America’s ‘failed state’ syndrome
THE 2002 US National Security Strategy report had stated that “America is now threatened less by conquering states than by failing ones.” Keeping a tally of ‘failed states’ and accusing some states of being ‘rogue states’ has thus become a favourite pursuit of many American think tanks. There is need to look into the reasons behind this ‘failed state syndrome.’
By their definition, failed states are the ones that find it difficult to function as politically and economically viable states, where government’s control over the state’s territory is loosening, and where law and order is collapsing. In a failed state, viable economy is elusive and ethnic or communal tensions make it impossible for the incumbent government to carry out its routine administrative duties.
Now we find the prestigious American journal “Foreign Policy” placing Pakistan at 9th position in the index of failed and failing states, a dubious ‘promotion’ from the 34th position in the first such list issued last year. The other two Asian states ranking in the ‘top ten’ are Iraq and Afghanistan and the remaining seven are from Africa.
Since the end of the Cold War, American policy-makers have been suffering from the absence of an ‘enemy’ to justify the huge expenditure America makes on maintaining its military machine and continuing research and development (R&D) to develop ever newer forms of destructive weaponry. Meanwhile, they have invented a number of windmills they could tilt at. These include the Islamic terror, led by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, practitioners and adherents of what is called ‘militant Islam’ living in both western and Muslim countries ; China, or what Samuel Huntington calls the Confucian civilization; rogue states as defined by the US state department, and, last but not the least, failed states.
According to US policy-makers, international terrorism and failed states go together and are inter-linked. Thus, keeping a tab on the so-called ‘failed states’ is a necessary exercise to allay some unexplained fears. And most of the investigative efforts to identify such states are based on preconceived notions under which the West is the only civilised part of the world and is on a civilising mission to which their ex-colonies must respond. In some cases, these exercises are part of a psychological warfare against certain advanced non-West states by the West to keep them reminding that they are inferior.
Their analyses often ignore the fact that complex changes occurring at any given time in a society ought to be seen in their correct perspective. They may be signs of social or political transformation, rather than of the state’s failure. But governments often react in a bizarre manner. An official spokesman in Islamabad attacked “the methodology adopted by the report and termed it defective,” as if some other methodology would be acceptable to him. The only sensible part of the statement is the one that recognises the report as “a shoddy piece of political propaganda.”
The opposition Alliance for Restoration of Democracy’s reaction is problematic. It has tried to make political capital out of the “Foreign Policy” magazine’s report by holding the regime responsible for Pakistan’s ‘promotion from 34th to 9th place’ in the list of failed states in one year. It seems the ARD had found an appropriate opportunity to return the accusation. The military regime had stated soon after it grabbed power in 1999 that “Pakistan was about to be declared a ‘failed state’ due to the policies of the political governments.”
By blaming each other, the government and the opposition may unintentionally play into the hands of the western propagandists and lend legitimacy to their ‘findings.’ Perhaps some of them may be regarding such reports as gospel truth. But this is not a polemical issue. It deserves a serious response than hitherto displayed by either of them.
The only plus point some parts of the report may possess for the governments concerned is that they draw attention to the flaws and weaknesses in the latter’s policies which can be taken note of and addressed in due course of time.
The report mentions the ‘mishandling’ of the tribal regions and the October 2005 earthquake as a factor in arriving at the ‘score’ that has placed Pakistan high on the list this year. Even if we assume that the ‘mishandling’ is true, we can dismiss it as an administrative failure rather than that of the state. But there are other factors that need to be tackled in earnest. Merely being able to pull on is no ground for complacency. What are these factors?
In ‘The Failed States Index’ prepared by “Foreign Policy” and ‘The Fund for Peace,’ early warning signs of a failing state are described as follows: “Among the 12 indicators we use, two consistently rank near the top. Uneven development is high in almost all the states in the index, suggesting that inequality within states — and not merely poverty — increases instability. Criminalisation or delegitimisation of the state, which occurs when state institutions are regarded as corrupt, illegal, or ineffective, also figured prominently.
“Facing this condition, people often shift their allegiances to other leaders — opposition parties, warlords, ethnic nationalists, clergy, or rebel forces. Demographic factors, especially population pressures stemming from refugees, internally displaced populations, and environmental degradation, are also found in most at-risk countries, as are consistent human rights violations. Identifying the signs of state failure is easier than crafting solutions, but pinpointing where state collapse is likely is a necessary first step.”
