THB CTNLLENGE
oFWBaT,FAILING,
AND ConnpsED Srnrps
Robert I. Rotberg
ATION- STATES IN TODAY'S DANGEROUS
world categortzed in descending
^te
order as strong, weak, failing, or col-
lapsed, depending on their ability or inability
to deliver high qualities and quantities of es-
sential political goods. Strong states, primarily
the globe's developed, industrial countries,
consistently perform well according to that
test. Weak states provide only inconsistent or
limited qualities and quantities of political
goods. Failed states are deficient in these ways.
Collapsed states represent extreme and rare
cases of failure. Strong states may slide into
weakness and then into failure, but it is usually
weak states that are susceptible to failing and
then failure, over time. Human agencypropels
all of these failures. In the developing world,
as indicated by the cases cited in this chapter,
there is a fluid continuum; states can fail and be
brought back to weakness. Even a collapsed
state can be resuscitated.
This new method of classi$ing and ranking
nation-states is based on an appreciation of
the meaning of political goods. Nation-states
arclargely responsible, especially in the devel-
oping world, for creating and supplying polit-
ical goods. That is the main Purpose of states
and has been since at least the seventeenth
century. The most important political good is
security-the projection of state power, the
state monopoly of violence, and human secu-
rity (freedom from criminal attack). Without
security, the provision of other political goods
becomes difficult, if not impossible. Those
other political goods are the instruments and
modalities of an eflbctive rule of laur, political
freedom (including participatory institutions
and fundamental human rights and civil liber-
ties), and economic opportunity (including an
appropriate regulatory environment and effec-
tive fiscal instruments). Other important po-
litical goods that nation-states are most often
expected to offer include educational training,
health services, a commercial and communi-
cations infrastructure, and the empowering of
civil society.
Of the globe's 193 nation-states, at any one
time upward of a dozen are failed or failing.
83
u RoSBRT I.
Another three dozen are weak and intrinsi-
cally in danger of slipping into or toward fail-
ure. Nepal and Haiti were endemicallyweak
until both poor, fragile polities cascaded into
failure and civil strife in 2004. C6te dTvoire was
regarded as a strong African state until, at the
turn ofthe present century grievous leader-
ship greed and errors of power produced a
rapid rush toward nation-state failure and civil
war. At the other end ofthe African continent.
Zimbabwe, also a strong state, descended
from 7998 through 2006 to the very brink of
failure, with much human misery and state-
sponsored brutality, but no all-out civil war.
Sudan and the Democratic Reoublic ofthe
Congo, enmeshed in one o, -or. enduring
conflicts, are classic failed states.They are failed
because of their intrinsic insecurities as well
as because each is unable to supply necessary
political goods to its inhabitants. Afghanistan,
with partial security and few political goods;
Burundi, with ongoing hostilities and a govem-
ment unable to provide many political goods;
Nepal, without security or many political
goods; and Haiti, devoid of an effective na-
tional government and riddled with insecurity,
are additional failed states. Bolivia, because of
its current insecurity and its weakened gov-
ernment, may have been very close to failure
in 2005. Kyrgyzstan is another precariously
poised failing state. Liberia and Sierra Leone
are recovering failed states, moving upward on
the scale toward mere weakness.
The sometime geographical expression of
Somalia illustrates the stage of firll-state failure
that approximates collapse. Somalia has only
its internationally accepted territorial borders.
Nothing else exists, hence its chanctertzation
as a collapsed polity. Warlords (nonstate actors)
for fifteen years until mid-2006 did provide
some security in the cities and districts that
they controlled. But the sway of the warlords
was removed in mid-2006 when the shadowy
Islamic Courts Union gathered sufficient fire-
power to oust them and began imposing an
Islamist, sharia-based fundamentalist order on
RorsBnc
much of hitherto unruly Somalia. Its rise to
power was based on the Union's growing in-
fluence over local mosques and Islamic schools
throughout the collapsed entity. It had begun
providing modest political goods in the late
1990s. ln 2006, the Union seemed capable of
providing security, Islamic law and education,
and rudimentary additional desirable benefits
to the inhabitants of much of Somalia (south
of Puntland, and not including Somaliland,
the de facto nation-state that has carved itself
out ofthe northern section ofthe larger So-
malia). Lebanon, A-fghanistan, and Thj ikistan
were once collapsed states, well, but all have
as
strengthened thanks to outside intervention
and resulting gains in security.
It is important to make clear distinctions
among and between nation-states and to clas-
si$' them in this way: strong, weak, failing,
failed, and collapsed. Doing so helps to dis-
tinguish the positive and negative qualities of
nation-states in the developing world in order
to respond to their needs, prevent them from
descending from strength to weakness and fail-
ure, and rebuild the ones that are eventually
overwhelmed by outright failure. Good policy
decisions flow from an appreciation ofthe dif-
ferences between these kinds ofnation-states
and especially of how certain kinds of weak
nation-states in the developing world are al-
most always driven by their leaders into the
firll embrace of failure.
In the post-9/7lworld, too, failed and col-
lapsed states bear watching because their very
insecurity could potentially create havens for
al Qgeda (as in Sudan and Afghanistan in the
1990s) or harbor terrorist cells capable ofre-
grouping, training, and preparing bombing
operations (as in Somalia before the car bomb-
ings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar
es Salaam in 7998 and before the missile at-
tacks at the Mombasa airport rn2002).1
Moreover, even absent the possibility of ter-
rorist activities, failed states are responsible for
most of the intrastate hostility in the world.
