Sanctuary or Ungoverned Spaces:identification, symptoms and responses

[Bob's World]

For an interesting discussion of "failed states" go to Foreign Policy magazine's website. They just published this year's report.

Exactly my point. We even track and publish list of these states in major policy journals, yet is what we are focusing on really important for the reasons we focus on it?

I believe it is one more distraction from what we really need to be focusing on; or perhaps rather that we should simply take this as an indicator of change rather than an indicator of "failure."

For example, the states that currently exist across the trans-sahel are occupied by populaces that were "globalized" long before any westerner coined the phrase, or before any westerner even stepped foot in the region for that matter. Tribal systems controlled the flow of commerce through the region; and the overlay of borders by outsiders was irrelevant to that age-old process. A very similar situation exists in SEA where commerce moves as it always has between Malaysia, Indonesian and the Philippines. While it may upset our sense of western propriety and concepts of sovereignty that this happens without the control of some central government, it does not make these states "failed" or even "weak," they simply have different paradigms and standards.

We go in and demand that they do something that is not important to them in order to control the transit of things that are of concern to us. We develop elaborate schemes to "build capacity" to execute these functions, with little regard to how unimportant it is to the target audiance, and in fact, how counter-productive and disruptive it is to the local populace in general. Any measure that hinders the movement of "bad" things, hinders far more the movement of "good" things; thereby further alienating the very populace who's support you are trying to secure.

These same populaces may with equal credibility look to the west and point out that it is perhaps we that are the failing states, given the current series of crises that we are weathering. After all, their system is operating exactly as designed, while ours is floundering under mismangagement and abuse.

I believe we lack a certain empathy on this issue, and confuse "not like us" for "not right."