Embed Notice

These actors did not emerge from the aether; they did not spring into existence ex nihilo. Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid had previously served in the Italian colonial police and as a general in the Somali National Army. We cannot point to examples of violence between state actors to illustrate or critique the absence of state actors.

In the absence of state authority (and state violence), there would inevitably be conflict and violence among people. We cannot infer, however, from examples of state collapse and state failure, that the human condition in the absence of the state is the inevitable emergence of warlords and a chaotic and Hobbesian war of all against all.

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