FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 24, 2004
CONTACT: Cara Santos Pianesi, 202/939-2211, csantos@ceip.org

The international community does not have the resources, political will, or know-how to mount comprehensive interventions in every state that gives early signs of failure, argues a new Policy Outlook paper from Marina Ottaway and Stefan Mair. Intervention is appropriate to restore security in states at risk but should be narrowly focused rather than comprehensive. Furthermore, some states should be allowed to fail if the survival of the state comes at the expense of the survival of its citizens. States at Risk and Failed States: Putting Security First is available exclusively online at www.CarnegieEndowment.org/democracy.

Failing and failed states are a grave danger to international stability as well as to the well-being of their populations. They can become havens for terrorist organizations, centers for drugs and arms trades, and breeding grounds for diseases. Yet the ambitious models for intervention that are often advocated—emphasizing human over state security—are too complex and costly and often divorced from realistic assessments of what can be accomplished. Cases from the recent past make clear that a sustainable and just approach is elusive: Kosovo, a territory of less than two million people, has been the target of well-funded, protracted intervention, while the international community did nothing for the 800,000 Rwandans who were slaughtered in 1994.

One solution to manage global instability is to devise more effective ways to deploy finite resources in states that are truly threatened with failure. Yet it will not solve the problem of human security for those directly affected. That problem can only be addressed in the long run by sustained economic development and political change. While richer countries should remained concerned and even boost their efforts to promote long-term change, no one should confuse those commitments with the short-term, intensive interventions needed to stabilize states acutely at risk.

Marina Ottaway is a Senior Associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She works on problems of democratization and post-conflict transitions. Stefan Mair is deputy director of SWP German Institute for International and Security Affairs. He works on sub-Saharan Africa non-state actors in international affairs and on state failure.

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