Violence Prevention Articles & Essays

It took a long time for the Canadian government to realize that state failure is a problem. State failure is nothing new. There have been many occasions historically where states have failed following on the collapse of empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. Today most states that are weak or failed or collapsed are so because they are fairly new and they have not had the opportunity to develop effective political, economic and social institutions.

State failure is now in the news largely because it is considered to be a security and not just a developmental issue. To put state failure on the radar screen you have to convince people that their security may be affected. That's not easy to do. We Canadians tend to feel we are isolated from the world's problems. Nevertheless, when our neighbour to the south decides that this is something important, we usually go along with them. Not always. But we have been active with working in partnership with our allies on these issues for the last 10 years on peace support missions, in the Middle East and in the war against terrorism in Afghanistan.

Canada needs to figure out which failed states are of importance to us.. We could say all of them matter, but they matter for different reasons. It is going to take lengthy discussion between academics, NGOs and the policy community to set out a list of priority countries. The Canadian government has already produced a list of countries but there only a few failed states on it among the 50 or so potential candidates.

To be sure, there will always be situations that will require more than just Canadian efforts. On other occasions there will be situations, a relatively small country for example or an island state, where Canada could have a significant impact by taking the lead or even acting on its own. For example, the collapse of Nigeria or North Korea would be overwhelming. Both would produce significant regional problems. For a medium-sized country like Canada, we have to look at our engagement in these kinds of situations in terms of our own effectiveness. Given that we will be part of a team working together, our contribution may amount to less than 5 percent of the total.

It may be that in a situations of lesser salience, Canada could be more effective. There are fewer things to do and the problems may be less overwhelming. So it is not an easy choice. Can we risk ignoring a small country's collapse, knowing that we might be pretty effective in doing something about its problems? For example, in Haiti, the mistake we made in the early 1990s was pulling out too quickly. Had we stayed the course, we would not have seen a recurrence of that country's problems. The lesson there is that in a small country one can be fairly effective, but you do need to stay the course.

Similarly, what we are watching unfold in Sudan right now is a very anxious moment, to say the least, because there is a great deal of hope that the African Union will be able to develop its own conflict prevention and management capacity to address the problems in Sudan and elsewhere on the continent. But what is anxious about it, is that we are not absolutely certain that the outcome will be a positive one. There is partly the obligation to contribute to the African Union's capacity, and Canada is doing that with a fair amount of aid that is being distributed to both Sudan and the African Union. But we have to wait on the "sidelines", while people are being killed. For those who monitor human rights abuses, this is simply not appropriate.

In general terms, there is now an almost unshakable belief that regional organizations should take more of a leading role in addressing security problems including state failure. It is easy to say that NATO is probably the most effective military organization and has experience in dealing with these issues in the past and should take on some role, for example, in Sudan. But what is the long-term sustainability of that process, and how will that be perceived by those within Africa, who historically have experienced outside interference far too often? Unfortunately, the UN has not come out looking very good after many of the recommendations in the High Level Panel were rejected , so there will continue to be increasing support for regional solutions to regional problems.

One could argue that integrating states into global, regional or local institutional frameworks is in itself a preventive measure. However, it may be premature to draw a conclusion as to whether these kinds of conflict prevention mechanisms work. These are long-term efforts, and it is sometimes in the range of 15-20 years before we have any degree of certainty about whether they have been successful. For example, we don't have a precise methodology yet, that would allow us to firmly conclude that shoring up human security in weak states is actually going to lead to long-term prevention. We would like to think it does, and we need to develop tools to allow us to evaluate that impact.

For the Canadian government there is a real challenge ahead. It is difficult to convey the long-term consequences and risks associated with failing to act at the earliest stages. But if the Canadian government is going to talk about state failure in the context of prevention, then we do need to think strategically and we do need to identify both the risks and the rewards of acting in a preventive way. Canadians need to understand that it is in their interest to do so.

David Carment is Professor of International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa and a fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute. You can access research and interviews of Professor Carment on the issue of State Failure here: http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/cip-pic/current_discussions/...