Nearly all of the hot wars of the world are
THB CHalreNcB opWBer, Faruuc, eNo Corr,epspo Stetns
within states; about fourteen million persons,
mosdy civilians, have lost their lives since 1990
as a result of civil wars. Another ten million
have been driven from their homes, many into
camps for refugees or internally displaced per-
sons. Hostilities in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, Sudan, and Angola account for
two-thirds ofboth totals, but the internal wars
in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, In-
donesia, and now Nepal, C6te d'Ivoire, and
Haiti account for a fair share. Because failure
always leads to civil war, if nation-state failure
could be reduced or eliminated. much of the
globe's civil conflict would vanish, millions of
lives would be spared, and people everywhere
would live longer and with greater degrees
of happiness and satisfaction. Conditions of
hunger, in some cases real famine, would also
be reduced or eliminated.
The enemy of sustainable economic and
political development is conflict, in terms of
lives lost or immiserated and in terms of vast
expenditures on arms and ammunition. Relief
also adds to the accumulated expenses of state
failure and collapse. World order never sits
idlybywhen humanitarian crises erupt.It even
supplies emergency food rations to popula-
tions starved by their own regimes-by despots
controlling the food supply to gain power and
control, as in North Korea andZimbabwe.
GovonxeNcE AND Porrncer Gooos
Nation-states do not stumble into failure.
Human agency is always the proximate cause.
Even resource-deficient and climatically or
physically challenged nation-states, the very
weakest of the weak, teeter on the precipice
of failure only if and when they cheat their
citizens or give unfair preference to one set of
elites over another or over ordinary citizens.
Corruption precedes and favors failure. So
do capital flight, escalating inflation, growing
rates of infant mortality and decreasing life
expectancy, the harassment of civil sociery
electoral fraud, the creation of private mili-
85
tias, small arms races, identity controversies,
disenfranchisement of ethnic groups, threats
tojudicial independence, and the strengthen-
ing of state security apparatuses. These insti-
tutional and normative breakdowns reflect,
but do not cause, the slide within a nation-
state from strength and weakness toward in-
cipient failure.
Fortunately for analltical purposes, these
slippages can be measured precisely. There
need be no reliance on anecdotal or impres-
sionistic calibrations. S trength, weakness, fail -
ure, and collapse are categories that describe
the extent to which a nation-state delivers ap-
propriately high qualities and appropriately
abundant quantities of essential political goods
critical ingredients ofgood governance.
-the
Governance is the effective provision of
political goods to ci:.rzens.2 Of those political
goods, the paramount one is security. There
can be no economic growth or social elevation,
and no societal strength as opposed to failure,
without fundamental security. A nation-state's
primaryfunction is to secure the nation and its
territory-to prevent cross-border invasions
and incursions. to reduce domestic threats to
or attacks on the national order, to bolster
human security by lowering crime rates, and
to enable citizens to resolve their differences
with fellow inhabitants or with the state it-
selfwithout recourse to arms or physical coer-
cion. If a nation-state merely controls its cap-
itail crty, if it cannot project power to the
periphery if it does not have a monopoly on
the use of force within its borders, and if it
cannot repress secessionists and potential reb-
els, then the nation-state has failed or is verglng
on failure.
In contrast to strong states' failed nation-
states cannot control their frontiers. They have
lost authority over large swaths of their nomi-
nal territory. Often, the expression of official
power becomes limited to a capital city (say,
Kabul or Kinshasa) and one or a handful
of ethnically specific provinces. The extent of
a state's failure can indeed be measured by
 86
exacdy how much of a nation-state's geograph-
ical expanse is genuinely subject to the writ
(especially after dark) of the official authori-
ties.In 2005,for example, C6te d'Ivoire's gov-
ernment controlled only the southern half of
its country In the 1980s, Mobutu Sese Seko's
regime lost authorityup-country and progres-
sively thereafter throughout the rcst of Zaire/
Congo. Nonstate actors appear and gain con-
trol as district warlords when the central gov-
emment no longer can extend its mle effectively
across the national patrimony.
Citizens depend on the central govern-
ments of nation-states to secure their oersons
and free them from fear. Thus, when such hu-
man security is not provided (and crime rates
escalate), the faltering nation-state's failure
becomes obvious to its citizens long before
rebel groups and other contenders threaten
the official government and go to war.
The civil wars that characterize failed states
often stem from or have roots in ethnic, reli-
gious, linguistic, or other intercommunal en-
mities. The fear of the other that drives so
much ethnic conflict stimulates and fuels hos-
tilities between regimes and subordinate and
less-favored groups. Avarice also propels that
antagonism, especially when official greed is
magnified by dreams of loot from discoveries
of new, contested sources of resource wealth-
petroleum deposits, diamond fields, gold, or
timber. But the outbreak of civil war, whether
ostensibly ethnic, linguistic, or religious in
character, is almost always a product of leader-
ship decisions that consciously deprive minori-
ties or oppressed majorities ofwhat they con-
sider their human rights, their equal economic
opportunities, their appropriate share of official
positions, or the social and political goods that
they believe they justifiably deserve. For these
out-groups, something vital snaps, and the
nation-state and its ruling regime decisively
forfeit legitimacy. A tl,pical weak state edges
toward failure when ruler-led oppression pro-
vokes a countervailing reaction on the part of
resentfi.rl groups (often already termed rebels).
