For Whom Tolls That Bell?

Who owns failed States? Who answers the bell? 

Failed States: the alarm bells are ringing more often. I define a failed state (other folks have other definitions) as a government incapable of protecting its citizens from physical harm, incapable of delivering essential public services, unable to exert authority over its citizens and borders, powerless to stop increasing inequity. What causes them? What problems do they pose, and to whom? More important, what should be done about one, if anything, and by whom: leave it to them, their neighbors, those affected, those who contributed to their failure, or larger communities of NGOs, institutions as the UN, WTO, World Bank, the IMF, and/or coalitions of healthy states? Just as many cities are afflicted with homelessness, the world is becoming afflicted with the helpless and hapless trapped in failed states.

 I do not have answers. My purpose here is not to prescribe but to get you thinking about these questions because with the advance of sea levels, temperatures, storms and droughts; the increase in migration and ethnic confrontations; the breakdown of constraints against war, violence and insurrection; the proliferation of nuclear weapons; and growing inequality, failed states and what to do about them will become uppermost in the lives of your children and grandchildren.

Yemen: #1 on the Fragile States Index

Topmost on lists of failed states is Yemen, proxy for murderous competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Yemenis are abandoned victims of man-made disaster.

 The widely accepted measure of failure, The Fragile States Index, is compiled annually by The Fund for Peace, an international mediation and data-driven not-for-profit org based in Abuja and Washington, DC. It assesses 179 countries and tracks 12 categories of indicators of the risks and vulnerabilities faced by each. An index of 120 is total collapse; an index of over 100 indicates high likelihood of failure. This year, Yemen is at 111.7. Others over 100 in the latest index: Somalia, Syria, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Afghanistan, Chad, and Myanmar. Fast approaching the 100 club are Burkina Faso, Haiti, and Lebanon.

The ten least fragile, i.e., the most stable, are (as you might guess, the usual suspects) Finland @15.1, followed by Norway, Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Canada, Ireland, and Sweden. Others of our counterparts, as Germany, The UK, Japan, South Korea, France, Italy and Spain all score better, i.e., are less fragile, than the US @ 46.6.

My friend, David S, has a special interest in Nigeria. It ranks 16^th most fragile of the 179, @97.2, with “factionalized elites”, lack of “public services”, and “demographic pressures” its most glaring weak spots. And it’s worsening.

I watch Nicaragua with concern – I’ve been there –because of historic US antipathy and Daniel Ortega’s turn to unalloyed dictatorship. I am surprised it scores only 77.7; its main weak spot is, of course, what Fund for Peace calls “state legitimacy.”

I went to Nicaragua in 1988, at the height of the Contra War out of curiosity about who was telling the bigger lies, the Reaganites or Daniel’s Sandinistas. Recently, Ann and I digitized all our slides, including those 34-year-old slides of Nicaragua. Yesterday, I pulled out and read again my 92-page travel journal; it brought back anew the vivid moments of that heady trip. But I will write about Nicaragua then and now another time.

So, is Nicaragua on track to become a failed state? Apparently, not soon. Fragility is not a matter of political system but of delivering the goods. Life there is tolerable so long as you don’t care to have a voice, are content with censored news and state-managed propaganda, and willingly keep your head down. Like life for a Chinese or Hungarian or Russian.

It’s Not Whether But How. It’s Not Later But Now.

Whether or not Nicaragua or Nigeria become failed states, the larger questions loom: what should be our response to state failure? Who should do what? Who takes responsibility? How will we decide? Will the world just react crisis by crisis or will we develop strategies to foresee, forestall, and mitigate damage? Will each country react alone, universal NIMBY-like, or will we apply our strengths in concert?

Who’s next? Lebanon? Venezuela? Nuclear-armed Pakistan? Iraq? (“if you break it you own it.”) The sea is rising, droughts drier, fires hotter, floods deeper, tornados stronger. Migrants are on the move. Ethnic conflicts are flaring up. Anxiety, suspicion of the “other”, threat of loss eat away at the foundations of community.  

I don’t have answers, for there will be multiple answers for different situations. But we must develop a consensus on communal strategies and mechanisms for caring for citizens victimized in and by a failed state. The time for debate is now.