"One of the leading challenges facing the international community is how to rescue failing states, those countries most at risk of collapse due to a combination of weak governance, internal violence, and social upheaval," says Lester R. Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, in a recent release, "Rescuing Failing States" "Continuing with business as usual in international assistance programs is not working, as evidenced by the continuing deterioration of places like Haiti, Somalia, and Yemen. The stakes could not be higher."

Failing states are a relatively new phenomenon, and they require a new response. The traditional project-based assistance program is no longer adequate. State failure is a systemic failure that requires a systemic response. (See earlier discussion of failing states at www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/book_bytes/2010/pb4ch01_ss5.)

The United Kingdom and Norway have recognized that failing states need special attention and have each set up interagency funds to provide a response mechanism. Whether they are adequately addressing systemic state failure is not yet clear, but they do at least recognize the need to devise a specific institutional response.

In contrast, U.S. efforts to deal with weak and failing states are fragmented. Several U.S. government departments are involved, including State, Treasury, and Agriculture, to name a few. And within the State Department, several different offices are concerned with this issue. This lack of focus was recognized by the Hart-Rudman U.S. Commission on National Security in the Twenty-first Century:  "Responsibility today for crisis prevention and response is dispersed in multiple AID [U.S. Agency for International Development] and State bureaus, and among State's Under Secretaries and the AID Administrator. In practice, therefore, no one is in charge."

What is needed now is a new cabinet-level agency—a Department of Global Security (DGS)—that would fashion a coherent policy toward each weak and failing state. This recommendation, initially set forth in a report of the Commission on Weak States and U.S. National Security, recognizes that the threats to security are now coming less from military power and more from the trends that undermine states, such as rapid population growth, poverty, deteriorating environmental support systems, and spreading water shortages. The new Department of Global Security would be funded by shifting fiscal resources from the Department of Defense. In effect, the DGS budget would be the new defense budget. It would focus on the central sources of state failure by helping to stabilize population, restore environmental support systems, eradicate poverty, provide universal primary school education, and strengthen the rule of law through bolstering police forces, court systems, and, where needed, the military.

As part of this effort the United States could rejuvenate the Peace Corps to assist with grassroots programs, including teaching in schools and helping to organize family planning, tree planting, and micro-lending programs. This program would involve young people while developing their sense of civic pride and social responsibility.

At a more senior level, the United States has a fast-growing reservoir of retired people who are highly skilled in such fields as management, accounting, law, education, and medicine and who are eager to be of use. Their talents could be mobilized through a voluntary Senior Service Corps. The enormous reservoir of management skills in this age group could be tapped to augment the skills so lacking in failing-state governments.

There are already, of course, a number of volunteer organizations that rely on the talents, energy, and enthusiasm of both U.S. young people and seniors, including the Peace Corps, Teach for America, and the Senior Corps. But conditions now require a more ambitious, systematic effort to tap this talent pool.

The world has quietly entered a new era, one where there is no national security without global security. We need to recognize this and to restructure and refocus our efforts to respond to this new reality.

For full report visit http:// www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/book_bytes/2010/pb4ch07_ss5.

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