Contradictions and Crisis of Failed States
The International Relations community has focused its attention in recent times on the growing cost of food and its impact on developing nations and the devastating effect the rising cost of food will have on the world’s poor which is currently estimated to be over one billion people. On top of this, most poor countries are perpetually weak political entities and are often ravaged by internecine wars predicated on the struggle to control vital natural resources and land. This past year has seen unprecedented eruptions of riots over food from Somalia where troops had to open fire on thousands of rioters in the streets of Mogadishu over rising food prices, to Mexico where thousands protested the astronomical jump in the price of corn flour. In Russia, pensioners took to the streets to call for price control on milk and bread. The Egyptian government had to order the army to bake loaves at military-run bakeries to assuage angry protesters. Similar protests over rising food prices have been witnessed in Haiti and Indonesia among others. The effect of these crises in most developing economies is the sharpening of the contradictions and crisis facing weak or “failed” states – countries that have been rendered ineffective with nominal military/police control over their territories and not able to “enforce laws uniformly because of high crime rates, extreme political corruption, an extensive informal market, impenetrable bureaucracy, judicial ineffectiveness, military interference in politics, cultural situations in which traditional leaders wield more power than the state over a certain area but do not compete with the state, or a number of other factors”. The current food crisis has the potential of undoing years of gains made in the struggle to alleviate poverty in the most vulnerable economies of the world. The shock to the world economy following the home mortgage meltdown in the United States, and the attendant reverberations around the world, slowed down trade and sent major currencies in the international market into a downward spiral. Weak states have a crisis of the rule of law and are prone to autocracies as is the case in Kazakhstan where the president persuaded his parliament to declare him president for life, and Venezuela where the president is involved in constitutional machinations to extend his rule. It has also manifested itself in Zimbabwe where the president clings on to power despite losing an election. In Burma, the military junta banned the legislature from convening altogether. In most weak states, prosperity does not necessarily mean a life of abundance to most of the citizens as most of the wealth is repatriated out of these economies by wealthy multinational corporations. For example, Exxon-Mobil had a revenue of $404 billion – more than the GDP of about 160 countries, while Shell made over $27 billion in profits and British Petroleum raked in profits of almost $8 billion in 2007. In weak economies, these record profits do not translate to a strengthening of the economy or the development of civil society. In Iran, much of the windfall from rising crude oil prices was used to finance the country’s gasoline subsidies. In Chad, the discovery of oil has introduced a renewed power struggle between rebels and the government. In Nigeria, record oil profits has no doubt impacted the insurgency in the Niger Delta region where there have been attacks on oil pipelines. As of 2008, there are offically 177 countries that are considered failed states. That is 71 states more than the figure for 2006, and 102 more than the figure for 2005.
The culminations of these pressures only helps to corrode the integrity of weak states and exposes their lack of resiliency to cope with the attendant consequences on internal conflict and societal deterioration.
These contradictions and crisis are manifested in humanitarian disasters like in Darfur, Sudan, the displacement of millions of people from their homes as has been the case in Iraq, Somalia, Kenya, Zimbabwe etc., the abysmal state of public services as is the case in most of Africa, the West Indies and Latin America, the emergence of personal and state-sponsored militias as is the case in Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, Iraq and Afghanistan, Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Zimbabwe etc., the inability of the state to integrate minorities as is the case between Israel and its Arab minorities, sharp economic distortions and dis-articulations in civil society and increased factionalization of political leaders as in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Pakistan and Bangladesh.