespread inequality and
spreading violence that was driving the country toward a race war. Yet, while it also
retains problems, South Africa accomplished a remarkable transition from white
domination to black majority rule, with a philosophy of racial reconciliation
promoted by Nelson Mandela, the countrys first president under a universal
franchise. Though burdened with a difficult legacy of inequality, it boasts sound
economic policies, a respect for constitutional rule, a free press, and a strong civil
society. Neither India nor South Africa is in the stable or most stable categories
in the FSI; however, they dodged the bullet of state failure that could have torn their
countries apart.
Many western governments are taking steps to devise new policies, bureaucratic
structures, and interagency systems to prevent conflict and to stabilize countries
emerging from conflict. The US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, the Netherlands,
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and Scandinavian countries, as well as multilateral organizations, have issued new
directives and set up new agencies to develop better early warning, preventive
actions, and interagency management systems for stability and reconstruction
activities. The US military is experimenting with new metrics for measuring progress,
or lack thereof, in such operations. Scholars, think tanks, and aid agencies are doing
the same.
The UN established a Peace Building Commission to coordinate the efforts of
donor countries, international financial institutions, and troop contributing countries.
Governments and military organizations are investing in better predictive
frameworks and systems of post-conflict reconstruction. The US military has made
stability and reconstruction operations (SRO) a core mission and the White House
issued National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD)-44 to mandate the US State
Department as the lead agency in coordinating, planning, and implementing SRO
assistance in states in transition from conflict or civil strife. The directive states that
the US should work with other countries and organizations to anticipate state
failure, avoid it whenever possible, and respond quickly and effectively when
necessary and appropriate....21
A Rand Corporation study by James Dobbins offered a rough hierarchy of
nation-building functions that provides an overall guide to peacemakers.22 This
hierarchy does not need to be sequential and, when resources permit, may be
pursued simultaneously. However, higher-priority needs, Dobbins notes, should be
adequately funded before lower-priority ones, in recognition of the fact that if first
order objectives are not met, money spent on second order objectives will be
wasted.23 His hierarchy of six functions is:
Security: peacekeeping, law enforcement, rule of law, and security-sector
reform
Humanitarian and relief efforts: refugee return, containment of potential
communicable diseases, and large-scale famine, other acute health concerns
Governance: resuming public services and restoring public administration
Economic stabilization: stable currency, legal and regulatory framework for
resumption of local and international commerce
Democratization: building political parties, free press, civil society, and a legal
and constitutional framework for elections
Development and infrastructure: fostering economic growth, poverty
reduction, and infrastructure improvements
These fundamentals are important. In Iraq, the US pursued this sequence in
reverse, starting with infrastructure and democratization. While the sequence does
not have to be rigid, the higher order priorities should come firstsecurity and the
rule of law, humanitarian needs, governance, and economic stabilization. Nearly
every state-building experience has confirmed the wisdom of that hierarchy, and
where it has been ignored, the mission has usually failed.
Even under the best of circumstances, and the fullness of resources, statebuilding is a long, costly, and risky process with no guarantees of success. However
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difficult and complex it might be, we have no choice but to meet the challenge.
Building secure and competent states is vital to the US national interest. The US and
its allies face the possibility of failing states reemerging in Afghanistan and Iraq, with
the return of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The possibility of failing states endangering
national and global security exists from North Korea to Lebanon.
And the danger does not reside within weak states alone. An additional concern
is threat convergence the linkage between weapons of mass destruction,
terrorism, and weak and failing states which could open up new pathways to
proliferation. North Korea, for example, presents a dual threat as a country with its
own nuclear development that could endanger the US and its allies, and as a potential
seller of nuclear technology to a non-state terrorist group committed to catastrophic
violence. When one contemplates the number of countries with potential rogue
scientists, residual arsenals that are not well secured, and multiple anti-western
groups operating in ungoverned or misgoverned territories, the full scope of the
danger becomes clear. As many as fifty states have enriched uranium or the capability
to make or acquire enriched uranium that could accelerate proliferation. Whether the
problem is approached from a humanitarian perspective or a strategic perspective,
fixing failing states will be the new national security agenda of the early 21st century.
Notes
1 Communal rivalries refer to conflicts based on competing ethnic, clan, racial, religious, linguistic,
geographical, or class differences that create a sense of collective belonging or group identity that defines the
social location of group members in competition with other competing communities.