Is it merely a coincidence that two of the Asian states among the top ten failing states are the victims of American interference and scheming? Why Pakistan is high on the list, however, requires a convincing explanation. Pakistan, many problems aside, can, by no stretch of imagination, be described as a failed, or even failing state at the moment. Many of its problems that might have contributed to its getting a high score in their apparently ‘objective tests’ of a failing state, spring from the incumbent regime’s staunch support of the US ‘war on terror.’
However, even though pro-American policies of the regime are causing domestic unrest, we tend to ignore the fact that there are other problems peculiar to our society such as demographic pressure, primitive social customs, sectarian bigotry, ‘VIP culture,’ and disregard of human rights by both the government and powerful elites that the ruling classes care little to resolve. In our milieu, quite a few of these factors stem from ‘bad governance.’ So, such reports should provide the ruling elite some food for thought.
The most admirable steps a state can take to avoid being a failed state include support for American policies, acting unhesitatingly on IFIs’ prescriptions, premature opening of its market to foreign products, leaning too heavily on the neo-liberal ‘model’ in devising economic policies. These are the measures that successive Pakistani governments, civilian or military, have religiously followed in the recent past, yet it is these policy steps that have been the cause of uneven economic development in the country. They have not led to our ‘salvation’ and have instead widened the prevailing economic inequalities. Privatising public services has not benefited people. In fact, the cost of service has gone up and would further increase in the coming days.
As regards the allegations of ‘criminalisation of the state’ and ‘severe economic decline’ in the US magazine report, it is for the government to look into them and arrest such trends before it is too late. An honest soul-search may help to find the correctness of the allegations. An attempt to defend itself by coming up with spurious arguments and cooked-up statistics would not do.
That our leaders and politicians allow foreign think-tanks to play a cat and mouse game with them shows their lack of confidence in their own judgment that leads to their acceptance of half-baked findings of foreign experts and institutions. While they tend to attach too much importance to these institutions’ unconvincing pronouncements, they lack the will to address their own obvious failings. They are guilty of either denying all the charges or accepting the reports concerned as gospel truth.
There are genuine cases of state failure, particularly in Africa. One reason is that former ‘colonies of exploitation’ became sovereign states overnight when decolonisation took place although they often lacked necessary conditions to exist as separate viable states. Partly for want of an alternative they tried to model themselves in the image of the European ‘nation-states.’ As their development was mostly on hold through the colonial period — except what was directed by the exigencies of the colonial power to facilitate its hold over the colonies’ territories and resources — they often lacked the necessary economic base for survival.
This was exploited by the big powers. The end of the Cold War and the rise of the sole superpower, coupled with the ideas of building a ‘new American century’ of world hegemony taking birth in the minds of White House neocons, has further compounded the problems of these states, as has the ‘corporate globalisation’ and the neo-colonialism that it entails. The corporate globalisers are eager to penetrate the developing countries. They don’t mind if the countries happen to be ‘failed states’.
It is interesting to note that on the one hand they harp on the tune of ‘melting’ state borders as it is the need of globalisation, on the other they fear the dismantling of weak states as a result thereof. However, the problem goes beyond that. Interference by neighbouring states, or by distant states with vested interests, has often contributed to states’ failure to function effectively.
America’s obsession with terrorism and failed states appears to have become particularly acute after 9/11. During the Cold War, the Americans feared the communists and worried about nuclear war. Today they fear shadowy ‘terrorists’ and are worried about ‘failed states,’ which they think are ‘hideouts of terrorists and criminals’ who ‘hate America’ and could ‘attack’ it some day. This paranoiac attitude is out of proportion with the actual threat. They are not prepared to give a right of defence to other countries. For them an Iraqi fighting against foreign occupation of his country is in fact indulging in ‘terrorism.’
But their behaviour does not need a rational explanation since their actions are dictated by an aggressive resolve to preserve their political, military and economic hegemony in the world. So, Americans have made no mean contribution to the failure of certain states. In Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, all their propaganda is directed at airing ethnic and sectarian differences among people of those countries to exploit them for their own ends. Thus, while they try to control and exploit the resources of other countries, they put the blame for the resultant backwardness and the state’s failure on the people of those countries.
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