Summary
Governments and supranational organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank, which together set the international agenda for failed states, are accustomed to formulating programs around states exclusively, and therefore often fall back upon generic models of analysis that disregard sociocultural forces. [...] the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) has embraced a drivers of change analysis, whereby DFID country offices commission work to understand countries through nontraditional aid lenses: history, culture, power dynamics, political landscape, incentives analysis and institutional analysis.
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Fixing Fragile States
Fragile states have marched from the fringe to the very center of U.S. security concerns. Whereas once defense analysts worried only about competing powers such as the Soviet Union and China, now even the weakest of countries is considered a potential threat. "The events of September 11, 2001, taught us that weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states," the 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy declared. Poverty may not turn people into terrorists, but "poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels." In a similar vein, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has declared, "Fragile states... are now recognized as a source of our nation's most pressing security threats. There is perhaps no more urgent matter facing [us] than fragile states, yet no set of problems is more difficult and intractable. Twenty-first century realities demonstrate that ignoring these states can pose great risks and increase the likelihood of terrorism taking root."1
We have, at least for the moment, stopped ignoring fragile states. Indeed, everyone seems to have an opinion these days on how to fix fragile states. Presidents and generals, academics and aid specialists, even financiers and business executives are volunteering prescriptions for countries where the only growth industries are violence, corruption, and decay. Yet, for all the talk, there is little understanding of what ails places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, why past efforts at helping them have failed, and what ought to be done to turn them around. Moreover, despite the increasing awareness of the importance of fragile states to the West's own security and well-being, much of the tens of billions of dollars in aid spent attempting to refo...See the full content of this document
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