Why Are International Interventions In Failing/Fragile States So Problematic?

Remember my struggling with a paper on how best to deal with failing/fragile states?

Thanks to all those who sent ideas.

Here is an extract from the finished product, which lists some of the grisly dilemmas which arise at the practical and policy levels alike:

There will be no consensus anywhere on ‘root causes’ and the best way of tackling them. The external view on priorities may not coincide with what the best available local leaders think needs doing. Plus sequencing priorities in theory and in practice are two different things. Resources are inadequate or ‘sticky’, hard to transfer swiftly to new tasks. Usually both.

Which is why reasonable and well-informed people dealing with a fragile/failing state disagree over many fundamental points:

Work with leaders who have got the country into its mess but who at least have experience and guile? Or try to start with a clean sheet?

Boost the central state government and its power/authority? Or go for decentralisation of power?

Try to boost moderates by marginalising extremists? Or try to bring in ‘moderate extremists’ as the best chance for progress?

Work to promote a ‘modern’ state sector, or try to identify traditional/informal power networks (eg ‘elders’, clan leaders) and work with them?

Boost small businesses to create jobs or go for large-scale projects?

Tackle head-on local taboos and give women/homosexuals full rights and opportunities as a catalyst for wider/deeper social change, or try to build on local traditions to avoid alienating conservative-minded communities?

Try to impose a local currency or let market forces decide what works?

Stamp hard on corruption, or turn a blind eye as it is ‘how things are done here’?

What about medical services? How to supply new modern drugs and equipment if it is not clear that they can be used properly?

How to balance spending between immediate priorities and saving schemes to build up pension funds for longer-term state viability?

How to influence education of young people to stop indoctrination?

What if liberalisation of market conditions creates alarming new disparities between rich and poor, the more so if disgraced former regime members grab the best opportunities?

And environmental issues – vital to promote the latest carbon-neutral practices/technologies/buildings, even if they cost more?

Many of these policies have an obvious or implicit ‘security’ dimension:

Confront local strongmen to allow more moderate pluralist forces to flourish, or cynically woo them to build local coalitions of the tough and effective as the pragmatic way forward?

Dismantle key former institutions which have played a key role in suppression of the local population, or merely ‘behead’ them by removing key known leaders and try to reform the remaining cadres?

Try to collect weaponry from the local population, or not?

Push to get refugees and internally displaced people back to their original homes in the face of angry opposition from the communities now living there, or accept that there have been irreversible population movements and build instead on new realities?

Put more development resources into training police and army cadres properly rather than local development initiatives?

In any of these areas, better to focus on quick visible wins to show the local population that some progress is being made? Or be more ‘strategic’/methodical and try to look at deeper issues where success might be far harder to achieve but the potential gains are much bigger?

And as well as all that, donors have to choose not only between what is essential, what is desirable and what is useful, but also between what is actually likely to work and be deliverable, given the prevailing security problems, resource constraints and other circumstances.

In short, where to start ‘intervening’ – and where to stop?

When do problems cease to be problems and become facts of life?