This article was originally published by the Research Center Slovak Foreign Policy Association, available on-line at www.sfpa.sk

Introduction

The events of September 11, 2001 significantly altered the priorities for the Bush Administration’s foreign policy and challenged the approach to international relations that characterized the first nine months of the Bush administration.  The need for a response to the attacks on New York and Washington, the decision to wage war on Afghanistan and finally the decision to go to war in Iraq and its aftermath have dominated the last three years of U.S. foreign policy considerations leaving behind the administration’s original core concerns. Even within the parameters established by the new national security orientation of the administration, its focus on the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and the Bush Doctrine of Preemption, the problems of failed and failing states continue to receive less attention, resources and strategic consideration than we would argue that they merit.  Indeed, the lack of appreciation for the importance of failed states may be seen in the inadequate preparations and resources devoted to rebuilding Afghanistan after the victory over the Taliban in 2001, the reduction of security forces in Afghanistan to assist in the war in Iraq, the inadequate preparations and resources to rebuild Iraq in the post Saddam era leading to what President Bush termed “catastrophic success^[1]” have led to the possibilities of two new failed states as the legacy of the administration’s post Sept. 11 policies.

The issues of terrorism and failing states are inextricably linked. Failing states represent the ultimate disintegrative force – the inability of the state to provide for the needs of it citizens.  From an international security standpoint, such states often threaten their neighbors and regions, not as classic military enemies but rather as the source of instability. Through the refugees they foster, the spillover of ethnic, religious or ideological conflicts, the potential for the spread of disease, and the potential to overwhelm the capacity of their neighbors to care for the disasters they spawn, weak and failing states present both a security and foreign policy challenge. Often weak states become safe havens for terrorist networks – allowing the flow of weapons and the unhindered training and indoctrination of a frustrated population.

Prior to September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration had concluded that it could assign failed states a very low priority. In the beginning, the administration indicated their intention to focus on the issues surrounding nuclear weapons and missile shields and their impact on relations with Russia, China, and Europe. In addition, a clear intent to distance themselves from the previous administration’s declaratory multilateralism dominated the administration’s initial foreign policy agenda.  In these first nine months, the Bush administration caused public worry within the councils of its closest allies in Europe and Asia and concern around the world by its intention to abandon treaties, decline participation in multilateral discussions, thwart the development of new accords, or follow through on previous U.S. commitments.  The administration also made clear their intention to adopt a more “hands- off” attitude to potential problems and crises in the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans.  

The President and his foreign policy team, through their abandonment of Kyoto, disengagement from the ABM Treaty, and their disinterest in all things multilateral, gained a reputation amongst friends and foes as arrogant unilateralists.  How this perspective led the administration to a policy vis-à-vis failed states and the approach to the problems such states pose is our concern. 

The concept of the failed state is not a new one, but in the last ten years the breakdown of states and the gross failures of state governments have received more attention.  The U.S. government established the State Failure Task Force to analyze factors that can severely weaken or cause states to fail and to develop possible joint actions to address these factors.  In April 2000 the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (hereafter, the Commission) issued a report outlining the six key U.S. national security objectives for the first quarter of the 21st Century.  Analyzing the impact of globalization and the emerging security paradigms that resulted from the end of the Cold War, the Commission identified failed and weak states as specific challenges the United States would.  The failed states policy agenda for the next twenty-five years will require decisions with respect to whether to act or disregard, whether to intervene militarily or not, whether to provide humanitarian assistance or not, whether to provide long term development assistance and in what areas or not, and whether to do any or all of these things unilaterally or multilaterally.

The Clinton Approach

The Bush Administration started its tenure trying to differentiate itself from the Clinton Administration.  During Clinton’s eight year term, the United States developed a policy approach vis-à-vis toward failed or failing states that had three component parts: attack the root causes of conflict within fragile states, promote collective security with respect to responses to needs, and engage in preventive diplomacy.

