In November 2021, ALLIES had the distinct pleasure of welcoming Susan L. Woodward as our keynote speaker at the Civil-Military Relations Conference. Dr. Woodward is a professor of political science at the City University of New York with a focus area on international security, failing states, and post-conflict state building. Her talk, titled nation-building in the 21st Century, covered the failures and successes of contemporary state building operations.
Since the year 2000, state-building has been a core part of every administration’s foreign policy agenda, yet none has successfully implemented an effective state-building program. Through Dr. Woodward’s talk, we explored the multiple reasons why this is the case: ill-defined terminology, ineffective aid distribution systems, lack of awareness of donor causes of instability, and many more.