RoeBRT I. RorsBnc
Civil war takes advantage of losses of legiti-
macy and underlying securityweaknesses that
have become apparent as the nation-state has
been sliding from strength or weakness to-
ward failure.
Tnn OnrnR PoLrrrcAL Gooos
The delivery of other desirable political goods
becomes feasible onlywhen reasonable provi-
sions of security arc obtained. After security-
the prime commodity-good governance re-
quires a predictable, recognizable, systematized
method of adjudicating disputes and regulat-
ing both the norms and the prevailing mores
of the society or societies in question. This po-
litical good implies codes and procedures that
together compose an enforceable body of law;
security ofproperty and the enforceability of
contracts, an effective judicial system, and a
set of norms that legitimate and validate tradi-
tional or new values embodied in what (in
shorthand) is called the rule oflaw. Each ofthe
world's nation-states fashions its own rule of
law;the English common law and the Napo-
leonic systems are but two major jurispruden-
tial methodologies, and most national modal-
ities ofadjudicating disputes roughly follow
one or other of those outlines. But there are
other forms, either ethnically traditional or
sharia-like. Without some such formal or for-
malized body of laws, societal bonds weaken,
disputes are settled by violent means rather
than peaceful padeys, and commerce cannot
proceed smoothly.
Another political good supplied in greater
or lesser degrees in the developing world en-
ables citizens to participate freely, openly, and
ful1y in a democratic political process. This
good encompasses fundamental freedoms and
rights-the right to participate in politics and
compete for officel respect and support for
national and provincial political institutions,
legislatures, and courtsl tolerance of dissent
and difference; an independent media; and
all of the basic civil and human rights. Earnest
TuB CHer,r,BNcB orWner, FIII-INc. exo ColLRpsno StRtBs
accountability is provided by the second and
fourth of these freedoms. It comes through an
independent, well-functioning judicial sys-
tem, but also because of a feadess, free media.
Few state failures have occurred in countries
with open media-with privately run television
channels and radio stations and a free press.
Without such methods of criticism, political
freedom and accountability shrink, nrlers and
ruling regimes can prey on their citizens (as
they do in failing and failed states), and nation-
state failure can occur without the wider wodd
reahingthe fulIdimension of a nation-state's
difficult predicament.
Another critical political good and compo-
nent ofgovernance is the creation ofan en-
abling environment permissive of and con-
ducive to economic growth and prosperity at
national and personal levels. This political good
thus encompasses a prudendy run money and
banking system, usually guided by a central
bank and lubricated by a national currency; a
fiscal and institutional context within which
citizens may pursue individual entrepreneurial
goals and potentially prosper; and a regulatory
environment appropriate to the economic as-
pirations and attributes of the nation-state.
Where a mling family or clan arrogates to it-
self most of the available sources of economic
growth, akeady weak states become weaker
and descend toward failure. Likewise, a rapid
rise in corruption levels signals the possi-
bility of failure. (The world's failed states all
fall near the bottom ofTransparency Inter-
national's annual "Corruption Perceptions
Index.")3 Plummeting GDP figures, both for
per capita income and annual growth rates, also
are diagnostic, especially in relatively wealthy
developing countries such as C6te d'Ivoire
andZimbabwe.
Corruption is fundamental to failed states.
Not only does it flourish in failed states, but in
them it ttrrives on an unusually desffuctive scale.
Widespread petty or lubricating corruption
exists as a matter of course, but failed states are
noted for rising levels ofvenal comrption: kick-
87
backs on anything that can be put out to fake
tender or bid (medical supplies, textbooks,
bridge constructions, roads, railways, tourism
concessions, new airports, and so on); unnec-
essarily wastefirl construction projects arranged
so as to maximize the rents that they are capa-
ble of generating; licenses for existing or imag-
inary enterprises and activities; and a persistent
and generalized extortion. Moreover, corrupt
ruling elites invest their profits overseas, not
at home, thus contributing yet further to the
economic attrition of their own states. Rulers
offailed states also characteristically dip di-
rectly into shrinking state treasuries to pay
for external aggressions, lavish residences and
palaces (Hasting K. Banda in Malawi con-
structed thirteen enormous mansions, Robert
Gabriel Mugabe in Zimbabwe a mere five),
and extensive overseas travel (often to purchase
luxury goods) and to ensure the loyalty of
their soldiers and security brigades.
Infrastructure (the physical arteries of com-
merce), education, and medical treatment are
three other key political goods, nearly always
responsibilities of governments. With rulers
and nrling classes siphoning offa country's cash
reserves and foreign exchange supplies, with
overseas investment drying up, with capital
flight, and with inflation rising, governments
run out of cash. Official services cease and the
delivery of political goods becomes a tertiary
priority compared to personal survival.
Metaphorically, the more potholes in main
roads (or main roads turned to rutted tracks),
the more a state is failing. As there are fewer
capital resources for road crews' equipment,
and raw materials. so the nation-state's infra-
structure slowly erodes or vanishes. Further-
more, maintaining road or rail access to dis-
tant disfficts becomes less and less of a priority.
