Prevention of State Failure

We only hear about the disasters and the failures. We hear about Rwanda, we hear about Somalia, we hear about the Congo, we hear about West Africa and all those bad cases where warnings were given and nothing sufficient was done, or was done too late. As a consequence, there was immense killing and violence and collapse. What we don’t hear about are the success stories that don't make the news. There are cases where preventive action was taken. Burundi is an example, in the aftermath of the collapse of Rwanda; Macedonia is another example.

One could argue that integrating states into global, regional or local institutional frameworks is in itself a preventive measure. With that in mind, it may be premature to draw a conclusion as to whether prevention works or not. These are long-term efforts, and it is sometimes in the range of 15-20 years before we can be absolutely certain or have any degree of certainty about whether they have been successful or not.

If the Canadian government is sincere about pursuing rule of law, protection of human rights, protection of ordinary citizens, human security -- and I believe that it’s a clear reflection of Canadian values -- then the pursuit of those objectives, whether they have a preventive consequence or not, may in itself be sufficient for doing preventive action. In other words, we do these things because they are the right thing to do. Whether or not they are actually likely to result in stronger state structures... we don’t have a precise methodology yet that would allow us to firmly conclude that shoring up human security in weak states is actually going to lead to long-term prevention. We would like to think it does, and we need to develop tools to allow us to evaluate that impact.

It is much easier to focus on a humanitarian disaster, where the effects are fairly obvious and measurable, or even in a peacebuilding approach where you are going in afterwards and shoring up a country’s very basic problems related to infrastructure. What is much more difficult is to convey the long-term consequences and risks associated with failing to do something at the earliest stages. Part of that is because it lacks a degree of precision. You can never be absolutely certain that your actions are going to have the effect that you claim they do. But if we are going to talk about state failure in the context of prevention, then we do need to think strategically and we do need to identify both the risks and the rewards of acting in a preventive way. Canadians need to understand that it is in their interest to do so.


Significance of State Failure

In the context of Canadian policy, if I could give you two options: the collapse of a fairly sizable country where the consequences would be significant—let’s say Nigeria (and we are not saying Nigeria, although I mentioned earlier it might collapse)—take that particular country, where doing something about the problems would require more than just Canada’s efforts, and compare that to a relatively small country where the consequences, or the gravity associated with the state’s collapse, are somewhat less significant. That, compounded by whether or not the country in question has weapons of mass destruction and so on... However in the latter case, where you have a relatively small country or a country where the impact is less likely to be significant, there may also be an opportunity to have a greater impact as a third party—just by virtue of size and manageability.

And then it becomes a question of: do you evaluate a decision to do something about a particular country on the basis of whether you think you can be effective, or the consequences of not doing something? The collapse of a Nigeria would be pretty overwhelming—or a North Korea perhaps. And believe me, the Americans have worked out the scenarios by which a North Korea’s collapse would lead to significant regional problems. It may not come to that, but for a small or medium-sized country like Canada, we also have to look at it in terms of our own effectiveness and whether or not we feel this is an appropriate action, given that we will be part of a team working together and our contribution may amount to less than 5 percent of the total contribution. It may also be the case that in a smaller situation we can be more effective. There are fewer things to do and the problems may be less overwhelming. So it is not an easy choice. But there’s a list of countries whose collapse would no doubt have a significant impact (I’ve named two of them). I think you also have to look at what I would call the “Stans”: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and even Pakistan, which in our evaluation is a country at risk. In all but its economic performance, its indicators are fairly poor. We don’t think of Pakistan as a failed state; in fact, it is one of the highest recipients of donor assistance, in particular from the United States. But it is not a country that is very stable right now. Its collapse could have severe implications for the war on terrorism in Afghanistan, in Kashmir and so on.

We could go through a list of countries that matter more than others, but I think the question of effectiveness is much tougher. Can we risk ignoring a small country’s collapse, knowing that we might be pretty effective in doing something about its problems? For example, in Haiti, the mistake we made in the early 1990s was pulling out too quickly. Had we stayed the course, we would not have seen a recurrence of that country’s problems. The lesson there is that in a small country one can be fairly effective, but you do need to stay the course.


Signs that a State Will Fail

Conventional wisdom suggests that you look for patterns of emerging or existing violence. However, I think that if we are going to broaden the term of “failure,” we have to look at issues that extend beyond organized violence, although it may constitute an important part. In other words, it is possible to have structural violence or large-scale political violence without a state tipping into failure mode. Conversely it is possible, although examples of this kind are rare, for a state to have failed without any violence at all. In other words, if we are going to look for broad patterns of change or even rapid changes within a government, we have to think more broadly. We have to think more conceptually about what constitutes “stateness” and then examine where those things might be absent in the case of a failed or weak state.

