Failed States in General, and Then a Look at Zimbabwe
April 8th, 2007For most people, preparing for collapse is impossible because they have absolutely no idea what collapse would be like, and no framework within which events may be assessed. Dmitry Orlov writes, “Collapse will not be televised, you will not know that it has happened. You will only know that it has happened to you.” Learning about failed states, though, can help us do a bit better than that.
“Failed state” is a clinical sounding term, an academic term for what many of us colloquially refer to as collapse. Of course, lots of individual states have failed in the past, and several are either in a state of failure now, or moving in that direction. Knowing where your state is on the path to failure can provide you with powerful insights and the ability to make strategic plans that might improve your chances of surviving, or better yet, avoiding the worst of what’s nearly upon us.
In my opinion, all Cryptogon readers should study the nature of failed states.
States don’t usually fail overnight. (Iraq is a notable exception, thanks to the U.S.) Several interrelated factors tend to spiral increasingly out of control, over years or decades, until the state’s power declines to a point at which internal actors (warlords), or other states, will attempt to fill the vacuum. If you are interested in reading a graduate level text on this process, see People, States and Fear by Barry Buzan. (I’ve provided a link to that book on Amazon, but I wouldn’t suggest buying it. It’s WAY too expensive for something that old and arcane. Any university library should have it.)
The specifics of how states fail are as varied as the states themselves. As you read about individual failed states, though, note what they share in common. This would be a fascinating and terrifying exercise for any Americans who happen to be paying attention.
The collapse of the U.S. will, most likely, be punctuated by variations on several failed state themes. The U.S. is too big and complicated of a place to read effectively as a single unit, but when it finally fails, my best guess is that it’s going to be a morphing mass of statelets, fiefdoms and confederacies, fighting against what remains of the federal corporate plutocracy, and each other.
It’s probably safe to say, with a high degree of confidence, that the collapse of the U.S. will be extremely violent.
Why?
Look at failed states with multiple ethnic and religious groups and what you will find is that genocide and other atrocities are routine. Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Sudan, Russia (Chechnya) are recent and extreme examples.
How many ethnic and religious groups are represented in the U.S.?
No failed state in history has been comprised of such a heterogeneous mixture religions and ethnicities as the United States. In better times, diversity might be seen as an advantage to a society. In failed states, however, the warfare typically occurs along ethnic and religious lines.
Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace have come up with a Failed States Index that is pretty good, although their assessment of the U.S. is off—too low—by easily 10 points. Take your pick on which indicators are too low for the U.S., but the scores for I6, I7, I8, I10 are outrageous (full index).
Their indicators are very good, but as with all of the social sciences, fitting numeric values to matrices like these lies somewhere between snake handling and reading tea leaves. Those criteria are worth keeping in mind, though. At least they are looking at solid referents to sociopolitical cohesion. Again, read Buzan if this interests you.
Now, see how much you can learn about the future of America by looking at the present situation in Zimbabwe.
Via: New Zealand Herald:
We ask the villagers whether they know what happened here. Someone says something about soldiers. Jonathan explains: “Everyone lost parents and family. No one wants to remember the camp.”
Everyone agrees that the bodies were dumped in the mine shafts that honeycomb the hills.
Smallholders say the hills are haunted and that skeletons prowl, carrying guns.
Thankyou Kevin for posting this article. An extremely sad and depressing situation. For me, it really brings home the vital importance of a strong currency.
I simply cannot understand why the fed is hell bent on crushing the US dollar in order to buoy the stock market? A rational question in an irrational world!
For research on this topic I read this history of Fiat Money in France after the French Revolution in 1790 to 1795 and it showed a pattern that is being repeated today except on a global basis!
Economy slows; cries for currency: 2001——Check
Burst of economy from new money: 2001-2006—Check
Relentless inflation: oil $1.70 to $3.50—–Check
Speculative class growths wealthy: Goldman—Check
Workers start to go broke: Detroit/Subprime–Check
Legislature taken over by wealthy: Congress–Check
News say inflation from greed, gold is bad:–Check
Cities bursting ostentatious wealth: London–Check
Wealthy move money overseas + gold: Exit tax-Check
How did it end?
Fiat money became worthless, wealthy owned all assets and land, poor starved but where ‘saved’ by sending them all off to war.
Fiat Money Inflation in France
by Andrew Dickson White
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/fiatm10.txt
BTW, the Project Gutenberg is pretty cool; a place to post and download free books in txt format.
Another example of a failed state right here:
“Death Of A Nation: Russia”
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9106762987895287402&q=