Book Review: State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century by Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama’s important new book on nation building asks all the right questions, but it does not provide answers to them. He rightly sees that the major problem in modern international politics is not primarily when to use force, it is what to do after an invader has already succeeded and is in occupation of the disputed territory. One can win the war, and, as the United States is doing presently in Iraq, lose the peace. After the fact, this can strongly condition whether it was a right decision to go in, in the first place. The evidence for this problem is legion. The United States, the EU, and NATO won in Bosnia and Kosovo, but they have not won the peace, in the sense of leaving a stable domestic government in charge of its political fortunes. The Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina still calls the shots. Nor is Kosovo—under NATO tutelage—truly independent. The United States has gone into Haiti time and again without giving Port au Prince a stable and uncorrupt government. The various interventions in Africa by the United States, France, and the African Union have not provided effective government for the countries concerned. Sierra Leone, the Congo, Liberia, and Somalia are still bleeding. There is even the possibility that intervention actually makes matters worse, in that it smashes whatever local administrative capacity there once was.