The root causes approach led to policies that stressed open markets and the development of economic links, the promotion of democracy and human rights, the development of infrastructures, and the strengthening of government to enable states to resolve their own conflicts.  The promotion of collective security relied on the United Nations and then NATO for a more multilateral rather than unilateral approach.  It stressed collective responsibility and burden sharing (often more so than collective decision-making).  However, many interventions were carried out on U.S. terms, much to the annoyance of U.S. allies, including aspects of the interventions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo.  Engaging in preventive diplomacy involved employing roving ambassadors and focused on arms control and arms transfers as well as human rights.  The administration enacted a more vocal condemnatory policy toward repressive regimes, but refused to condemn repressive governments deemed to be economically or strategically important for U.S. interests. 

The Clinton Administration remained conflicted in implementing some of these approaches throughout the Presidency.  In 1995, for example, the Clinton Administration added domestic economic considerations to the list of criteria for approving weapons exports and has opposed efforts to create a “Code of Conduct” governing countries eligible to receive U.S. weapons based on criteria such as human rights and democracy. Even when the U.S. wasn’t selling weapons, military know-how trained foreign militaries and peacekeepers, often as a substitute for involving U.S. troops in unilateral, multilateral, and international initiatives.  The Clinton administration was also never able to move beyond the parameters and assumptions of the Weinberger-Powell doctrines developed during the Reagan and G.H.W. Bush administrations that outline conditions for the when and the how of military deployment, which in effect, discouraged the use of the U.S. military except in the most favorable strategic, operational, and domestic political circumstances and established the fear of American casualties and the need for overwhelming force as the two key legs of military policy.  This policy lessened the chances of military interventions and delayed the possibility of such interventions until much later in the development of crises, when interventions are by necessity much larger, as was the case in Kosovo.  It also prevented the development of an appropriate force structure for dealing with the threats posed by failed states.

The Bush administration tried to demonstrate fundamentally different operating principles, purposes and goals.   During the 2000 election campaign and in the first nine months after the inauguration members of the new administration criticized the multilateral approach. While saying very little about failed states during the campaign, Bush did indicate that he did not believe that events in Africa concerned the U.S. national interest and that he did not believe “nation-building” was a proper role for the United States military.  During the debates with Al Gore he indicated that he would not have engaged in “nation building” in Haiti, intervened in Rwanda to prevent genocide, or become involved in the Balkans. But, he did approve of the Australians intervention in Timor (because it was an initiative requiring only U.S. logistical and technical support). And while the United States did provide assistance in Haiti in 2004, the Bush Administration made very clear the limits of U.S. roles and responsibilities.

While the Clinton administration stressed economic development and by implication the integration of the global south and potential failed states into the global market, the new administration tried to distinguish its interest in market driven forces rather than government initiated economic development.  Both Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice have indicated that they believe that the United States needs to encourage the integration into the market of the nations of the world, because otherwise the global south have little to contribute and thus are of minimal importance.

The new approach was not been met enthusiastically by U.S. allies and was in conflict with some U.S. strategic planning.  The CIA’s “Worldwide Threat 2001:  National Security in a Changing World presented by then CIA Director George Tenet to the Senate Armed Services Committee stressed a major concern for U.S. security to address “the growing in potential for state fragmentation and failure”^[2] The CIA’s position reflected the Commission’s recommendation that the United States establish priorities for aiding weak and failing states translates into selective rankings of nations that should be assisted.  The Commission pointed to four in particular – Mexico, Colombia, Russia, and Saudi Arabia – whose stability is of “major importance to U.S. interests.”  For failing states of lesser U.S. interest, the Commission suggests the United States “work with the international community to develop innovative mechanisms to manage the problem of failed states.”

After September 11: A New Approach?

