How can the international system be homogenous when there are so many tensions, so many contradictions and so many failures in extending the state model on the world, overall the world? And this is probably one of the main features of our <i>Espace mondial</i>, the international system is obviously heterogeneous. It’s heterogeneous not only in the meaning gave by Raymond Aron when he said that different kinds of regimes were coexisting during the cold war and the bipolar system. Of course USSR and the US, Eastern Europe and Western Europe were not made of the same regimes, but all of them were states, were frankly states, rooted in the Western tradition. USSR, even USSR if it was also an Empire, was profoundly affected by the state tradition which grew up in Europe. Now, in a global order, the things are quite different, that’s to say it’s not only a question of difference of regimes, but it’s a question of coexistence of different kinds of political systems. And among those political systems, we have to notice so many collapsing states, and this global order so heterogeneous is of course very difficult to rule. How can we rule an international order, which is made of so many contradictions, of so many different cultures of politics and which is so deeply affected by the crisis and the failure of the western state exportation? So that’s why, if we want to have access to this international order, we have to point out four kinds of deviant political systems, I would take into account: virtual states, microstates, failed states and rogue states. These different categories are now frequently used by analysts but also by political actors, so we have to create a kind of order in this very anarchical use of these different concepts. First, virtual states. You know that “virtual states” was coined by the great American political scientist and economist: Richard Rosecrance, and Richard Rosecrance pointed the case of those states, which have a capacity, which is not based on territory and material resources, but which is based on non-material resources. Richard Rosecrance takes the example of Singapore. Singapore doesn’t find its capacity in its territory, which is very small, very tight, but from the informal relationship, the virtual relationship which made it as one of the main trade actors in our present global world. This is a break, because if we take into account the European history, European history is exclusively based on territorial construction, is exclusively based on material power. And these new kind of state is probably initiating another vision of politics. And here, the main question is: how to make coexist these different kinds of powers? Those which are rooted in material resources and those which are mobilizing nonmaterial resources. The second category, which is a little bit puzzling, is the microstate. Microstate is defined by UN as a state, which has less than 1 million ad half inhabitants, that’s to say many states in our present world. Those states are sometimes very very small, if you take into account for instance Tuvalu, in Oceania, Tuvalu has only 10 000 inhabitants. Imagine if we compare Tuvalu with China and its 1.4 billion inhabitants, Monaco has 33 000 inhabitants. Tuvalu, Monaco but also Kiribati, Nauru, Lichtenstein are members of the United Nations and are considered legally as equal to China, India, Russia or United States. We can easily understand that this equality can be nothing but formal. And the issue of sovereignty is clearly at the center of the reflection which is triggered by this new category. How these states can be sovereign? How can they have a minimal chance of being sovereign? But also another question: how these states are able to survive with very poor resources? And that’s why those states are sometimes moving to other activities, as tax paradise, or even some illegal activities. We can understand then how this discrepancy generating some deviance and pathology of our international order, and this is important as we know that the trend of the fragmentation of the world order, of the inter-sate order, is now growing and growing. Some fragmentations taking place in Africa, Asia, Europe and so on. The third category is probably the most important one, it is the category of failed states. What is a failed state? A failed state is a state, which is not able to achieve its main functions, that’s to say which is not able to protect its own population, which is not able to be committed to the Hobbes pact, to the Hobbes social pact, that’s to say not able to provide security to all the citizens. These failed states sometimes have no social contract, that’s to say even nation is questioned, some of them are not able to dispense the minimal security that people are expecting. And this is particularly true in war societies like Democratic Republic of Congo or in Somalia or in Central Africa today. These states have not the minimal infrastructure which is needed by a state for being active and for protecting its population. If we take into account the example of the Central African Republic, some places like for instance Birao at the north east of Central Africa are not accessible from the capital of the state, and so, this lack of infrastructure is of course decreasing the protection capacity of the state which is not able to penetrate its own society. But, on the contrary, a failed state is, for the same reason, a state which is more and more penetrated by outside, by powers from abroad, from neighbor states and, for Center Africa, those neighbor states are Chad, Soudan or Democratic Republic of Congo, but also from powers coming from other continents. And that’s particularly obvious in the behavior of economic entrepreneurs coming from Europe for using, extracting and using the material resources of the failed state. This concept was creating in 1991 for legitimizing the intervention, the American intervention in Somalia, but the question was: how can we intervene in a sovereign political system? It’s contrary to the rule, it’s contrary to the international law. And so, the solution was to imagine, to coin this concept of collapsed state, failed state, because if a state is collapsed, if a state doesn’t work there is no more sovereignty, and so it’s not transgressing sovereignty when we intervene inside these countries. Now what is the criterion? And which kind of international institution is able to define in which condition one state can be properly considered, as a failed state. This is a blurred aspect of the question and that’s why this concept is not really operational by now. And the last category would be rogue state. Rogue state was a political concept coined by political actors during the 90s, and during the Clinton administration, when US was short of enemies and was trying to rediscover enmity among some less powerful states, or even powerless states but states considered as deviant. A state which is considered as rogue, as deviant, is a state in which it would be legitimate to getting involved and that’s why this concept is also very dangerous. When you coin a state as a rogue state, you get the right to intervene inside its domestic affairs. That’s why this concept is very political and is poorly scientific, for a very simple reason, which is the same that we pointed for the concept of collapsed state. What are the good criteria of a rogue state? Is a rogue state a state, which is not really committed to human rights? But so many countries are in this case. Is it a state, which is authoritarian and not democratic? Is it a state, which is using a kind of violence? But in all these possibilities we can discover that so many examples are fitting these definitions. So, that’s why this new typology of political systems inside our present world is difficult to build up, we know only something very important: heterogeneity of the international order and difficulties to handle this complexity.
