What fragile states present the greatest risk to the United States and surrounding regions?
Today, Pakistan is the most important fragile state to the United States because Pakistan’s inability to control the tribal areas along its northern border has allowed al-Qaeda to regroup and a number of terrorist groups to target U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s fragility and its resulting hospitability to terrorists also endanger neighboring India and, indeed, the wider world. Pakistan’s fragility defies an easy solution. Decades of political, economic, and social exclusion have left many of Pakistan’s people—most noticeably those in the tribal belt—badly estranged from the state, making any resolution of its deep troubles unlikely in the short term. Weak government, profound social cleavages, a military deeply entrenched in politics and business, bad relations with its neighbors, and now a growing insurgency all work to exacerbate the country’s failings. It is likely that we will be trying to fix Pakistan for decades to come. Lebanon’s fragility has allowed Hezbollah