Although the administration seemed to embrace multilateral support immediately after September 11, 2001, and were able to sustain a form of multilateralism with U.S. predominance, by the end of the Afghan War and the preparations for the confrontation with Iraq they returned to a unilateral stance.  Preparations and more importantly, funding for both security and reconstruction have not had the budgetary priority that war making held and thus in both the Afghan and Iraqi cases, reconstruction, political stability and governance have created intelligence estimates that suggest that the prospects for both states are still rather bleak and the possibilities that they could become failed states more likely. ^[3]

Beyond the initial distancing from the perceived view of previous administration as too multilateral and too weak, and the elevation of the right to preemption to a doctrine, another source of the continuing Bush aversion to multilateralism is the continuing U.S. policy of promoting U.S. arms exports and training to countries that have been criticized for of persistent human rights violations, lack of democracy, and even support of terrorism. Arms exports clearly have strong financial benefits to key actors in the American economy and strong political backing within the Congress, many of these arms exports also may extract a toll in contributing to further instability and declining abilities elsewhere.  Since September 11, 2001, the United States has increased arms sales and military training to countries it has deemed crucial allies in the GWOT, even though many of these countries have questionable practices within their own countries and are involved, in some cases, in fighting insurgencies in their own countries. For example, Nepal, Kenya, and Djibouti, relatively minor contributors to the GWOT have all seen significant increases in U.S. military assistance since September 11, 2001. Similarly, India and Pakistan have also both had their sanctions against them lifted (as have Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and Yugoslavia) in order to provide them military hardware in return for their GWOT support.

Conclusion

But how should the United States respond to the threat of failing states?  In addressing the weak and failing state, the Commission argued that preventive diplomacy should be the first reaction for the United States and its allies, including the use of political and economic initiatives. The Bush Administration through its pursuit of its domestic taxation policies combined with the additional costs of the war’s fought in Afghanistan and Iraq have created a budgetary deficit situation which make most discussion of the possibilities of increasing development and humanitarian assistance in fragile states, or meeting its stated pledges to the Global Aids fund or the U.S. Aids account virtually non existent and in any case unlikely to result in political action.  In addition, not only the decision to go to war in Iraq isolated the U.S. from many of the Organization fore Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations which provide most of the development assistance worldwide, but also the decision in the war’s aftermath to not open reconstruction contracts to those nations that did not participate in the war continued the gulf amongst the allies.  No one nation is likely to have the political will or resources to invest in the long term political and economic development process that will be necessary to prevent the emergence of additional failed states, and thus a multilateral approach still provides the best hope for success.  It is unclear if a Bush administration can achieve this.

If preventive diplomacy failed, the Commission stressed that the United States “should be prepared to act militarily in conjunction with other nations in situations characterized by the following criteria: when U.S. allies or friends are imperiled; when the prospect of weapons of mass destruction portends significant harm to civilian populations; when access to resources critical to the global economic system is imperiled; when a regime has demonstrated intent to do serious harm to U.S. interests; and when genocide is occurring.”  The Commission contends that any one of these factors may be enough to justify military intervention.  The administration is unlikely to ever be able to again put together the “grand coalition” of 1991 by the first Bush Administration in which now Secretary of State Colin Powell, now Vice President Dick Cheney and Rice all played an active role or even that which they achieved in Afghanistan.  Currently, the U.S. military caught in the downsizing and efficiencies sought by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the strains of conducting the Iraq War and its aftermath has simply increased the difficulty that the U.S. military would not be capable of a major intervention in a failed states on its own but would need to seek significant forces from potential allies.  While in a true emergency the forces in Iraq and elsewhere could be redeployed this could be an uncomfortable situation for the military.

After September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration made the GWOT the core of its international security framework.  The War in Iraq was, and continues to be, justified as a core component of the GWOT.  While the international security framework changed on September 11, 2001, it was not necessary that future failed and failing states be forgotten. As we argued previously, the policy approach and assessment of the Clinton Administration provided an appropriate framework to confront the problem of failed and failing states.  The Clinton Administration failed to consistently implement their policy prescriptions, but the Bush administration not only has rejected the necessary fundamentals for the prevention of future failed states, it has created a situation in which as long as it remains in control of development and implementation of American foreign policy it will not be able to achieve a reversal of its policy prescriptions having alienated its potential partners and reduced the financial and political capability to provide  long term foreign assistance to states in need.

Michael Stohl is Chair and Professor of Communication at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Rachel Stohl is Senior Analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C.