About the Book: The Myth of International Order: Why Weak States Persist and
Alternatives to the State Fade Away
In February of 2011, Libyan citizens rebelled against Muammar Qaddafi and
quickly unseated him. The speed of the regimes collapse confounded many
observers, and the ensuing civil war showed Foreign Policys index of failed
states to be deeply flawed—FP had, in 2010, identified 110 states as being more
likely than Libya to descend into chaos. They were spectacularly wrong, but this
points to a larger error in conventional foreign policy wisdom: failed, or weak
and unstable, states are not anomalies but are instead in the majority. More
states