Why Nation-Building Matters

We are excited to share with you Board Member Keith Mines’ newly published book, Why Nation-Building Matters: Political Consolidation, Building Security Forces, and Economic Development in Failed and Fragile States.

CENSA members can purchase Why Nation-Building Matters for a speciality 40% off discount at nebraskapress.unl.edu using the discount code 6AS20.

Keith W. Mines has taken part in nation-building efforts as a Special Forces officer, diplomat, occupation administrator, and United Nations official. In Why Nation-Building Matters he uses cases from his own career to argue that repairing failed states is a high-yield investment in our own nation’s global future. Eyewitness accounts of eight projects––in Colombia, Grenada, El Salvador, Somalia, Haiti, Darfur, Afghanistan, and Iraq—inform Mines’s in-depth analysis of how foreign interventions succeed and fail. Building on that analysis, he establishes a framework for nation-building in the core areas of building security forces, economic development, and political consolidation that blend soft and hard power into an effective package.