Armed Non-State Actors and the Challenge of the 21st-Century State Building

State building has become a 21st-century mantra, imperative for world peace and global prosperity. The intellectual foundation of the idea rests on a definition offered by sociologist Max Weber a century ago: a state is an entity that successfully “claims the monopoly over the legitimate use of force within a given territory.” When states are absent, many presume the result to be a grim anarchy, with rebels, criminals, bandits, and terrorists throttling economic development and spoiling political conciliation. The breakdown of states spawns refugee outflows, civil wars, and mass killings that destabilize entire regions. The task for the international community, therefore, is to enhance state effectiveness, eliminate armed rivals, and make room for “normal” politics to take root. This essay contends, however, that this approach is frequently misguided. States often cooperate with mercenaries, warlords, strongmen, religious or tribal leaders, mafias, or others who retain private armed retinues. The relationships with armed nonstate actors (ANSAs) are not contrary to political order; rather, they are fundamentally constitutive of that order. Furthermore, in many circumstances, strong states are unlikely to replace ANSAs. Instead of seeking to eliminate or marginalize ANSAs, the international community must learn to accommodate non-state actors and engage those groups that have already established themselves on the ground. This may mean accepting forms of non-state governance that are merely “good enough.”5 ANSAs rarely provide a political order as robust or conducive to human flourishing as strong, capable states would. Still, engaging nonstate actors is often better than waiting in vain for a strong state to arrive.