Rampant instability draws in all great powers.

This paper argues that the changing national security landscape requires a comprehensive, strategic approach toward fragile states, defined as those at the highest risk of coups, conflicts, or mass atrocities. Threats to American national security including terrorism, pandemics, and the spread of violence and conflict emanate increasingly from fragile states. State fragility has also emerged as a leading impediment to human development, trapping many of the world’s poorest individuals and states in a cycle of poverty and violence. In the absence of a more proactive strategy towards fragile states, a growing portion of U.S. assistance and military resources are now spent responding to conflicts and atrocities after they occur – an approach that is both costly and ineffective.

In the wake of 9/11, the United States significantly expanded its focus on the links between state weakness in the developing world and threats to U.S. security. The 2002 National Security Strategy highlighted that “weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states.” But while the U.S. government developed new strategies to aid poor but well-governed states and to coordinate reconstruction efforts in the wake of conflicts, it has yet to develop and implement an effective framework for responding to fragile countries on the brink of crises. This represents a significant gap and misalignment of U.S. resources against 21st century challenges.

From Southeast Asia to West Africa to Central America, many fragile states are key U.S. security partners that collaborate in efforts to counter violent extremism, disrupt transnational crime and trafficking networks, and promote regional stability. The United States has critical security interests and engagements with these states, which can and should be reconciled with U.S. investments in fostering stable development and effective governance. As the next U.S. administration takes office, the time is ripe for a new strategic approach toward fragile states.

This is the first in a series of four briefs proposing a strategic framework for understanding and responding to fragile states. This series will include:

• The case for prioritizing fragile states and investing in the prevention of state crises,

• An examination of key definitional issues and the state of research on the factors that contributes to state fragility,

• Options for addressing fragility in partner states through development, diplomatic, and military engagement, and

• Specific bureaucratic and legislative reforms necessary to implement the strategy.

WHY FRAGILE STATES?

From the collapse of Syria and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, to the terrors of Boko Haram in Nigeria, the consequences of state fragility are confronting Americans today in dramatic new ways. The complex web of state fragility and its consequences poses an increasingly serious challenge to American security, making the reconsideration of America’s current approach to fragile states a security, fiscal, and moral imperative.

When fragility is not addressed – or addressed insufficiently – crises ensue. States that collapse or lose control over security within their borders become breeding grounds and safe havens for brutally violent extremist groups, like ISIL, which often move on to threaten neighboring states and the world at large. As the conflicts in Ukraine and Yemen illustrate, internal fragility can also make weak states susceptible to interventions by regional powers that use political manipulation and proxy military forces to expand their own influence. State fragility can have spillover effects, as well; rising violence in Central America and the conflict in Syria have produced dramatic numbers of migrants and refugees. In states undermined by ethnic and religious tensions, government repression can quickly spiral into large-scale violence, whether state-sponsored atrocities against a beleaguered minority or the emergence of insurgencies and violent extremists.

Further from the headlines, but equally important, are the grinding, incremental pressures that state fragility places on U.S. military capacity to operate in concert with coalition partners in vital regions of the world. Institutional weaknesses today in U.S. partner states such as Tunisia and Thailand not only undermine the performance of those governments in addressing security challenges; indeed, they also increase the risk that partner state regimes could collapse and be replaced by governments antithetical to long-term U.S. security interests. Key U.S. security partners, including Egypt, Mali, and Yemen, suffered political breakdowns in recent years, and several more are at risk of destabilization, underscoring the very real threat state fragility poses to key U.S. security alliances.

In addition to these national security challenges, the United States also faces fiscal constraints that compel a reconsideration of the current approach. In 2015, CIA Director John Brennan remarked that, over the past three years, there have been “more outbreaks of instability than at any point since just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, matching the rate we saw during the period of decolonization in the 1960s.”ii Since 9/11, the United States has devoted over $455 billion in aid to countries immersed in or recovering from fragility-related crises. Even more will be spent managing the expanding crises in Libya, Yemen, South Sudan, and Syria. The United Nations (UN), also stretched thin, reports that its responses to those four countries represents the first time in history it has simultaneously dealt with four “Level 3” crises – the UN classification for the most severe, large-scale emergencies. For the U.S., the implication is clear: up-front investments to prevent crises would save lives, reduce the burden on taxpayers of costly responses to catastrophes, and reserve military action for only truly unavoidable conflicts.