Less than a year after the end of the Second World War, the West began drawing up the sophisticated policy of containment that eventually defeated global communism. Eight years after September 11, there is not yet a similar concept in dealing with the threat from failed states – even though it is these societies that have been the driving force of American foreign policy and its current wars.

Read more in Yale Global http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=12686