Sanctuary or Ungoverned Spaces:identification, symptoms and responses

[Jedburgh]

14 Feb 08 testimony by Angel Rabasa, one of the authors of the Rand pub linked above, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs:

Ungoverned Territories

....Building government capacity and expanding the central government’s writ into ungoverned territories is the work of generations. Many of these policies are difficult to implement. Nevertheless, if the United States works with its partners to implement them, then—despite individual failings and inefficiencies—the overall results would help to make ungoverned areas less hospitable to terrorists and much less conducive to their activities. Taken in tandem with policies to reduce the number and size of ungoverned territories, the results could mean enhanced constraints on terrorism, international organized crime, and other plagues that traditionally have been spawned and nurtured in ungoverned territories.

[Ski]

I gave a brief two summers ago to some interested military personnel (I have to be vague here) about this situation.

The brief was built around Foreign Affairs "Failed State Index" - available here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/c...?story_id=3865

I simply said - look at the nations on the list and then tell me how many countries the US has been involved in over the last decade, and how many are we in today. That trend is not going to disappear anytime soon. They understood where I was coming from.