■"The fate of failed states is our shared responsibility: The rights of human beings are far more important than the rights of more or less dysfunctional states to do what they wish," op-ed by Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 23 February 2005, p. 15.

■"Donít look away this time: If the victim was a man, he was probably castrated; if a woman, she was probably raped," op-ed by Nicholas D. Kristof, International Herald Tribune, 24 February 2005, p. 6.

Another great piece by Martin Wolf, whose book, Why Globalization Works, features prominently in Vol. II

First he talks about fragile and failed states and offers some good observations (by others) on the boundaries of this problem set. The UK government lists 46 countries as ìfragile,î with a population of 900m (14% of world total), with Indonesia and Nigeria being the biggies. The World Bankís more limited definition yields 11 such nations (Afghanistan, Angola, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti, Liberia, Burma, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabweóall Gap, naturally), with an additional 16 named as Low-Income Countries Under Stress LICUS), yielding a global total of 165m.

Wolfís main points are these:

First, we must accept the principle of qualified sovereignty . . .

Second, we must also embrace the principle of ìdo no harmî . . .

Third, we should invest more in prevention . . .

Fourth, we need the ability to respond swiftly and decisively to crises . . .

Finally, we need to achieve full integration of development assistance with other actions, including security interventions, in fragile and failing states.

Hard to do? Sure, as I explore in Vol. II, but as Wolf ends: ìall the alternatives are far worse.î

The ìfar worseî is on display in Sudan right now, as Kristof likes to keep harping. Today he runs some tame photos of dead kids and a skeleton whose pants are obviously pulled down around its knees, indicating sexual assault before execution:

One wrenching photo in the archive shows the manacled hands of a teenager from the girlsí school in Suleia who was burned alive. Itís been common for the Sudanese militias to gang-rape teenage girls and then mutilate or kill them.

Another photo shows the body of a young girl, perhaps 10 years old, staring up from the ground where she was killed. Still another shows a man who was castrated and shot in the head.

Kristof cites reasonable estimates that close to a quarter-million are dead in this manner, with numbers accumulating at roughly 10,000 a month. When I argue for the A-to-Z Core-wide system for processing politically-bankrupt states, I donít see it as some distant goal for distant problems, but a serious, short-term answer for ongoing genocide thatís occurring on our watch.

Kristof wants sanctions, a no-fly zone, freezing of government assets, killers sent off to the International Criminal Court, a ìteam effortî by Arab and African states to pressure Sudan (good luck with that one) and an international peacekeeping force of Africans (even less plausible), but one with financing and logistical support from the Core (now weíre getting somewhere).

What Kristof wants is what I want: a system to deal with these sorts of atrocities, and waiting on the Gap to come up with one on its own, or the UN, is simply fanciful. Itíll be a group of Core heavyweights. Itíll look like a Star Chamber and the vengeance will smack of Dirty Harry-like retribution.

And thatíll be a very good thingónot sort of good, not kind of good, but absolutely good.