Chimeric governance and the extension of resource regulation

Abstract

The contemporary securitisation of underdevelopment is based on the myth of mutual vulnerability—the idea that underdevelopment and state failure pose diverse threats both to the developed world and the poor in the developing world. The mutual vulnerability thesis provides the rationale for an attempt to expand the range of both military and regulatory interventions inside the developing world. The promise of these interventions is of a synthesis between security for the developed world and solidarism with the poor. The reality is a form of chimeric governance which purports to protect the rich from a range of imagined threats and which masks an unwillingness to really address the problems of the poor.

One illusion has been shattered on 11 September: that we can have the good life of the West irrespective of the state of the rest of the world…. Once chaos and strife have got a grip on a region or a country trouble will soon be exported. Out of such regions and countries come humanitarian tragedies, centres for trafficking in weapons, drugs and people, havens for criminal organisations, and sanctuaries for terrorists…. The dragon's teeth are planted in the fertile soil of wrongs unrighted, of disputes left to fester for years, of failed states, of poverty and deprivation.1

America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing states.2

Fragile states … are a threat to the national security of the United States … the danger they are posing is unparalleled. Absent responsible state authority, threats that would and should be contained within a country's borders now melt into the world and wreak untold havoc. Weak and failing states serve as global pathways that facilitate the spread of pandemics, the movement of criminals and terrorists, and the proliferation of the world's most dangerous weapons'.3

Notes

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 2. The White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 1.

 3. Andrew S. Natsios, Administrator, US Agency for International Development, speaking at USAID, Reaching for Democracy Discussion Conference, 10 January 2006, National Press Club, Washington DC.

 4. Collier, Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy, 1.

 5. Stewart, ‘Development and Security’, 277–278.

 6. Coalition official cited in The Guardian, 17 July.

 7. Piccioto, ‘Investing in Peace and Prosperity’, 227.

 8. United Nations, A More Secure World: Our shared responsibility. Report of the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.

 9. Duffield, ‘Getting Savages to Fight Barbarians: Development, security and the colonial present’, 148.

10. Cited in Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security, 35.

11. Pugh, ‘The Political Economy of Peacebuilding: A Critical Theory Perspective’, 24.

12. O'Brien and Williams, Global Political Economy: Evolution and Dynamics, 269–270.

13. Cooper and Pugh, Security-sector transformation in post-conflict societies, 14.

14. Duffield, Global Governance, 35.

15. Duffield, Global Governance.

16. Hendrickson, ‘A review of Security-sector reform’.

17. Fukuyama, State Building: Governance and World Order in the Twenty-First Century, 125–126.

18. Piccioto, ‘Investing in Peace and Prosperity’, 226.

19. United Nations, A More Secure World, 14–16, para 17, 21–27.

20. Study Group on Europe's Security Capabilities, A Human Security Doctrine for Europe: The Barcelona Report of the Study Group on Europe's Security Capabilities, 6–7.

21. Duffield, ‘Getting Savages to Fight Barbarians’, 153.

22. Benn, speech at the University of Bradford.

23. Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era.

24. Dench, Hurstfield, Hill and Akroyd, Employer's Use of Migrant Labour; The Guardian , ‘Amnesty on illegal immigrant is ‘worth £6bn to UK’’.

25. Glover et al., Migration: An Economic Analysis.

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27. Barclay and Tavares, International Comparisons of Criminal Justice Statistics.

28. Centre for Disease Control, National Vital Statistics Reports, 18, Table 2.

29. National Audit Office, Tackling Cancer in England: Saving more lives, 1, para. 1.

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31. Kaldor, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War, 6.

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35. Brem-Wilson, ‘What Factors Influence EU Policy Towards the DDA’

36. Tujan, Gaughran, and Mollett, ‘Development and the War on Terror’.

37. International Crisis Group, Islamist Terrorism in the Sahel: Fact or Fiction?, i.

38. Pugh, ‘The Political Economy of Peacebuilding’, 30.

39. Grayson, ‘Dangerous Liaisons: Human Security, Neoliberalism and Corporate (Mis)Conduct’, 12.

40. Pascual, Address to: Joint Event of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

41. Global Witness, All The Presidents Men: The Devastating Story of Oil and Banking in Angola's Privatised War; Human Rights Watch, The Oil Diagnostic in Angola: An Update.

42. United Nations Integrated Regional Information Network, ‘Foreign corruption spotters now in place’.

43. United Nations Integrated Regional Information Network, ‘Foreign corruption spotters now in place’; Global Witness, Cautiously Optimistic: The Case for Maintaining Sanctions in Liberia.

44. Gold, ‘The Attempt to Regulate Conflict Diamonds’; Wright, ‘Tackling Conflict Diamonds: The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme’; Smillie, ‘What Lessons From the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme?

45. Partnership Africa Canada, Sierra Leone 2004: Diamond Industry Annual Review.

46. Partnership Africa Canada and Global Witness, The Key to Kimberley: Internal Diamond Controls. Seven Case Studies.

47. Ferguson, Collusus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire; Durham, The Republic in Danger: Neoconservatism, the American Right and the Politics of Empire’; Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation Building in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan.

48. Krasner, ‘Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States’; Ellis, ‘How to Rebuild Africa’, Pegg, ‘Can Policy Intervention Beat the Resource Curse? Evidence from the Chad–Cameroon Pipeline Project’.

49. Commission of the European Communities, Making Globalisation Work for Everyone: The European Union and World Trade, 21.

50. Bracking, ‘Neoclassical and structural analysis of poverty: winning the ‘economic kingdom’ for the poor in southern Africa’, 893.

51. Klein, ‘Baghdad Year Zero’, 5–39.

52. Klein, ‘Allure of the blank slate’.

53. Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability’.

54. Ravaillion, ‘Looking Beyond Averages in the Trade and Poverty Debate’, 8–9.

55. Malhotra, Making Global Trade Work for the Poor; Pugh, ‘The Political Economy of Peacebuilding’.

56. Bracking, ‘Neoclassical and structural analysis of poverty’, 897.

57. Schiller and Fouron, ‘Killing Me Softly: Violence, Globalization, and the Apparent State’, 211–212.

58. The Guardian , ‘Microsoft faces fines of €2m a day’.

59. The Guardian , ‘Cigarette giant to pay $1bn to EU’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Neil Cooper

Neil Cooper is Lecturer in International Relations and Security in the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford. His research interests include the arms trade, arms control and the political economy of civil conflicts. His recent publications include the co-authored work War Economies in Their Regional Context: The Challenges of Transformation (Lynne Rienner, 2004), as well as publications in Security Dialogue, Contemporary Security Policy, Journal of Conflict, Security and Development, Economics of Peace and Security Journal, and Development and Change. He can be contacted on [email protected]