【单选题】

The lessons of state failureTraditional diplomacy deals with risks of conflict between nation-states. These risks are of course still present, but a more pervasive danger is that states will simply collapse. Of a dozen or so conflicts inAfrica in recent years, few, if any, have involved cross-border aggression. Instead, bankrupt and impoverished states have imploded, the vacuum filled not by regimes with newly consolidated power but by brutal violence engulfing civilians. The disaster then fans out to neighboring countries, and eventually much farther a fielD、

A、special "task force on state failure" set up byAmerica’’sCI
A、has found that three variables are most predictive of state stability or instability: the openness of the economy; democracy; and infant mortality. In sub-SaharanAfrica, where much of the population lives on the edge of subsistence, poverty and slow economic growth, or outright decline, increased the likelihood of future state collapse, thereby trapping the countries in a vicious circle of poverty and political instability. Rich countries, on the other hand, tend to maintain political stability which, in turn, promotes further economic development.When countries were classified in 1990 by their status in the United Nations HumanDevelopment Index (an index of income, literacy and health), high-development countries achieved robust and stable economic growth during 1990-98, with average growth rates of around 2. 3% a year and with 35 out of 36 countries enjoying rising living standards. Middle-development countries achieved a slightly lower growth rate, 1. 9% a year, but 7 out of 34 countries experienced outright declines in living standards. The poorest countries averaged no economic growth at all, with 15 out of 39 experiencing falling living standards. The flip-side to the poverty trap, however, is that the gains of development tend to be sustained, once countries break through to sufficient levels of income, health and literacy. Conservatives inAmerica often ask why it matters if an impoverished country collapses. The answer is that, aside from humanitarian concerns, crises in such far away places often suck the United States into crisis as well. Since 1960,America has been dragged into military conflicts inCuba, Thailand, Laos,Congo, Vietnam, theDominican Republic,Cambodia,Cyprus, Lebanon, Zaire,El Salvador, Libya, Lebanon, Honduras, Nicaragua,Chad, Liberia,Bosnia, Somalia and, more recently, Kosovo andColombi
A、State failures, or even milder state instability, have also underminedAmerican and global interests through globally transmitted financial crises, drug-trafficking, money-laundering, terrorism, the spread of diseases such asAIDS and mass refugee flows. On the positive side, sustained economic development would create new and potentially large gains from trade, as well as much-needed cooperation in science and culture. Even when a problem is correctly identified, there is a stunning disconnect between risk and action inAmerica’’s foreign economic policy. The globalAIDS epidemic, for example, has recently and wisely been identified as a risk to the security of the United States. What action has been taken President GeorgeBush has called uponAmericans to give just $ 200 million, or 70 cents each, to the new global fund to fight the disease.The failure to make even basic investments in foreign policy has been pervasive, and the examples are legion.Eleven years ago, the last prime minister of unified Yugoslavia,Ante Markovic, launched a last-ditch plan for economic stabilization. He appealed toEurope and the United States for a reduction in debt-servicing and other modest financial support, but was turned down by the creditor governments.Economic stabilisation was undermined, and this helped Slobodan Milosovic to get the upper hanD、 The rest, as they say, is history.In the past two yearsAmerica andEuropean countries have made the same mis