Landline telephone systems (in nearly all de-
veloping countries a utility owned and op-
erated by the state) likewise deteriorate and
mobile telephones become the only option.
The national educational and health sys-
tems suffer similarly from increasing neglect.

Teachers, physicians, nurses, orderlies, and
technicians are paid late,if at all. Absenteeism
rates naturally increase. Textbooks and medi-
cines become scarce. X-ray and other vital
machines break down and are not reoaired. In
such a situation of impending failure, citizens,
especially rural parents, students, and patients,
gradually realize that the state is abandon-
ing or has abandoned them to the forces of
nature. When the nation-state ceases in this
manner to provide basic services, or only pro-
vides them at a very low level, it is failing.
The markers for these kinds of lapses, and
failure, are declining literacy rates, decreasing
levels ofeducational persistence, rises in infant
mortality and (sometimes massive) decreases
in life expectancy levels, the spread of HIV/
AIDS and other infectious diseases,lowered
national health expenditures per person, the
loss of physicians, and widespread neglect of
hospitals, clinics, and equipment.
The greater Horn ofAfrica region, includ-
ing neighboringYemen, provides a usefirl com-
parative example. There, except for Kenya, all
of the countries and areas are poor, with un-
derdeveloped road and rail systems, creally sea
and river ports and airports, poor traditional
telephone systems and limited teledensity
(levels of phone ownership), and low rates of
Internet connectivity. Likewise, again except
for Kenya and northern Sudan, their health
and educational systems are either nearly non-
existent or primitive (even by prevailing lim-
ited African standards).In the medical services
field, for example, in 2001 there was one physi-
cian per 35,000 people in Ethiopia, one per
33,000 in Eritrea, one per 25,000 in Somalia,
one per 11,000 in Sudan, one per 7,500 in
Kenya, one per 7,100 in Djibouti, and one per
5,000 in Yemen. The Africa-wide average in
2001 was one per about 13,800.
In terms of the number of hospital beds per
1,000 people, Djibouti has more than two,
Kenya and Sudan more than one, and all the
others a few tenths of a bed. Ethiooia has onlv
0.24 hospitalbeds per 1,000.In terms ofhealth
RoSBRT I. RorsBnc
expenditures as percentage of GDP, Kenya
spends the most (nearly 8 percent), Djibouti
and Eritrea followwith 7 percentand5.T per
cent, respectively, and Ethiopia brings up the
rear with 1.4 percent.a The all-Africa average
is about 2.1 percent of GDP.
It comes as no surprise, given these star-
dingly low health delivery numbers, that infant
mortality rates in the region per 1,000 live
births range from 133 in Somalia and 114 in
Ethiopia down to a comparatively welcome
figure of 59 in Eritrea.The all-Africaaverage
is 94.4. Estimated life expectancv at birth in
this region ranges from a high offihy-one years
in Eritrea to a low of fortv-two in Ethiooia.
What such numbers til.r, is that the coun-
tries of the greater Horn of Africa region, on
average, have delivered poor political goods to
their citizens. State failure in a massive terri-
torylike Sudan, and total collapse and the lack
of most security in Somalia, pl.rt interstate
war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, "r have con-
tributed to this paucity of political goods. Few
of these states have more than rudimentary
rules of law, and the canons of political free:
dom are much honored in the breach. Even
so, except for Somalia before 2006, these poli-
ties are secure, in some cases oppressively so.
Thus, in addition to Somalia, only Sudan (with
an ongoing war in Darfur and the provision of
few other political goods) is a failed state. But
most of the other nation-states of the region
(bar Kenya but includingYemen) clearly con-
tain the seeds of failure. The emergence of
civil strife in any of them could readily trans-
form weakness into failure.
Tsn SrcNrFrcANcE
oFHTJMANAcnNcy
Nation-states do not become failed because
of structural lapses or global trade issues. Nor
do they fail in a fit of absence of mind. In-
stead, they are failed by the purposefirl actions
of a leader or leaders. Presidents Mobutu Sese
Seko in Zure/Congo, Siaka Stevens in Sierra
TsB CHar-rBNcn opWeRr, tr'arr-tNc, RNo Collepsoo Stetps
Leone, Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor in
Liberia, Gaafas Mohamed el-Nimeiri in Su-
dan, and Idi Amin in Uganda (to mention
only a few of those personally culpable, like
General Ne Win in Burma, for nation-state
decline and decay) are alTtyrunts who system-
atically deprived their constituents of funda-
mental political goods, ultimately even the over-
riding political good of security. They each
provoked or demanded civil strife in order to
profit from the resulting insecurities or other-
wise drove their loyal and long-suffering citi-
zens into rebellion by acts of outright discrim-
ination or communal marginalizztion (as rn
C6te d'Ivoire and Sri Lanka) or by the whole-
sale theft or threatened theft of national re-
sources (as in Sierra Leone and Sudan).
A detailed appreciation of the actions of
each of those men, year after year, would
demonstrate the dynamics of failure and how
it is caused. But none is still in office and five
are dead. Instead, our analysis ofthe critical
influence of leadership decisions and motiva-
tions on state failure is well illustrated by an
example of purposefi.rl predation- the case of
President Mugabe and failing, but in 2006 not
yet fu lly faile d, Ztmbabwe.
