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This chapter explores a final category of states: weak, failing, and failed states. It focuses on the states in the sub-Saharan African region, based on a belief that the African continent contains more weak states than any other region and, therefore, offers sufficient diversity in terms of cases. On the whole, the weak, failing, and failed states category presents mixed evidence for the globalization school. These states clearly have changed the type of wars they fight, and have reached out to nonstate actors and institutions to help them achieve their security objectives. In addition, there does indeed seem to be an increase in non-traditional security threats in sub-Saharan Africa, although traditional interstate threats persist. The majority of the states in the region, though, have not reduced their armed forces or defense expenditures, nor have they abandoned traditional security concerns to address new threats. Furthermore, they continue to pursue strategies at odds with the prevailing view of globalization, including hard-balancing against regional opponents and military offense.

Most studies of Islamism have focused on the role of oppositional forces. Increasingly, states are also important Islamist actors. States pursue Islamization not only in reaction to Islamist challenges but also because in Islamism they see the opportunity to address the inherent weaknesses of the postcolonial state structure, and to significantly increase the power and capacity of the state. This trend is most evident in Pakistan and Malaysia where both the weakness of the postcolonial state and the opportunity inherent in Islamization have been greatest. These cases deviate from other models of state formation in the Muslim world, and provide new insights not only into state formation in the Muslim world but also into the study of the role of religion in state expansion in comparative politics.

Fragile states are said to threaten international security by providing hospitable environments for transnational crime. “Failing states are inextricably linked to the increasing power of international criminal networks and ‘illegal’ economies,” the United Kingdom's Prime Minister's Strategy Unit contends. This connection makes intuitive sense: Weak regimes may lack the capacity or will to combat crime, while the corruption, insecurity, and weak rule of law found in many fragile states play to criminals' advantage. This chapter evaluates the connection between state weakness and transnational crime, paying special attention to six sectors of crime: narcotics production and trafficking; human trafficking; small arms trade; money laundering; environmental crime; and maritime piracy. It argues that the relationship between transnational crime and weak states is more complicated than popular mythology suggests.

This chapter argues that the relationship between energy insecurity and state weakness is real but complicated, and the link should not be exaggerated. Weak states are more vulnerable to disruptions in energy production and transit. Furthermore, high oil and gas prices tend to fuel corruption and conflict in relatively poor producers, while volatility in energy markets may further destabilize weak-state suppliers—reinforcing a vicious cycle of instability and energy insecurity. In general, however, weak states do not pose the greatest threat to US and global energy security; relatively stronger developing countries do. The chapter begins by analyzing of the growing prominence of energy issues in the US national security debate. It then explores the role of fragile states in world energy markets, and evaluates arguments about the dangers posed by these states to energy security. Next, it focuses on how the recent energy crisis—and US reliance on supplies from developing countries—may actually exacerbate state weakness and undermine US foreign policy goals. Finally, it underlines the importance of energy-rich “states to watch” for US energy security.

This chapter summarizes the preceding discussions and presents some recommendations. This book has sought to map the intersection between state weakness and particular threats, and to trace those “spillovers” to specific gaps in state capacity or will. As its findings show, the overlap between state weakness and today's most pressing transnational threats is hardly clear-cut, much less universal. It depends on the threat in question, the specific sources and manifestations of state weakness, and the will of ruling regimes to deliver effective governance and control transnational spillovers. In sum, it is a mistake to frame the world's fragile states, as a cohort, as a mortal threat to US and global security. Policymakers and analysts alike need to take a collective “time out”, and begin an honest conversation about the relative strategic importance of fragile states—as well as the alternative rationales, including alleviating poverty and human suffering, for engaging them.

There is growing concern that weak and failing states breed new pandemics, thereby endangering global health. Public health has become a fundamental responsibility of the state and a precondition for national security. When fragile states fail to invest in the well-being of their population or to respond to the outbreak of infectious disease, they can become vectors for the spread of disease beyond their borders. This chapter shows that a pandemic disease with global ramifications could occur almost anywhere—but there is no reason to presume that it will originate in the world's weakest states, rather than in another part of the developing world. To the extent that the most direct threat to US security comes from truly global, rapid-onset pandemics, the risks may actually be concentrated in relatively developed countries. Of course, this should not preclude efforts to combat endemic diseases in poor states, given their disastrous economic and human consequences.

This chapter presents an overview of the central theme of the book—the overcoming of “Southern European exceptionalism” and approximation over the past four decades of state capacities and public policies typical of other West European democracies—which the chapter hypothesizes is in large measure a product of the interaction among three forces, democratization, socioeconomic modernization, and Europeanization. The chapter presents a historical overview of the nature of Southern European exceptionalism, one aspect of which the chapter calls “state-heavy” characteristics: frequent resort to repression; corporatism and state intervention in the economy; excessive centralization of state power; and heavy reliance on patronage. At the same time, exceptionalism included several “weak-state” features: an inadequate and regressive system of taxation; strong and autonomous local elites; weak civilian control over the military; bureaucratic incompetence (in both civilian and military sectors); inadequate government services; weak legitimacy of the state; and economic inefficiencies that retarded economic development.

This chapter asks why states with tremendous capabilities and resources—the most powerful in the world—are often unable to attain even limited objectives through the use of military force against much weaker adversaries. The primary goal is to identify the conditions under which powerful states achieve their political objectives when they use military force against weak targets and the factors that limit their ability to use force as a policy instrument. Of particular interest is how the nature of a strong state's political objectives affects the likelihood that the state will attain its war aims. The first section of this chapter briefly describes the dependent, explanatory, and control variables used in the quantitative analyses in this chapter. The second presents a series of statistical models exploring the effects of these factors on the outcomes of major military operations by five of the most powerful states in the international system.

