'Fragile states' are a global worry

Opinion editor's note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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The chaos cascading through Sri Lanka may seem singular. And while the specific events — an economic collapse, protesters storming government buildings and the president fleeing the country — may be unique, Sri Lanka's fragility is not.

According to two recently released analyses, several nations are vulnerable to crises, especially as food and fuel shortages triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine spike prices and sink economies.

On Wednesday the Fund for Peace, a think tank with a focus on "the nexus of human security and economic development," issued its annual Fragile States Index. Based on a consistent set of 12 primary and hundreds of sub-indicators of social, economic and political pressures in 179 countries, the analysis comes to these conclusions about 2020 and 2021, years in which COVID revealed resilience in some countries and fragility in others:

"There has been an erosion in public confidence in democratic institutions and an increase in social and political polarization in both rich and poor countries across the globe, which has contributed to a rise in authoritarianism," wrote Nate Haken, the FFP's vice president for research and innovation.

This, he continued, "bodes ill for country resilience and the ability to manage the next shock and bounce back successfully. Without an improvement in social and political cohesion scores, even rich countries can be destabilized."

He cited how the war in Europe led to a food crisis in Africa and the ease at which a pandemic, xenophobic nationalism and violent extremism can flow in any direction. "Fragility is something that must be addressed everywhere all at once, and core to that strategy must be a focus on social and political cohesion and inclusiveness," Haken noted. That theme was echoed by multiple foreign policy experts assembled during a virtual panel discussion that accompanied the report's release.

About a fortnight before the Fragile States Index report, the Economist magazine built a statistical model to study the link between food- and fuel-price inflation and social unrest. Price spikes in these two critical categories "were a strong portent of political instability, even when controlling for demography and changes in GDP," the Economist noted.

The magazine "found cause for alarm about the coming months," especially because debt is rising in poor countries. According to the Economist, 41 countries with 7% of the world's population are at high risk of "debt distress." And that debt distress can lead to social and political distress, as evidenced by Sri Lanka's descent.

The debt problem will likely grow as this period of pernicious inflation continues, perhaps followed by a global economic slowdown. Winter and heating fuel instability loom in the Northern Hemisphere, too.

These problems won't ease soon, and the U.S. must be among the nations proactively planning on how to handle the coming social disorder. But doing so requires social cohesion here at home. That's elusive at best, as evidenced by the facts from and response to the Jan. 6 congressional hearings.

The analysis ranks Finland 179th, or the least fragile state, with Yemen ranked first, or the weakest. In just five years, the U.S. has moved from 158th most fragile to 140th.