Partition of Failed States: Impediments and Impulses

Failed states, not so long ago, were discussed as a problem of foreign aid or social theory. Only prescient thinkers and policy makers identified them as a priority of national security. The atrocities of September 11, 2001, did not make failed states a problem but very much did trigger recognition that severe civic dysfunction in one part of the globe might well have consequences elsewhere. An Afghanistan or a Somalia has first and final responsibility for its own future. At the same time, so widely can such a state spread disruption that ‘its’ affairs and ‘ours’ now can be said to be segregated only in a carefully qualified way. New alertness about national security has brought an unprecedented increase in creative analysis of the problem: What to do about failed states?

The predicate question—what is a “failed state?”—by no means lends itself to an easy answer. Like many questions involving statehood and international relations, the question of the failed state becomes more complicated the further one moves from the clear, core examples. It can little be controverted that Somalia and Afghanistan are in some important sense ‘failed.’ But, if characterization of a state as ‘failed’ may open the door to international intervention—even, potentially, intervention that leads to radical revision of the contours of the state—then the criteria for that characterization are very important indeed, for their existence in a state would lead to the displacement of the important presumption of modern international law that the state enjoys legal autonomy and is the vehicle whereby its citizens realize their right to self-determination. Yet autonomy and self-determination well may be the very principles impelling intervention; states in the developed world may argue that their own rights are derogated when violent and uncontrolled forces arise in a failed state and disrupt public order in their territories.