Washington's Weak-State Agenda: A Decade of Distraction?/Mazarr Replies

• Published in: Foreign affairs (New York, N.Y.) Vol. 93; no. 3; p. 172
• Main Author: Schear, James A
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Council on Foreign Relations NY 01.05.2014
• Subjects: Diplomacy; Foreign policy; Geopolitics; United States > US
• ISSN: 0015-7120; 2327-7793

In his essay "The Rise and Fall of the Failed-State Paradigm" (January/ February 2014), Michael Mazarr heralds the end of "the recent era of interventionist US state building," which he argues lasted from the mid-1990s to around 2010. Washington's "obsession with weak states was always more of a mania than a sound strategic doctrine, he writes. But as budget austerity and public opinion shake policymakers loose from this dangerous distraction, he predicts, the US will finally be able to focus on "grand strategic initiatives" and "transformative diplomacy." Mazarr also argues that US policymakers embraced interventionist state building with "misplaced confidence." Furthermore, he claims that Washington's obsession with weak states was a costly distraction from larger geostrategic priorities, such as reducing tensions in Northeast Asia and cultivating relations with rising regional powers such as Brazil, India, and Turkey. The failed-state paradigm had an alluring quality -- as Mazarr rightly observes, it was a politically adroit way of bridging security, development, and humanitarian interests.