Failing Failed States: A Response to John Yoo

Abstract

In Fixing Failed States, 99 CALIF. L. REV. 95 (2011), John Yoo shows that intervening states seeking to transform the social, economic, and political framework of failed states aim to do too much and ultimately fail. Yoo proposes that the role of intervening states should be minimal — enforcing power-sharing agreements between competing groups within failed states, rather than transforming them into parliamentary democracies. Stated another way, he argues that failed states are best stabilized by military guarantees from western countries. He argues that the rules prohibiting the use of force should be loosened to facilitate such military guarantees as a means of re-stabilizing failed states. In my response to Yoo’s, I argue that his proposals overstate the benefits of loosening the prohibition against the use of force and the rule that occupied countries be restored to full sovereignty. By proceeding primarily from a security perspective, he offers a military solution that risks exacerbating rather than resolving the problem of failed states while failing to support his arguments with persuasive evidence and case studies to support the efficacy of his proposals. Ultimately, I disagree with the means Yoo proposes to fix failed states.