Weak and Failed States: What They Are, Why They Matter and What To Do About Them

Transcript

CARLOS PASCUAL:  The perception of weak and failed states perhaps changed most dramatically in the international image after September 11, 2001, when the second-poorest country in the world became the foundation for the most significant strike that we have ever had on U.S. territory. After that there was an emergence not only of a reassessment of U.S. national security strategy, but global strategies. In the U.S., our national security strategy of 2002 said that America is threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones. In 2004 the U.S. government decided to set up an office that was dealing directly with this issue of weak states and conflict and what to do in stabilization and reconstruction issues. This was not just a U.S. issue. We saw similar trends emerging in the U.K., Canada, France, and Germany. At the U.N. there was the creation of a peace building commission because of the sense that these weak and failing states actually presented a significant threat to the international community.

Yet despite that attention, we still have not developed a very clear understanding of what these states are, how we prepare to deal with them, or how we deal with responses to failure in some of these states. You would think that in fact if we say in our national security strategy that perhaps we are threatened more by failed states than conquering ones we would understand what are those principal weak and failed states and have strategies to address them. Yet at the same time if one were to ask the United States government "do we have an official position of what the principal failed and weak states would be" the answer would be "no." And of course, the next question would be what is the strategy then to deal with this greatest threat which we have just put on the national security agenda, and the answer of course would be that we do not have one because we have not clearly identified what those states are. The reason I think it is important to underscore those context is that it reinforces why it is so important to undertake this exercise that our colleagues Susan Rice and Stewart Patrick have undertaken today.

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