by Gerald B. Helman and Steven R. Ratner

About the authors: Gerald B. Helman, retired from the U.S. Department of State, served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Steven R. Ratner, an international relations fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, works for the U.S. Department of State Office of the Legal Adviser.

From Haiti in the Western Hemisphere to the remnants of Yugoslavia in Europe, from Somalia, Sudan, and Liberia in Africa to Cambodia in Southeast Asia, a disturbing new phenomenon is emerging: the failed nation-state, utterly incapable of sustaining itself as a member of the international community. Civil strife, government breakdown, and economic privation are creating more and more modern debellatios, the term used in describing the destroyed German state after World...