In the days before Ronald Reagan, Academics developed concepts like Domino Theory to justify the use of force in faraway places like South-East Asia. Most of the ideas were variations on the theme of defending the world against The Communist Menace. But the Reagan People improved on the rhetoric with the notion of an Evil Empire to describe the Soviet Union…and the idea of a Terrorist State.
But it was Bill Clinton’s speechwriters who first coined the phrase Rogue State…with Failed States coming later. Rogue States…like Iraq…threatened US Security while Failed States…like Haiti…required US Intervention to save them. Shame about the Mess that got left behind.
Most Americans manage to overlook the fact that under US Law their country fits the category of Terrorist and Rogue State better than most. In American academic circles it has long been accepted that the rest of the world regards the USA as the leading rogue state and a threat to their existence. Foreign Affairs Specialists write it as a fact.
But Noam Chomsky is now going round the studios telling Americans that they are also one of the best Failed States as well…and suggesting there might be a connection between the two facts. On this the American People do not need much persuading. The overwhelming majority of Americans take the view that their country has a Democratic Deficit…a gap between public policy and public opinion…although being well to the right of the People, the political parties are unwilling to accept this. And Democratic Deficiency is a key measure of the Failed State.
This brings me to Sweden. Not too big. Not too small. Just the right size…but bottom of the Rogue State and Failed State leagues…alongside New Zealand and Switzerland. To be Small or Not To Be Democratic At All? If State Research were conducted along similar lines to Medical Research millions of research dollars would have poured into statistical analyses of these league tables. Particular attention would have been directed to states that altered their size and shape by acquisition or dismemberment. The statistical findings would have been incontrovertible. Size matters…and a population of a few million is great news for the State’s inhabitants...and the neighbouring states too.
Then our State Researchers would have moved on to Confederations and…the coming thing…Diasporas. Business Researchers have discovered by studying the data that Financial Portfolios suffer from Diminishing Returns and the more items they include the worse they get. The Optimum Portfolio Size is six to ten…which might be true of confederations too.
If I lived in Vermont I would like to know if it were better for my family to live in a Province of a Large Failed Rogue State or as part of a Confederation of Successful Small States at the foot of the Rogue State League. It is good to see this question is now on Vermont’s Agenda. One day we may be grateful for the Academics who invented the concepts of Rogue and Failed States. So much research to do…so little being done. To conclude here are two extracts from Speculation Past in The Rise & Fall of the Swedish Green Party (1982-1997).
After allowing the Norwegians to secede peacefully and create a new country on their Atlantic Seaboard at the beginning of the century, the remaining eight million Swedes continued their virtuoso display of war avoidance diplomacy - a skill acquired during the early years of the 19th century when Napoleon’s troops were establishing military bases along the estuaries of the rivers running out of Central Europe into the Baltic Lakes.
By the time the governments of the European Colonizing Companies embarked upon The Great Folly of employing their young men as cannon fodder in 1914 Little Sweden was well rehearsed in the Art of Non-Alignment. It knew all there was to know about weaving and bobbing and keeping your head down, and had learned how to avoid slaughtering its youngest, strongest, best and brightest men. It had become a small sensible Nation-State that remembered its imperial pretensions of bygone days and understood that nothing awaits warring empires...be they hailed as Victors of the War or Winners of the Peace…except their exhaustion, their division and their subsequent brief but glorious Golden Age…echoes of Leopold Kohr in The Philosophies of Misery…perchance even Plagiarism.
