IGPCs are effective.

While largely envisioned as a civilian program, the report also spells out a number of needed steps to help ensure that U.S. security assistance in fragile states is coordinated into a broader political and economic strategy to build rather than undermine legitimacy and accountability.

There are models through which similar approaches by the United States and partners have worked in the past. When the United States has engaged in patient, long-term, and well-grounded strategic efforts to assist countries making difficult transitions, the results have often been impressive. Fifteen years of U.S. investment in both diplomacy and assistance have many viewing Colombia as a promising success story on the international stage. Similarly, considerable U.S. assistance to Liberia helped that country not only emerge from a ravaging civil war but also cope with the Ebola outbreak. Massive U.S. assistance to former Eastern bloc countries after the fall of the Berlin Wall played a key role in supporting their accession to the European Union and securing lasting political and economic reforms.

Coupled with existing international and regional support, Inclusion, Growth, and Peace Compacts would offer a new and potentially transformative development tool for assisting fragile states as they try to achieve lasting stability and economic prosperity. For the United States and its partners, every success in this regard would represent potentially one less crisis on the international radar. And by any reckoning, the United States has a considerable vested interest in reducing the number of fragile states in order to moderate the spread of infectious diseases, crack down on criminal and extremist networks, prevent vast spending on humanitarian or security assistance, provide greater opportunities for trade, and shape more reliable allies and partners.