2 North Korea ranked among the top 20 states at risk of violent internal conflict in the Failed States Index
of 2005 and 2006. See The Failed State Index, Foreign Policy, July/August 2005, 56-65 and The Failed State
Index, Foreign Policy, May/June 2006, 50-54.
3 Sudan refused to allow a UN peacekeeping mission to replace the ill-equipped and undermanned African
Union peacekeeping force that also lacks that mandate to stop the killing in Darfur. Khartoum stated that it
would consider any countrys pledge to participate in a UN force as a hostile act and a prelude to an
invasion. The Sudanese government threatened an al-Queda and Sudanese attack on non-African forces if
they land. As many as 450,000 people have died and 2 million displaced in what has been described as the
worst violence in Africa in more than a decade. See Sudan Escalates Stand Against UN Mission for Darfur,
Washington Post, October 6, 2006.
4 Stewart Patrick, Weak States and Global Threats: Fact or Fiction?, Washington Quarterly, Spring 2006.
5 The annual Failed States Index, which began in 2005. Available at: www.fundforpeace.org and
www.foreignpolicymagazine.com (Accessed Februay 1, 2007).
6 Michael Mandelbaum, A Perfect Failure: NATOs War Against Yugoslavia, Foreign Affairs,
September/October 1999. For a vigorous rejoinder, see James B. Steinberg, A Perfect Polemic; Blind to
Reality on Kosovo, Foreign Affairs, November/December 1999. Also, Justin Logan and Christopher Preble,
Failed States and Flawed Logic: The Case Against a Standing Nation-Building Office, Policy Analysis,
January 11, 2006, CATO Institute.
7 That term is no longer in vogue, but it shows how stability and reconstruction operations, as they are now
called, were viewed in the decade of the 1990s. They can be found at www.fundforpeace.org.
8 Comments made at a Beijing conference hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on trilateral
cooperation September 22-24, 2006.
9 See Jason Ladnier, Neighbors on Alert, Fund for Peace, 2003, and Patricia Taft with Jason Ladnier,
Realizing Never Again: Regional Capacities to Protect Civilians in Violent Conflicts, Fund for Peace, 2006.
Available at: http://www.fundforpeace.org/publications/reports (Accessed January 21, 2007).
10 The African Union previously deployed a smaller mission in Burundi to protect leaders in the transitional
government. This was not considered to be a traditional peacekeeping mission, however, as it was more a
bodyguard function for the political elites during the transition period.
11 Susan Rice, Anthony Lake and Congressman Donald Payne called for a more muscular military response
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in Darfur. See We Saved Europeans. Why Not Africans?, Washington Post, October 2, 2006.
12 For a dissenting view, see Erick Posner, The Humanitarian War Myth, New York Times, October 1, 2006.
13 Peter Gantz, US Budget Requirements for UN Peacekeeping 2006. Available at:
http://www.effectivepeacekeeping.org/docs/pep/bn-unpk-fundreq-dec06-combined.pdf (accessed February
14, 2006).
14 The notable exception is, of course, the Palestinian movement. Other conflicts also raise territorial
concerns, such as the Serbian quest for control of Kosovo or border disputes arising from colonial days. For
the most part, however, the conflicts circle around identity, resource, and religious issues.
15 Americas Army on Edge, The New York Times, October 1, 2006.
16 These concepts are taken from the FFP methodology known as CAST (the Conflict Assessment System
Tool) and the Failed States Index.
17 For more information see Fund for Peace reports on Iraq as a Failed State.Available at:
www.fundforpeace.org (Accessed February 1, 2007).
18 Save the Children calculated that, of the 115 million primary-aged children worldwide that are not in
school, at least 43 millionone in threelive in fragile states affected by armed conflict. Available at:
www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/KHII-6TL3RG? (Accessed February 1, 2007).
19 The FFP has scores for 148 states published on its interactive website. Available at:
http://fundforpeace.org/programs/fsi/fsindex2006.php?column=11& (Accessed on February 1, 2007).
20 Available at:
http://www.transparency.org/news_room/latest_news/press_releases/2006/en_2006_11_06_cpi_2006
(Accessed on February 1, 2007).
21 National Security Presidential Directive, NSPD-44.
22 For another framework, see Jock Covey, et al., Eds., The Quest for Viable Peace: International Intervention and
Strategies for Conflict Transformation, (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2005). In much of the
literature, the terms nation-building and state-building are used interchangeably.
23 James Dobbins, Preparing for Nation-Building, Survival, Autumn 2006.
The Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations