FROM A DESERT TO A GARDEN IN A LIFETIME: RAPID, ROBUST, EXPEDITIONARY TRANSFORMATION OF “FAILED STATES” TO AVOID THE APPEARANCE OR REALITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL (pages 97-117) by Dr. David A. Jones in THE INTERNATIONAL MANAGER / ISSN: 2348-9413 (Online); 2348-9405 (Print)

Various countries around the world have been designated as “failed states,” in different degrees. Sometimes they have failed on account of their own inaction, such as by failing to adapt to a variety of changing conditions. On other occasions, they have been designated as failures by the rest of the world or by leading nations, accurately or not, sometimes for purposes of the labeling parties that can include social control. Either way, “failed” countries require rapid, robust, and expeditionary transformation, without which their failing characteristics tend to mestastacise much as do cancer cells, and in doing so failed states infect their neighbours, export terror, much as a failing Syria has done by contributing to the rise of the “Islamic State” within and across its borders. Failed states can be resurrected from deserts to gardens, both figuratively and literally, in a lifetime or even sooner. Remedial action must include rapid, robust, and expeditionary transformation, instead of lethargic inactivity such as the world has witnessed across much of the 21st century as one country after another joins or climbs up the failed state ranks in Africa and the Middle East. In the second decade of the 21st century “Great Powers” including the five Permanent Members of the United Nations Security Council have fostered proxy wars across the Middle East, sometimes extending into Africa. Nothing is more evident, nor shameful, than in Syria following an almost deliberate handover by the United States of much of Iraq to gruesome operatives of the “Islamic State” once the United States withdrew its forces at the most inopportune time. Keywords: Failed state, failing state, changing conditions, leading nations, labeling parties, social control, remedial action etc.