Page 1TitlesCHAPTER 11 An Agenda for Action Page 2Titlesi: What Needs to Happen? I ,.' Page 3TitlesBreaking the Natural Resource Trap Lifelines for the Landlocked Page 4Page 5TitlesBreaking Out of Limbo Who Should Make It Happen? Mobilizing Changes in Aid Policy Page 6TitlesMobilizing Changes in Military Intervention Mobilizing Changes in Our Laws and the Promulgation of Page 7TitlesMobilizing Changes in Trade Policy Problems of Coordination Page 8TitlesProblems of Focus Page 9TitlesWhat Can Ordinary People Do? Page 10Titlesi Research on WhichCHAPTER11An Agenda for ActionWE HAVEBEENTHROUGH the costs that the countries of the bottombillion are inflicting on themselves, on each other, and on us. I have triedtoput some numbers on the cost of a civil war and the cost of a failingstate. They are big numbers. But really it is not necessarytobe that so-phisticated. I have a little boy who is six. I do not want himtogrow up ina world with a vast running sore-a billion people stuck in desperate con-ditions alongside unprecedented prosperity.And stuck they will be. Clearly there are brave people within these so-cieties who are strugglingtoachieve change. It is important to us thatthese people win their struggle, but the odds are currently stacked againstthem. We have been through the traps: conflict, natural resources, beinglandlocked, bad governance. They have kept these countries stagnant forforty years, and I do not see much reason for the next couple of decades tobe very different. Will globalization improve the situation? We have beenthrough what it is likely to do for the countries at the bottom. Trade ismore likely to lock them into natural resource dependence than to opennew opportunities, and the international mobility of capital and skilledworkers is more likely to bleed them of their scanty capital and talent thanto provide an engine of growth.If the world is like that in two decades, then, given my profeSSion, myson is going to ask me what I did to avoid it. It has been easy for metodosomething: I have written this. But do not think that just because your176THE STRUGGLE FOR THE BOTTOM BILLIONwork is unconnected with development you are off the hook. You are acitizen, and citizenship carries responsibilities. In the 1930s the worldsleepwalked into the avoidable catastrophe of World War II because elec-torates in the United States and Europe were too lazy to think beyond thepopulist recipes of isolationism and pacifism. These mistakes led to theslaughter of their children.Itis the responsibility of all citizens to preventus from sleepwalking into another avoidable catastrophe that our childrenwould have to face.And avoidable it is. In this book we have discussed four instruments:aid, security, laws and charters, and trade. Each of these has some bite, yetat present we are using the first quite badly and the three others scarcely atall. Why have the governments of rich countries been so incompetent?Electorates get what they deserve. Popular thinking on development isfogged by lazy images and controversies: "Globalization will fix it" versus'They need more protection," 'They need more money" versus "Aid feedscorruption," "They need democracy" versus 'They're locked in ethnic ha-treds," "Go back to empire" versus "Respect their sovereignty," "Supporttheir armed struggles" versus "Prop up our allies." These polarizations areuntenable, and I hope that you have picked up some sense of how quan-titative research on these issues challenges them.Itis now time to pull it all together. In Part 2 we went through thetraps, and in Part 4 we went through the instruments.Itis now time to re-late the instruments to the traps. Not everything is appropriate every-where. Trap by trap, what combination of instruments is likely to be mosteffective?The other key question concerns who is going to make all this happen.Since there is no world government, what is the realistic balance of actionsbetween the rich countries and the bottom-billion societies themselves?Which actions need to be done cooperatively, and how might that happen?Given that even within each group coordination is so difficult, what is theminimum that we can get away with, and how might it be achieved?,,'r-'i:What Needs to Happen?Let's revisit the traps and see how they can be broken by the instrumentswe now have.,I~', AN AGENDA FOR ACTION177~,,.'~"~,~~fBreaking the Conflict Trap~:!;,The conflict trap has two points of intervention: postconflict and deep pre-vention. Since around half of all civil wars are postconflict relapses, andsince these happen in only a few countries, getting a postconflict interven-tion to work better is a good place to start.Itis particularly pertinent at themoment because there have been a lot of recent peace settlements,Of the four instruments, I think that in postconflict situations we canmore or less forget about trade. Afghanistan isn't going to export anythingsoon except drugs.Aid to postconflict societies used to be too little too soon. That is al-ready changing. Donors are learning that postconflict situations take timeto get better and that aid is more usefully phased over a decade rather thandumped in a rush. The crushing needs of the early postconflict periodcollide with government incapacity. One way around this is to deliver thekey basic services through the independent service authority model: com-peting organizations provide the services on the ground while the author-ity finances and scrutinizes their performance. This would enable donorsto coordinate, pooling funds into the authority. They could, of course, co-ordinate through budget support, but many postconflict governments arejust too weak for this to be wise. It will also usually make sense for donorsto fund traditional projects to restore infrastructure, but they will need ex-ceptionally substantial supervision both to ensure success and to guardagainst corruption.Security in postconflict societies will normally require an external mili-tary presence for a long time. Both sending and recipient governmentsshould expect this presence to last for around a decade, and must committo it. Much less than a decade and domestic politicians are liable to playawaiting game rather than building the peace, and firms are likely to bewary of investing. Much more than a decade and citizens are likely to getrestive for foreign troops to leave the country. To be effective, an externalpresence requires troops with a mandate to fight to preserve the peace,