Little wonder, then, that “the international community” struggles to respond effectively to the challenges posed by “failed” states. From the perspective of an alien observer from another planet, the “international community” of the planet earth would surely appear like a failed state writ large; it has proven consistently unable to control the violence of powerful actors (whether states or non state entities such as terrorist organizations), control environmental catastrophes such as climate change; remedy astronomically large economic inequities between individuals and societies, constrain the devastating scramble to exploit the earth’s dwindling natural resources, or address crises such as global epidemics.
Just as Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq are fractured into numerous competing ethnic and religious groups dominated by warlords and other regional power brokers, the international order still better resembles a Hobbesian struggle for survival than a coherent system of governance. If there is some sense in which all the world’s people constitute a society (and why not insist on that, in this era of globalization and human rights?), it is hard not to conclude that the international community is simply a failed state on a global scale.
Rosa Brooks, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon (2015)
Rosa Brooks just kinda kicked me in the butt. I have to admit that when I read about the Middle East/North Africa there's a part of me that says: "Well, thank whatever, I don't live there, it's far away, they've been fighting at least since the end of WWI and what can I do?" But Rosa Brooks says: "Wake the hell up, hello? Airplanes? Internet? Global trade networks? It's one world and we just have to deal with that fact whether or not the mere idea of a global government gets your panties in a twist or not."
Being an American rancher, I do know quite a few people, who, although fine individuals on a person to person basis, do get panicky at the mere idea of a global government. And I understand some of their fears: a global government evokes visions of more urbane suit-wearers and "cultural creatives" who don't understand the brute realities of agriculture or the other lowly extractive occupations and who are basically living off the sweat of our brows while making up all the rules and norms (and accumulating all the QE money.) I get it.
But that kind of resentment is short-sighted, to put it nicely.
"It's never to late to be brave." Rosa Brooks again. Brave enough to look straight at the fact that we are one society and have been for some time. And the sooner we act like one society, the less of a failed state we'll make for ourselves and our kids.
It's an excellent book, that I never would have read if I didn't have a completely awesome though tiny (about the size of a shipping container) local library. Which, right there, is a small, mundane, miraculous example of what a successful society looks like.
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