Word: problem
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...Institution produced, with Stewart Patrick of the Center for Global Development, a 50-page index of weak states that ranks 141 developing countries according to 20 factors such incidence of coups, GDP growth and primary school completion. The idea is to define state weakness in a way that identifies problem countries, and shows which areas in them need the most attention...
...9/11 brought home one strategic truth to Americans, it was that weak states now potentially pose as great a threat to the U.S. as strong states do. But recognizing that fact doesn't get you very far; it only acknowledges the scale of the problem. Of the 200-plus countries in the world, 130-140 are "developing," struggling with some combination of bad government, lack of security, underperforming economies and poverty. How to identify the ones that pose a looming danger, and finding a strategy to manage the different threats they present, is a major priority for U.S. national security...
...Likewise Clinton, Obama and John McCain have beaten each other up over Pakistan. The central government's inability to control al-Qaeda in its northwestern tribal territories, and concerns over Islamabad's nuclear arsenal, make handling relations with the country a particularly tricky problem. Hence the tumult over Barack Obama's fairly mainstream assertion that he would strike "high-value" terror targets in Pakistan if the leadership there could not. The confusion over when and whether to intervene across sovereign borders shows how little light has been shed on America's policy for responding to weak-state threats during...
...shattered by what should have been a small, isolated fire in an electrical substation on Miami's western fringe. A breaker shut down the facility, as it's programmed to do; but it failed to contain the problem, as it also should have, and so in response more than a dozen other substations in South Florida's electrical grid shut down as well. That caused a cascading regional grid collapse - including the Turkey Point nuclear power plant south of Miami - as electricity demand suddenly outstripped what was being produced. Some 3 million people from South Beach to Tampa to Daytona...
Florida Power & Light (FPL), the giant South Florida utility that runs Turkey Point and the Miami substation where the blackout started, has yet to discover why the breaker that should have isolated the fire problem failed. "These systems are all designed to handle two contingencies," FPL President Armando Olivera told the Miami Herald. "We still don't have a full understanding of what happened." Says former Florida Public Service Commission Chairman Joe Garcia, a Democratic congressional candidate, "Obviously, they've got some explaining to do. There should have been units [compensating] in other parts of the state to make sure...