When Africans finally created a free new
nation of Zimbabwe in 1980, Mugabe be-
came first its prime minister and then its
president. He gradually gathered all of the
reins of power into his own hands. Neverthe-
less, for much of the country's first eighteen
years, nearly all important political goods-
security, rule of law, economic opportuniry
infrastructural provisions, education, health,
and the empowerment of civil society-were
delivered in reasonable abundance. Mugabe
indeed provided very high levels of educa-
tional opportunity, good medical services,
strong state security, low rates of crime, and
excellent roads and other arteries of commerce.
Corruption existed but was held in check.
Economic growth was largely positive, based
on reasonably solid macroeconomic and mi-
croeconomic fundamentals, a well-organtzed
89
monetary and banking system' and a compar-
atively open trading system. Only freedom to
campaign politically against Mugabe and the
ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-
Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) was curtailed,
with increasing severity. (Mugabe also or-
dered the killing of twenty thousand to thirty
thousand of his Sindebele-speaking oppo-
nents in 1982-84,but most Zimbabweans and
outside observers tended to ignore that ruth-
less demonstration of a ruler's wrath.) There
was freedom of expression in dailylife (unlike
in, say, Burma), but Mugabe's regime owned
or controlled neady all radio, television, and
press oudets. Thus accountability was limited,
even though the judicial system remained
independent.
This relatively satisfactory and stable ar-
rangement, with Mugabe running a forceful,
authoritarian regime and increasingly intimi-
dating or otherwise margirralizing a fewbrave
African opponents, unraveled in the late 1990s.
Mugabe started looting the coffers of the
state, permitting his relatives and associates to
exceed previous levels of greed' Corruption
ran rampant; citizens became increasingly cyn-
ical where previously they had been loyal and
supportive. As Mugabe's legitimacy eroded,
he sent thirteen thousand soldiers into Congo
to support another dictator. That costly ma-
neuver, coupledwith corruption and the move-
ment of cash overseas, bankrupted Zimbabwe
Consumer shortages of fuel and staple com-
modities followed. The population grew restive
and rejected the provisions ofa constitutional
referendum, favored by Mugabe, early in 2000.
He wanted increased powers' which voters
denied him after a surprisingly successful
grassroots campaign.S
Mugabe, never seriously challenged before,
grew more threatened and angry. He unleashed
awave of thugs againstwhite (and sometimes
black) commercial farmers-the backbone of
the national economy. As four thousand
white farmers were forced off their farms,
production plummeted and four hundred
 90
thousand African farmworkers lost their
sources of employment. The national econ-
omy naturally fe1l backward, especially after
Mugabe rigged or otherwise stole the par-
liamentary elections of 2000 and 2005 and
the presidential poll of2002,thus denying an
emergent opposition any opportunity to pro-
pel Zimbabwe back along the path of pros-
perity and sanity.
EnruNc ZTMgABwE
Zimbabwe, a strong state by African and de-
velopingworld standards until 1998, has since
descended rapidly into weakness and to the
very brink of failure. Numbers tell the story.
Since 1998, thanks to Mugabe's depredationi,
annual GDP per capita in Zimbabwe has
slumped from $800 to $400. A country once
growing at a steady 5 percent a year has gone
backward by 40 to 50 percent since 2000. A
recent study reports that the standard ofliving
of Zimbabweans in 2005 fell in real terms to
1953 levels. About 80 percent of all adult
Zimbabweans are unemployed.The local dol-
lar, once stronger than the U.S. dollar, and
tn1998 worth aboutZfi38 to US$1, steadily
collapsed to a mid-2006levelof 2$150,000
to US$1. Annual inflation flew well beyond
1,000 percent, the highest rate in the world.
Equally important, by 2000, the country's
once-vaunted rule of law was breaking down.
Mugabe was reviling and interfering with the
courts or refusing to abide by their decisions.
Torture of opponents occurred. The presses
of the onlyindependent daily newspaperwere
bombed, and that paper was later banned.
Hospitals stopped providing medicines, sutures,
and even bandages. Schools lost teachers and
textbooks and fell into disuse. A superbly
maintained road network decayed. There were
periodic shortages of fundamental consumer
goods, especially throughout 2005 and 2006,
when gasoline, diesel fuel, cooking oil, flour,
and many other commodities were unobtain-
able at almost any price. Indeed, since early
RosBnr I. Rorspnc
200 4, Zimbabwe has experienced serious food
scarcities and pockets of extreme hunger and
starvation. In 2005, to compound the misery
that the regime had inflicted on its citizens,
Mugabe unleashed a reign of terror on urban
shanty dwellers, most of whom presumably
backed the opposition. As many as 1.2 million
Zimbabweans lost their homes and small
businesses, being forced to flee in the deep
cold ofwinter into rural areas where there was
no work and little food. A IJN report corr-
demned Mugabe's actions in thus harming his
own citizens randomly and arbitrarily, but lit-
de international action followed.6 Possibly the
strongest indication of Zimbabwe's near fail-
ure is reflected in its alarming emigration sta-
tistics. At least two million Zimbabweans (of
a nation of twelve million) since 2002 have
fled the country for South Africa, Botswana,
andMozambique.