This chapter distinguishes between three sorts of polities. The first are strong states, such as the Roman empire and its Byzantine and Arab successors, based on taxation and a paid army as an independent resource for political power. The second are the weak states, such as the major Romano–Germanic kingdoms of Frankish Gaul, Lombard Italy, and Visigothic Spain, with a landed army but also a strong sense of public power acting as a focus for political legitimation. The third are pre-state systems of the northern world, such as the kingdoms of England, Wales, Ireland, and Denmark. The discussion focuses on the differences between strong and weak states, the basic difference being in the role of taxation. It looks to establish a set of parameters between the economic structures of political systems, inside the broad categories of strong, tax-based states and weak, land-based states.

This chapter examines the difficulties faced by liberal states in responding appropriately to the challenges of weak and failed states and suggests that such difficulties are connected to the tension between the notions of Liberalism of Restraint and Liberalism of Imposition. It first considers liberal states' emphasis on the principle of Restraint within the context of decolonization and explains why this emphasis held no solution to the problem of weak and failed states. It then explores how the policy of Imposition has been much strengthened since the Cold War in that humanitarian and/or security concerns may lead to intervention, including intervention by force, in weak states. It also discusses the empowerment that sovereignty provides to the elites controlling weak states and concludes with an assessment of the liberal dilemma: neither Restraint nor Imposition is effective in addressing the severe problems in weak states.

This chapter argues that variations in the sociopolitical strength of states influence how they are affected by the norm of border fixity. It begins by discussing the concept of sociopolitical strength and the different components that determine the strength of the state. Next, it discusses territorial conflicts and the process of state building in a world without fixed borders. This is followed by a discussion on the effects of border fixity on weak states. Finally, the chapter explains why fixed borders and sociopolitically weak states cause many international conflicts.

Given that PMCs operate mostly in weak states without the capacity or willingness to regulate and control their conduct, more emphasis falls on states exporting their goods and services. Of the key exporting states only three — the United States, South Africa, and Israel — operate licensing regimes controlling the export of commercial military services. This chapter examines two of these regimes with very different underlying principles. It shows that the regulatory system adopted in South Africa has proven ineffective due to its overly burdensome approach, causing firms either to circumvent it or to relocate altogether. By contrast, the US approach reflects the different perceptions of the industry as a potential tool for foreign policy. What both regimes have in common, however, is the power shift to the executive and the lack of sufficient resources to ensure enforcement.

This chapter discusses the effect of the norm of border fixity on weak states by examining the cases of Lebanon, Congo, and Israel. First, it explores the sociopolitical strength and weakness of Lebanon. Next, it discusses the absence of territorial pressures and its effect on state building and political development. The chapter then explores the case of Congo as a second example of a weak state in a fixed-borders world. Finally, the chapter examines state building in Israel and the role of the Israeli military in this process.

This concluding chapter compares four case studies (Brandenburg-Prussia, Argentina, Lebanon, and Congo) and two smaller cases (Poland and Israel). The analysis proceeds along the following lines of inquiry: the level of territorial pressure faced by the state, the process of state building, and the relations between weak states and internal violence in a world of border fixity.

This chapter extends the study to the population of approximately forty weak states whose economies are defined by low capital mobility. It illustrates the impacts of resources, patronage, and local elite rent-seeking on state security using paired comparisons of six countries. Each pair—Syria and Lebanon, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan, Zimbabwe and Somalia—has confronted similar challenges, yet they have witnessed state security fragmentation in one and state security cohesion in the other. Approximately fifteen countries have experienced state security fragmentation (often leading to state failure), while across the same period thirteen countries have avoided fragmentation and witnessed the rise of cohesive state security apparatuses underpinned by rent-seeking. These are long-lasting state formation trajectories, and there is little overlap between the two groups. At the same time, another eleven countries have managed to avoid either of these trajectories, despite their low capital mobility.

This introductory chapter presents a broad survey of the study of weak states both as a scholarly exercise and in relation to the Middle East. The study of weak states is itself a controversial terrain where the very definitions of “weak” and “collapsed” or “failed” states are contested. This chapter outlines some of the more salient controversies involving the weak and failed states discourse, and addresses the question of where weak states come from, examining the causes and characteristics of state weakness and failure. It also discusses the role of the more powerful states and international organizations that have invested considerable sums of money in fragile states because they view them as threats to international security.

This chapter discusses the weak church and the weak state which alone made it possible for Adam Smith's thought to emerge at all, but which set him a range of intellectual problems to solve in his two books. The main concession demanded by the Scots related to the protection of the national church. There were two main strands of Presbyterianism in Smith's Scotland. The war of the loose and the austere raged for the whole of Smith's lifetime. The weakness of church and state gave Smith and David Hume the space in which they could write and publish freely. It then describes Smith's assessment of the Scottish church as an agency of social improvement. Adam Smith strongly influenced Robert Burns on writing his poems. Burns played a large role in creating a mythic Scottish history in which the good guys were constantly betrayed by the bad guys.

This concluding chapter discusses how understanding the distinct patterns of state failure in weak states with immobile capital can inform our study of regime change, ethnic violence, and security sector reform—both comparatively and in the postcommunist region. The analysis of weak states is relevant as it offers a new look at the forces motivating local elites, whose political calculus involves accessing rents and whose actions are defined by the limitations imposed by immobile capital. As the examples of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in this book reveal, these structural and strategic factors combine to erode institutions from within and they can be decisive in perpetuating state power or leading a country into state failure.