When a country is no longer able to perform the duties necessary to maintain an independent government it is known as a failed state. Funds for Peace came up with four different elements to characterize a failed state. They include:• Loss of physical control of the territory• No legitimate authority to make decisions• Inability to provide reasonable public services• Doesn’t interact with other states as a full member of the international communityThe first story I read was “Failing Nations: Why Things Fall Apart”. It talked about some of the different things that can lead to a country to become a failed state. It said that for some countries one little mistake can be a turning point for the worse, but for other countries the fall can happen over a long period of time. It talked a little about some of the things listed above, and also about the danger to the rest of the world that these countries can be. When a country is very unstable its citizens will try to find anyway out, and sometimes those ways are not very safe. Also the location of a country can play a big role in whether or not it will succeed. If a country is a neighbor to an unstable country it’s possible that refugees from that country would flee to the neighboring country. If a country is not very rich in resources it has a high risk of being a failed state, but also on the flip side if a country is very rich in resources it might have to deal with competition and that could also lead to trouble. One thing that I really liked from this story is that at the end it talked about how we shouldn’t judge these countries because if you go back to the birth of our country you would find that we went through many struggles and there was a civil war and all of that stuff. I also liked the point that the US shouldn’t expect other countries to become more like us in a short period of time without violence when it took many years and quite a bit of violence for the US to get where it is today. I thought this story was pretty good, and it brought to my attention how very vulnerable a country can be and how one mistake could turn things very ugly.The second story was called “Shattered Somalia”. It explained how terrible life was in Somalia by telling the story of a young boy who lived there. He talked a lot about the poverty and how, since his father was injured, he had to fish to provide for his family. When I was reading this I compared a lot of the things that the teenage boy went through on a daily basis to things that I do in my life. It just amazed me that to him fishing is a way to survive and also for his family’s survival, and to me fishing is something you do to relax and have fun. He talked about the old dictator General Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and the people of Somalia are still waiting for a government. The teenager talked about the different clans of Somalia and how sometimes they got along but other times things were very violent between them. One thing that really amazed me when I read this story is when he would talk about how destroyed the cities were and how people would get killed by roadside bombs and things like that. When I read stories like that it makes me realize how great my life is. For these people everyday is a huge struggle and they have to fear for they’re lives and worry about road side bombs and such. I can’t imagine living that way.
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