Revisiting the Category of Fragile and Failed States in International Relations

International Relations scholars and policy-makers are increasingly paying greater attention to a new category of fragile and failed states across Asia, Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Latin America and the Middle East. While effective policy responses are necessary to strengthen these politically fractured, economically collapsing and socially divided states, the category itself appears to be more politically and ideologically charged and less critically understood in the context of international relations. There is a general tendency to avoid examining how political and economic policies and military actions by the West contributed to the degeneration of these states. This article seeks to re-examine the causes of state fragility and failure, and critically reviews the current US strategies to rebuild the failed states of Afghanistan and Iraq. It argues that the US-led statebuilding strategies in both countries are based on a wrong diagnosis of the political and social problems, and the solutions offered are also ill-conceived. The article also contends that the Western liberal vision of the state, premised on the Weberian notion, commands less relevance to the fragile and failed states in the non-Western world.