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DRAFT ; This paper engages with the growing literature on state-failure and nation building. At the present juncture, despite a growing analytical and policy-oriented body of writing, and a renewed commitment to nation- or state-building, the number of collapsing states continues to grow world-wide. These are not isolated problems and any solution needs to take account of the wider crisis of the nation-state system, the de-territorialization of wealth and poverty, rising levels of inequality and the increasingly oligopolistic character of the global order of 'genuinely existing' liberal capitalism. The paper focuses on Colombia and the Congo, both of which represent examples of nation-states that have virtually from their inception been wracked by conflict and civil war to the point where violence has become a key vector of the wider politico-economic struggle for territorial control. The paper also includes a discussion of Iraq. This will complement the overall effort to argue that the way beyond the current crisis of the nation-state system lies in a careful understanding of the specific histories of the nations-that- never-were-nations. The pursuit of development and security can only be successful when we move beyond the current enthusiasm for state building along formal historical and territorial lines (embodied by the current conception of sovereign nation-states). In short there is a need rethink national sovereignty and establish frameworks for the protection of rights and the delivery of basic needs that moves sovereignty both downwards and upwards. There is more than ever a need to formulate approaches to security and development that take 'common humanity' seriously for both practical and altruistic reasons.

The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10,1080/01436590601153572 ; This introductory article provides the context for the contemporary debate about insurgency, counterinsurgency and collapsing states taking place against the backdrop of what originated as the 'global war on terror' (GWOT) and is now increasingly being characterised as 'the Long War'. The Long War and the GWOT are often represented as a 'new' era in warfare and US geopolitics, despite the fact that, rhetorically, George W Bush and other administration officials have on occasion invoked the Second World War as analogous to the Long War. This article argues that the Long War is new in important respects, but it also bears many similarities to the Cold War. A key similarity between the Cold War and the Long War is the way in which insurgency and counterinsurgency are seen primarily in the context of inter- state rivalry in which the critical local or regional dynamics of revolution and counter-revolution are neglected. In this context US policy makers and their allies have again erroneously applied a 'grand strategy' that suits the imperatives of conventional military and geopolitical thinking rather than engaging with what is a much more variegated array of problems facing the changing global order. The Long War is ostensibly a war against various non- state movements, networks and actors, and is even represented as such by the Pentagon and the White House. However, the overall approach to the Long War has continued to fall back on the conventional 'American Way of War' that produces more problems than it solves.