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Bridget L. Coggins, Strong States, Weak States, and Nontraditional Threats, International Studies Review, Volume 16, Issue 1, March 2014, Pages 142–144, https://doi.org/10.1111/misr.12105
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Extract
In Weak Links, Stewart Patrick interrogates the conventional wisdom of the early 2000s that dangerous cross-border threats emanate from, and are enabled by, weak and failing states. After weighing the evidence for Washington's dramatic shift from understanding these countries as “humanitarian development problems” and toward “menacing security threats,” he only finds “weak links” between state fragility and international threat. Patrick instead discovers a relationship that is context specific, conditional, and dependent upon both the particular threat and each regime's willingness to prevent or counter it.
The book examines five nontraditional threats: transnational terrorism, WMD proliferation, transnational crime, energy insecurity, and infectious disease. Only illicit trafficking (in drugs and arms), maritime piracy, and some infectious disease outbreaks were more prevalent among weak states than among their stronger or more stable peers. Weakness alone has been insufficient to generate threat. Moreover, Patrick asserts that, when they do threaten others, failed states' most acute threats are to their own populations or their neighbors. Far fewer and less intense threats extend to the United States or the wider international community.
