Weakest states pose biggest threat to world’s superpowers

The Brookings Institution, a leading research center in the USA, has unveiled a new interesting project – to survey the state weakness in the developing world. Although researchers have discovered nothing new, they have conducted extensive work, which provides a credible tool for analyzing and understanding the general situation in the world’s poorest countries.

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With the beginning of the new century researchers and political leaders started raising the issue of failed states to justify the so-called humanitarian intervention to improve the situation in those states. But like many other terms in modern politics, this one is much spoken of, but there is no clear definition of it. Brookings researchers Susan Rice and Stewart Patrick suggested readers should look through common definitions and ratings of weak and failed states.

They themselves offer the following definition: “Failed states are those lacking possibilities or desire to perform four major management duties: to provide conditions for stable and fair economic growth; to create and develop legitimate and responsible political institutions; to defend the population from violent conflicts and to control the territory; to meet the population’s major requirements.” Interestingly enough, the authors note that it is impermissible to associate all-mighty political machinery (for example, in North Korea) with prosperous states.

Using this definition the institution’s researchers formed four corresponding groups of criteria with five indicators each. This system has a definite plus, but also a minus typical of such reports. The advantage is that the short report incorporated other ratings of the World Bank, IMF, UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization), research departments of the Economist, the Freedom House and other research institutions. Thus the disadvantage is that the data collected by other organizations may be subjective.

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