Al Shabaab's handiwork in KampalaZakaria on failed states being an enabler of terrorism: he makes the finer point that it’s mostly the weak states that give the West trouble rather than the truly failed, so a Pakistan trumps a Somalia.
Fair enough, but weak states are often defined by their proximity to truly failed ones, like Pakistan is to Afghanistan and the shared non-state of Pashtunistan. Truly troubled weak states rarely, if ever, exist in isolation (NorKo is a Cold War leftover).
So the argument shouldn’t be, let’s beg off working failed states and concentrate on weak ones. The argument should be, let’s be realistic that, until we deal with failed states, expecting the regional environment to improve to the point where weak or rogue nations are forced into better behavior is a pipe dream. If you want a strong regional community, fix the “broken windows” and raise the security level as a whole.
What Zakaria is peddling here is the Colin Powell sort of benign neglect: ignore Somalia until al Shabaab pulls off something truly large and we can spot the clear al Qaeda ties. Then he says, strike. That sounds like a redux of Clinton’s approach in the 1990s, which was amazingly ineffective.
But notice that Zakaria’s assumptions here seem to be all about what America alone can achieve. If your starting assumptions are that myopic, then his caution is warranted. But why start with such myopic assumptions?
China and India and Brazil are coming to Africa in big ways. Africa is clearly the emerging center of globalization’s integrating dynamics. Why view Somalia through the lens of Clinton’s 1990s mindset?
More strategic imagination, please. Time-wise, pay and play it forward—not backward.