| Abstract: | At the end of the Cold War, the new-world order promised a liberal peace. Instead, there were new wars and failing states. Since 11 September 2001, these are now being scrutinised as potential threats to international security. In late 2001, Somalia emerged as a potential target of the Western military alliance in an expanded 'war on terror'. Military action in Somalia was not carried out and attention has refocused on rebuilding the state through diplomacy and development. For the past ten years, conventional approaches to diplomacy and development have been unable to restore the state and place the country on the road to liberal democracy. Renewed diplomatic and development efforts to resurrect the Somali state are likely to prove equally problematic if the existing processes of development in Somalia are ignored. These processes need to be assessed not as a failure of development, but as a response to, and reflection of, existing global development policies and processes. In this sense, it may be better to understand state collapse and statelessness not as a 'failure', but as something strived for. |
