Are failed states a sign that the state-based system's dominance, embodied by the United Nations, is ending?
Is the Westphalian state-based system over because states are too weak to enforce their will?
Syria, Libya, Yemen . . . and now Sudan. Sudan has the unhappy potential to become the next of the intractable conflicts that have unfolded over the past decade. These multisided struggles involving a cocktail of militaries, militias, and mercenaries drag on year after year, producing destabilizing waves of refugees, flourishing criminal cohorts, and a plague of outside meddling.
Well, the United Nations system is based on states, so the dominance of states isn't over while this structure only recognizes states as members.
Is the state a weakened institution that can't be the foundation of our system?
The assumptions that control of the state is the prize, that principals control subordinates, and that there are “sides” and not a constantly changing constellation of armed factions are all based on yesterday’s Weberian model of the state (centralized, with a monopoly on violence).I don't know about that. I don't think that ideal has ever been true. Sure, political scientists often think of the state as the basic unit of analysis. It's convenient for models. As do our media and leaders. Hell, I do in a surface manner. But everyone who pays attention doesn't really hold those assumptions, do they? I don't. And I don't think this was the reality rather than the formal ideal decades or centuries ago.
Even if true, even a weakened state is going to be the most powerful faction. Even in a lot of failing or failed states that will be true.
And this seems like an odd observation about waning state power:
That era officially ended on September 11, 2001. Osama bin Laden was the first to act on the realization that the new communications revolution freed small groups from the need to capture or ally with a state to act globally. He could raise and move funds, recruit cohorts with proselytizing videos and free media coverage of Al Qaeda attacks, and shop the black market to acquire the kinds of tools once reserved for states. Bin Laden’s model had its parallel in evolving criminal enterprises like drug cartels, piracy, or human trafficking, which had also once been dependent on state allies to coordinate and protect their enterprises.
Was there ever an era when there weren't failed states? Or limits to state power? Is it possible this is only being noticed because refugees are heading to the West rather than moving among distant states out of sight and out of mind?
And who says the terrorists, cartels, pirates, and traffickers aren't now dependent on states? Even if that dependency in some cases is simply the weakness or passive complicity of states that allow the non-state entities to be parasites on their hosts? And have no doubt, there is state complicity in encouraging, enabling, or supporting many such entities.
I'm so old I remember when an email address and some marketing skills made you a Fourth Generation non-state god. In the 1990s.
Yet as the authors states, these non-state actors are subject to the same fissures that can weaken states. So on that score at least, the state has not lost ground.
Maybe the current cast of failing states is a warning sign of the future. After all, Western governments seem
increasingly unable to handle governance duties. In part by futilely
trying to solve problems outside their lanes, it is true. Some states undermine governance by silencing women to please their god. Others states pay undue attention to pronouns rather than competent governance.
Regardless of why, the
lack of apparent competence is astounding. It sometimes feels like we are coasting on the accomplishments of those who came before us and are unable to do more than patch things up and hope for the best. Are new social media platforms really something to base our society on?
Maybe this kind of failure is
universal, but there is less margin for error in the Third World. Maybe
the West needs to establish the Lexington Rule to deal with ungoverned spaces that threaten stability beyond their borders.
And get our own
houses in order lest we follow the trend that has reached its conclusion
in already weaker states like Syria, Libya, Yemen, and now Sudan, among others.
Sure, perhaps the state monopoly on effective military power is waning. We've seen it in the past and that may be returning. In Russia, most ominously. But in the end, bin Laden died and his organization has not gained power. The Islamic State--a proto-government with territorial control spanning portions of Syria and Iraq--was defeated in a few years.
And maybe we need to find a way to recognize virtual states without demanding territorial concessions.
Further, the UN system locks in place the outcome of World War II. Of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, only America has earned its position since 1945.
China was a formal victor despite its weakness. But it has grown in power to earn its Security Council position now.
Britain was on the surface a major power earning a Security Council seat. But it has weakened since then.
The same can be said of the Soviet Union which as Russia doesn't have the economic heft of Canada overall.
France was an honorary seat holder and is at Britain's level. Really, nuclear weapons are its justification for membership--which can be said about Britain and Russia.
And if that is the measure, what about India. Shouldn't it be a Security Council permanent member?
But unless we want to encourage nuclear weapons as the entry ticket, shouldn't Japan be rewarded for not going nuclear with a permanent seat?
Yet not many countries want to end or even dilute their Security Council permanent seat power. Probably not even America. Although America extending a proxy veto to countries deemed to be powerful enough and supportive of the UN system to have a permanent seat might be a bridge to a new organization that unfreezes the 1945 world.
But maybe the nation-state era isn't over. Maybe just the powerful government system that is proving incapable of coping with the world is ending. Decades ago I read a book about how the current system would be replaced by one with more private entities taking over governmental responsibilities more effectively. With debt piling up, we may be reaching the point where when something can't go on, it won't. And in the last few years, George Friedman has written about America being on the cusp of reorganizing our increasingly incapable governance structure.
After all, the UN system doesn't really care how you govern your territory. Just that you can do it and keep the peace. We really should distinguish between state collapse and regime collapse. So I won't write off the state-based system yet. And I don't think the past state-based system is as gloriously quiet and "clean-cut" as we seem to remember it. But yes, times change and our systems evolve. There is no reason to believe what was established in 1945 can be kept exactly in place and still respond to an evolving world.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