It is pretty obvious for a collapsed state as the indicators are fairly broad, but generally it is defined in terms of the failure of the government to provide basic services to its people. Conversely, the state might lack the ability to extract resources from its population and distribute those resources efficiently. Somalia is a classic example of a collapsed state. That is not to say that the people themselves who constitute this state weren’t capable of surviving.

In sub-Saharan Africa, it is interesting to note that state failure mode may be something that is almost permanent within many of these states. Examples are the Congo, West Africa, Sierra Leone, Liberia and so on. It raises a very important question about how the people of these countries survive in the absence of an effective government. They do so by coping—coping through informal economies, the grey market and even the black market. Associated with that would be the flow of people outside the country.

One of the key indicators or measures of state failure potential is whether people are leaving the country, especially those with resources and wealth.
Haiti is a good example, where the wealthy population of the country likely no longer dominate that country’s economy. A good portion of Haiti’s population that historically held the reins of political or economic power have essentially left the country. 

In a study that we have done, we found that there are a number of countries that are at risk of failure without any clear patterns of violence emerging. One has to be cautious about simply looking for large-scale violence and concluding that this is a state that is on the brink. Ideally you would want to be in a position to act much earlier. That is why we need a better understanding of all the kinds of structural indicators and measures that constitute effective “stateness.” I think right now the donor community, including Canada, is looking at defining governance not just in terms of institutional structures but broadly—the capacity of a state to distribute resources and effectively absorb resources from outside—as an important measure as to whether a state is likely to survive some inherent structural weakness.   


Who Should React When a State Fails?

What we are watching unfold in Sudan right now is a very anxious moment, to say the least, because there is a great deal of hope that the African Union will be able to develop its own capacity, and is in the process of developing its own capacity, to address the problems in Sudan. But what is anxious about it is that we are not absolutely certain that the outcome will be a positive one.

There is partly the obligation to contribute to the African Union’s efforts, and Canada is doing that with a fair amount of aid that is being distributed to Sudan and the African Union. But we have to wait on the sidelines, if you will, while people are being killed. For those who monitor human rights abuses, this is simply not appropriate.

There is now an abiding assumption that regional organizations should take more of a leading role. It is easy to say that NATO is probably the most effective military organization and has experience in dealing with these issues in the past and should take on some role, for example, in Sudan. But what is the long-term sustainability of that process, and how will that be perceived by those within Africa, who historically have experienced outside interference far too often?

So it’s a bit of both: multilateral organizations contributing to these efforts—and make no mistake about it, the UN is positioning itself through the High Level Panel report to be a more effective organization to deal with all facets of security, including state failure—but there is also what I would call bilateral programming, in which Canada is making a more focused effort to address particular countries’ problems. We have considerably narrowed the countries in which Canada should be involved.  


Why is Canada Adressing this Now?

It took a long time for the Canadian government to realize that this is a problem, and it did so in part in response to what its allies are doing, but state failure is nothing new. There have been many occasions historically, generally following on the collapse of empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. Most states that are weak, are weak largely because they are fairly new and they don’t have the opportunity to develop effective institutions.

We are talking about state failure now largely because it is considered to be a security and not just a developmental issue. But there are and there have been projects long before 9/11 in both the United States and Canada that have focused on the issue. But to put it on the radar screen you have to convince people that their security may be affected. That’s not easy to do. We Canadians tend to feel like we are isolated from the world’s problems. When our neighbour to the south decides that this is something important, we usually go along with them—not always, but we have been active with working in partnership with our allies on these issues for the last 10 years. Only within the last year has the Canadian government really begun to think seriously about it.

Along those lines, I don’t think we want to stay too close to the American agenda with respect to identifying countries that matter. We need to figure out which regions beyond North America are of importance to Canada. We could say all regions matter, but they matter for different reasons. I don’t think there is a magic formula that’s going to present itself so that we could easily identify countries or regions that make a difference to Canada. It is going to take some discussion between academics, NGOs and the policy community to set out a list of priorities, and I think that we have initiated that. What happens if an early warning is issued about a state at risk and the Canadian government decides that if we look at our historical record this is not a country that matters? Should we draw the conclusion that this is something that is best left addressed by someone else?