Zimbabwe raced pell-mell toward failure
rn 2006. The state's delivery of most political
goods virtually ceased. All kinds of numbers
point to the parlous quality ofstate services,
and to the deep consternation-a qpical indi-
cation of failure or near failure-of the citi-
zens of Zimbabwe. However, in 2006 the
state still conffolled the exercise of legitimate
and illegitimate sources ofviolence. Mugabe
even felt sftong or desperate enough to rebuff
Nigerian and South African diplomatic in-
terventions. Although everyone is preyed on,
and Mugabe's opponents are pilloried and re-
pressed, in2006 the state still projected power
throughout the entire country and effectively
forestalled rebellion. When this situation
changes, and if and when civil war breaks out
between Mugabe loyalists and regime oppo-
nents, then Zimbabwe (like so many other
weak and failing states) can be called failed.
MarrnnsoFPolrcy
These distinctions between types of states
are more than arbitrary or academic. As in
Zimbabwe, impending failure highlights a
THB CuerrBNcB opWnAr, FArr,rNG, eNo Correpspo SletBs
serious situation that threatens world order
because of the harm that such failure inflicts
on a nation-state's people and because the
failure that accompanies the rise of anomie
and state-sponsored terror) unless checked,
can seem intemationally sanctioned.
Separating the failed and failing nation-
states from those that are merelv weak. al-
beit desperately poor and lacking effective
leadership, permits policymakers to focus their
preventive energies on weak countries at risk
and their reconstruction talents on those that
have failed. A careful analysis of nation-state
failure and collapse, moreover, permits policy-
makers to distinguish those failed or near-failed
states that are primarily threats only to them-
selves and their unfortunate inhabitants from
those rogue states that possess weapons of
mass destruction and for that reason or be-
cause ofother capabilities pose serious threats
to world order. Most rogue nation-states at-
tack their own populations and hold them
hostage (as in North Korea), but they are also
very secure places and so escape being classi-
fied as failed.7
ADvNeurcPnocnss
The failure and collapse of nation-states is a
dynamic process. Little is foreordained. No
matter how impoverished a state may be, it
need not fail. The origins of a state, whether
arbitrary or absentminded (as in much of colo-
nialism), again do not predispose to, or fi.rlly
account for, failure. States born weak and for-
lorn, such as Botswana, have emerged strong
and high performing as a consequence ofgifted
leadership and not primarily as a result of a
subsequent resource bonanza. Wealth must be
well managed and distributed genuinely if a
nation-state, such as Nigeria or Equatorial
Guinea, is to emerge from weakness and be-
come stronger; otherwise there is always the
possibility of slippage (as in Nigeria in the
1980s) and failure. In other words, the road
to failure is littered with serious mistakes of
9l
omission and commission. Where, especially in
fragie,isolated states in the developing world,
there is litde accountability and no political
culture of democracy, these errors of commis-
sion are almost always made for personal gain
by leaders. Human agency (and greed) drives
and accounts for failure, or near failure, as in
the ongoing cases of Zimbabwe and C6te
d'Ivoire, as in Mobutu Sese Seko's Congo, and
as in Idi Amin's Uganda. Likewise, nation-
states strengthen under positive leadership for
good, as in President John Kufuor's Ghana,
Nelson Mandela's South Africa, Sir Seretse
Khama's Botswana, and Sir Seewoosagur
Ramgoolam's Mauritius. 8
Failure, it should be said, does not creep
stealthily into the domain of a body politic. Its
pending arrival is there for all to see-if we
would but notice. Three kinds of signals-
economic, political, and military-provide
clear, timely, and actionable warnings. On
the economic front, for example, Lebanon
in 197 2-79,Nigeria in 1993-99,Indonesia in
t9 97 -9 9, and Zimbabwe in 79 9 8-2005 offered
ample earlywarning signals.In each case, rapid
reductions in income and living standards
presaged the possibility of failure early enough
to have been noted and for preventive mea-
sures to have been encouraged from outside or
explored from within.
TUB Dowxwano Spner
Once the downward spiral starts in earnest,
only a concerted, determined effort slows
its momentum. Corrupt autocrats and their
equally corrupt associates usually have few in-
centives to arrest their state's slide. They
themselves find clever ways to benefit from
impoverishment and misery; they are not the
ones to suffer. As foreign and domestic invest-
ment dries up, jobs vanish, and per capita in-
comes fall, the mass ofcitizens in an imperiled
state see their health, educational, and infra-
structural entidements erode. Food and fuel
shortages occur. Privation and hunger follow
92
T1,pically, as the poor get poorer, ruling cadres
get richer. State treasuries are skimmed, cur-
rency perquisites are employed for private
gain, illicit gun and narcotics trafficking in-
crease in scale, and secret funds flow out of the
country into private structures and nonpublic
bank accounts.
In the political realm, too, available indica-
tors are abundant. First, "maximum leaders"
and their associates subvert democratic norms,
restrict participatory processes of all kinds,
coerce civil society, and override institutional
checks and balances supposedly secure in leg-
islatures and bureaucracies. Second. thev cur-
tail judicial independence, harass the media,
and suborn security forces. In other words,
rulers show more and more contempt for their
own nationals; surround themselves with fam-
ily, lineage, or ethnic allies; and gready narrow
the focus of their concern and responsibiliry.
