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24 september 2019
Page XVI-XVII
“One factor in particular is the peculiar nature of the contemporary international system, one that despite good intentions arguably promotes political decay.
If one examines historical cases of state formation and state building in the regions of the world that have strong states (primarily Europe and East Asia), the uncomfortable truth emerges that violence has always been a key ingredient…
Today’s international system does not look kindly on interstate violence and the kind of wars of conquest and consolidation that as recently as the 1870s produced the present-day countries of Italy and Germany. Africa, for example, was saddled with an irrational political map upon decolonization, one that corresponded to neither geography, ethnicity, nor economic functionality…
Today, we have a situation in which things that weaken states and promote political decay – like weapons, drugs, laundered money, security advisors, refugees, and diamonds – can cross international borders with relative ease, while the world’s normative structure and the institutions built around it … inhibit the kind of muscular state-building that was necessary to political development in other parts of the world.”