Global Arab Network | Robert Gates: So-called failed states & US foreign policy in the Middle East

Translate this article to your language:

GANPublications

e-Publications

Add Site to Favorites

Add Page to Favorites

Make Homepage

Share This Page

RSS Feed

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| |

Robert Gates: So-called failed states & US foreign policy in the Middle East

Global Arab Network - Arab Media Watch

Sunday, 15 August 2010 19:00

In the May-June 2010 issue of influential magazine Foreign Affairs, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates states wrote: "In the decades to come, the most lethal threats to the United States' safety and security are likely to emanate from states that cannot adequately govern themselves or secure their own territory. Dealing with such fractured or failing states is, in many ways, the main security challenge of our time."

There is no doubt that so-called 'failed states' are firmly on the US foreign policy radar in 2010, and the recent bombings in Uganda have brought the issue sharply into focus. As was recently reported widely, the US has expanded its covert military operations to 75 countries, and conducts many operations from Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, home to around 2,000 military personnel.

Two countries in particular that find themselves squarely on the radar and in the Western public imagination are Somalia and Yemen. Prior to 25 December 2009 and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253, Yemen and Somalia found themselves only infrequently lumped together in the media - and then the common context was related to the body of water that separates them, be it shipping or refugees.

Since then, the increase in mentions in the British media has been almost fourfold, with the two lumped together seemingly because they are close to one another, and both rank highly on the failed-states index, a list produced by Foreign Policy magazine which ranks 60 of the world's most failed states. Four of the top 15 are members of the Arab league (Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and Yemen), while overall 10 countries from the region feature in the list.

These 'ungoverned spaces,' we are told, create the conditions necessary for the incubation of transnational terrorism, such as was attempted on Flight 253. Taking into account that Yemen is not as 'failed' as Somalia, the label 'failing' is often attached instead, but the validity of the 'ungoverned spaces' concept receives little attention.

This encourages short-sighted policy responses, as it ignores the fact that methods of governance do not need to resemble those common in the West for there to be some system of order: in many places, systems of tribal self-government have been around much longer than modern Western democracy.

So in parts of the Western imagination, 'failing' leads to 'failed' which leads to al Qaeda, pigeon-holing everything and everyone as either terrorists or on their way to being terrorists (Southern Sudan, in anticipation of secession, is sometimes described as a 'pre-failed state'). That allows only a very narrow conception of identity, which unsurprisingly people in the region object to.

One further observation is that a lot of Western comment on the subject of 'failed states' belies a certain frustration that at policy level, little of the action undertaken to remedy the negative ramifications (especially affecting the West) of 'state failure' seems to have been successful, or to have provided enough clues on the way ahead.

Worse still, alternative measures to political engagement at the government-to-government level that some are proposing - such as disengagement and intelligence-led airstrikes - renders policy politically indistinguishable from the George W Bush presidency, a man who returned no great successes for his efforts.

The range of problems affecting such countries as Somalia and Yemen, and the degree to which these problems are entrenched, cannot readily be subsumed under one catch-all term. Using terminology - such as 'failed states' - that makes it seem it can convey enough of the required contextual information is misleading.

These essentialised, sensationalised, media-friendly forms are at best a partial explanation, simplified for people who do not have much time or inclination to separate complex realities and ideas from idealised, ambitious solutions.

Such labels become hard to shift while the fuller and more informative reality remains obscured. This is particularly true when the term is 'failed': a past participle, a completed action in the past with no regard or sympathy for future prospects.

If 'failed states,' as Gates suggests, are the "main security challenge of our time," then perhaps acknowledgement that security is not the lens through which the people of these countries would like to be seen would be welcome.

This is not to say that there are no security concerns facing the US, but rather that the humanitarian lens is better placed to build trust and understanding in order to face them.

Global Arab Network

Guy Gabriel, AMW adviser, for more articles by Arab Media Watch click HERE

Add comment

The opinions of the authors in articles published are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Global Arab Network
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Published comments are the opinions of private individuals and do not reflect the views of Global Arab Network