Many of these arrogant leaders grandly drive
down national boulevards in massive motor-
cades, commandeer national commercial air-
craft for foreign excursions, put their faces
prominently on national currencies and on
large photographs in private as well as public
places, and are seemingly convinced-as was
Louis XIV-that the state and the riches of
the state are theirs to dispose.
A third indicator is derived directly from
levels ofviolence. Ifthey rise precipitously, the
state clearly is crumbling. As national human
security levels decline, the probability of fail-
ure increases. Not every civil conflict precipi-
tates failure, but each offers a warning sign.
Indeed, absolute or relative crime rates and
civilian combat death counts cannot prescribe
failure conclusively. But they indicate that a
society is deteriorating and that the glue that
binds a new or an old state is becoming dan-
gerously thin.
There are implicit ttppirg points. Yet, even
as a weak state is becoming a failing state and
seemingly plunging rapidly toward failure,
desperate descents can be arrested by timely
external diplomatic or military intervention.
RosnRT I. Rorsnnc
Usually, however, those interventions are too
timid and tepid or much too late. People in
the thousands thus die, as in Cambodia, East
Timor, Rwanda, Sudan (and Darfur), Congo,
Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Lebanon. Many
thousands of others flee their homes for sanc-
tuaries or refugee camps.
There is a better way, and the recom-
mendations of the UN secretary-general's
High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges,
and Change provided a firm guide to what is
needed and should be done. Under guidelines
adapted by the UN General Assembly in 2005,
a "responsibility to protect" is now officially
rccognized. Responsibility to protect means
that the United Nations and other forces of
world order have an obligation, in keeping
with Chapter VII of the UN Charter, to enter
sovereign territory to prevent the abuse of
civilians even if it is a national government
that is the attacking parq. This new norm
supports a strengthened UN security
^ppara-
tus.Togetherwith an enlarged Department of
Peacekeeping Operations, the United Nations
now has the moral and logistical tools that
could contribute to diplomatic and military
interventions if and when nation-states slip
toward failure. There thus is a proactive trig-
ger for action that now depends less on indi-
vidual national initiative than on the United
Nations. Serious implementation has still to
be tested; whether the importance of sover-
eignty will trump abuse or be balanced judi-
ciously against the need to protect innocent
lives in states that are failing is still to be seen.
In terms of the responsibility-to-protect
norm, and because there have been many past
examples and several more contemporary
cases where presidents willfirlly destroyed their
own states and the livelihoods and social wel-
fare of millions of their own constituents, egre-
gious new infractions rightfirllywould compel
effective regional- or UN-supervised inter-
ventions. Given the global failure to intervene
in Rwanda and Bosnia until too late, and given
the ditheringin2004,2005, and 2006 over
Tue CHer,r.BNce opWBAr, FATLING, ANo Coluq.psoo SterBs
Darfur, the United Nations'and the globe's
major powers would, under the new norm,
internalize a moral imperative to intervene-
if only to save lives. But political will remains
weak, and world order impotent. The United
Nations and larger powers usually wait to
become involved until intrastate hostilities be-
come too hot, and too many people die, or until
foreign nationals are threatened. By then, as
rnZimbabwe and Darfur, or earlier in Liberia
and Sierra Leone, it is far too late. Recogniz-
ing failure early as the threat that it is to world
order should encourage timely and more ef-
fective responses. Applnrg an odious label-
"failed"
-helps.
Preventive diplomacy by the United Nations
and world powers is the first line of action in
attempting to arrest a slide toward failure.
Sanctions are an additional response. Then
various kinds of interventions under Chap-
ter VII may be necessary. If, however, as nearly
always occurs and may continue to occur even
under the new UN arrangements, states do
continue to stumble and fail, world order has
a responsibility to resuscitate and reconstruct.
In postconflict situations there is an urgent
humanitarian as well as a security need for
conscientious, well- crafted nation building-
for a systematic refurbishing of the political,
economic, and social fabric of countries that
have crumbled, that have failed to perform
and provide political goods of quality and in
quantiry and that have become threats to
themselves and to others. Good governance
needs to be reintroduced into polities that have
failed. Legal systems need to be re-created.
Economies need to be jump-started.e Some-
times, as in Haiti, the United Nations needs
to take temporary control, as a trustee. This
Iast point is very controversial but is becoming
another emerging norm.
The examples of Tajikistan and Lebanon,
two failed states that have recovered to the
point of weakness and strength, respectively,
demonstrate that it can be done-that failure
and collapse are not end points but way sta-
93
tions. In both countries, neighbors-Syria and
Russia, respectively-intervened and imposed
securiry enabling rebuilding to occur.1o Fur-
thermore, the accomplishments of the UN
transitional administrations in Cambodia
and EastTimor, and of the NATO/EUruN
interim administration in Kosovo, suggest
that effective postconflict nation building is
possible if there is sufficient political will, if
individual outside countries (such as Aus-
tralia) exert it and take the lead, and ifthere
exists targeted, well-funded, and carefi.rlly uti-
lized external aid.
CoNuxuruc WEAIoIESS
ANDFhILURE
There are always moreweaknation-states than
failed ones, and in almost any era a handful of
the weak ones are at risk for failing. Haiti
slipped into this category and failed, after
decades of deplorable weakness but little civil
strife. Then internal batdes began as national
security deteriorated, narco-traffickers and
nonstate actors took charge, and an interim
administration proved dramatically incapable
of delivering any of the basic bundles of polit-
ical goods.
There are more Haitis to follow. Parugtay
is always at risk. Bolivia, its neighbor, harbors
irreconcilable class conflicts and its regimes
are incapable of keeping order, much less pro-
viding fundamental political goods. Ecuador
and Peru are both weak and capable of floun-
dering further. Guyana is mired in ethnic com-
petition, with few resources and poor leader-
ship. Chad, Guinea, and even oil-rich Nigeria
are additional candidates for failure unless their
present and future rulers can develop capabil-
ities to satisfy restive citizenries that required
political goods will arrive and be well shared.
In the Pacific region, Papua New Guinea is
very insecure, exhibiting extremely high rates
of crime and disorder and limited governance
performance, and harboring at least one fes-
tering secessionist movement. Indonesia was
94
until recently in a roughly similar situation,
but clear-sighted leadership, a successfi.rl peace
process in Aceh, the moderating of other con-
flictual situations across the country's vast ar-
chipelago, and a strengthening of the delivery
of decentralized democracy have greatly im-
proved that once-failing state's prospects. 1 1
States falling in the category of odious
dictatorship-the worst of the worst among
nation-states-fail rapidly once the all-powerfirl
ruler or ruling junta loses its dominance of the
local security apparatus. Iraq was one of those
places. NowBelarus, Burma, Cuba, Equatorial
Guinea, hzn,LTbya,North Korea, Syria, Togo,
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Zimbabwe are
candidates for failure and even collaose when
and if there are effective revolts or the leader's
mailed fist atrophies. Each of these cases de-
livers only security and is held together by
oppression and the denial of human rights.
Other political goods are largely provided only
symbolically, or in limited amounts. Hollow
nation-states harboring the incubus of failure
they maybe, but they cascade into failure only
when regimes cease projecting power and start
brutalizing their citizens.
Unless the United Nations or the big pow-
ers develop an effective series of mechanisms
to forestall failure by diplomatic, technical,
or military means-a highly unlikely proposi-
tion in the modern era-the phenomenon of
nation-state failure will remain for years and
decades, and the peoples ofthose deprived and
depraved polities will continue to suffer at the
hands of avaricious rulers.Their human rights
will be abused, their civil liberties curtailed,
their economic opportunities foreclosed, and
their life expectancies limited until the forces
ofworld order decide that despotism and tyn-
anny are serious, overriding threats to global
stability and prosperity. The precariousness
of the Congos, Sudans, and Somalias of the
current age arc, alas, destined to be duplicated
elsewhere around the globe in this decade and
the next.
RospRT I. Rorspnc
NorBs
1. See the detailed discussion ofthis possibility
in Robert I. Rotberg, Battling Terrorism in tbe
ed.,
Horn ofAfrica (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Insti
tution Press,2005).
2. For the argument, see Robert I. Rotberg,
"The Failure and Collapse of Nation-States: Break-
down, Prevention, and Repair," in When States Fail:
Causes and Consequences, ed. Robert L Rotberg (Prince-
ton, NJ.: Princeton University Press,2004), 3-10;
and Robert I. Rotberg and Deborah West, The Good
Governance Problern: Doing SornethingAbout It (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: World Peace Foundation,2004).
3. See Transparency International, "Corruption
Perceptions Index 2005" (Berlin: Tiansparency Inter-
national, 2005), http ://www. transp arency. o r g/ cpi/
2005 / cpr200 4. en. html.
4. Victoria Inez Salinas compiled these figures
in 2005 at the Program on Intrastate Conflict and
Conflict Resolution, the Kennedy School of Govern-
ment, Harvard University. She derived them from
World Bank and World Health Organization data
for various years and from national data.
5. For more details on Mugabe's tyranny, see
Robert I. Rotberg, "Africa's Mess, Mugabe's May-
hem," Foreign Afairs 79 (July-August 2000): 47 -67.
6. Anna Kajumulo TibaTjtka., Reports of the Fact-
Finding Mission to Zimbabute to Assess the Scope and
Impact of Operation Murambatsvina (United Nations,
July 18, 2005). The author was the UN special envoy
on human setdements issues in Zimbabwe.
7. For the theory and practice ofrogue states, see
Robert I. Rotberg, ed., The Worst of the Worst: Rogue
and Repressive States in World Order (forthcoming).
8. See Robert I. Rotberg, "The Roots ofAfricat
Leadership Deficit," Cornpass 7 Q003):28-32.
9. For the method, see NatJ. Colletta, Markus
Costner, and Ingo Wiederhofer, "Disarmament, De-
mobilization, and Reintegration: Lessons and Liabili-
ties in Reconstruction," in When States Fail,770-787.
10. For details, see the relevant country chapters,
by Oren Barak and Nasrin Dadmehr,in State Failure
and State Weakness in a Tirne of Terror, ed. Robert I.
Rotberg (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution
Press.2003).
11. For a discussion of Indonesia when failure
was more probable, see Michael Malley, "Indonesia:
The Erosion of State Capacity," in ibid., 183-218.