Ailing States

Whilst the Second Season of the Trump Show continues to break ratings records, elsewhere in the world two events of lasting import are unfolding: one is the election of a new pope to head the 1.4-billion-person Catholic Church, and the other is the war dance between India and Pakistan, two of the largest countries in the world, both capable of deploying nuclear weapons. Normally, those events would be the dominant stories, but in the United States, we remain more focused on relations between Canada and the U.S. and on the messy evolution of the tariff wars.

What unites these threads is that all the relevant actors are ailing states. They aren’t failed states, even though Pakistan is often treated as one. But they are all, to one degree or another, ailing. Pakistan has a sclerotic military autocracy that is barely delivering on public goods and is keeping opposition leader Imran Khan locked up and out of politics to forestall a youth-led surge in democracy (not that Khan himself would necessarily be inclined to govern democratically). India has a messy, illiberal democracy led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose ambitions for an electoral rout were surprisingly—and hearteningly—shattered last year but who retains immense power. The Catholic Church made real strides toward becoming a more inclusive, compassionate institution under Pope Francis but remains hugely divided and in serious institutional and financial pain. And the United States is more riven by partisan passions, geography, and visions of what the nation should be than it has been in more than a century.

Ailing states are not the same as failed states. They function. They perform vital public functions, albeit sub-optimally. Pakistan is furthest along the spectrum toward failure, but even its government maintains roads and airports, a national banking system, and security. That may be a low bar, but the difference between that and, say, Sudan today—or much of Syria, Yemen, or Myanmar—is substantial. There are also at least a dozen states around the world that aren’t failed but whose “success” is maintained through varying degrees of autocratic violence and fear: North Korea and Turkmenistan at one extreme, with Russia, Rwanda, Uganda, Vietnam, and Cambodia along the same continuum but less severe. And then there is China, of course, which is a very successful state in terms of public goods rendered and served—and a very autocratic one.

Ailing states present their own challenges, in that they exist in a near-constant state of muddle. Depending on which part of the kaleidoscope you’re looking at, they can seem failed one day and perfectly fine on another. Until recently, it seemed as if the United States was a well-functioning one, with a government that more or less reflected the multifaceted will of the people and was accorded legitimacy by its citizens. In the 21st century, that proposition has become questionable.

The United States as a state is no longer accorded automatic legitimacy by its citizens. Untold millions do not believe that the presidential government of Donald Trump or the Republican-controlled House and Senate are legitimate. By that, I mean that millions do not believe these institutions are acting as faithful representatives of the people, as imagined under the Constitution. When Barack Obama and Joe Biden were president, and the Democrats controlled Congress, the same dynamic held.

And yet, even with the tumult of the Second Season of the Trump Show, the federal government continues to perform most of its functions, and does so adequately—albeit problematically. Decades of underinvestment in air traffic control appear to be finally reaching a crisis point, yet the response of the Department of Transportation, in addition to blaming others, has been an urgent effort to fix and repair that system. It’s unclear if it will meet the crisis, but it isn’t denying the crisis—and that is a vital ingredient in fixing it.

Some might scoff that acknowledging where the state continues to function well is hardly a resounding piece of good news. Doing what it should do is, well, simply doing what it should do. But the nature of public debate and perception in the United States suggests that we are living under a failed federal state. The plot of the Second Season of the Trump Show is whether Donald will save the state or destroy it, and the audience is gripped. Will he? Won’t he? Can he? Meanwhile, 50 state governments go about their daily business—some becoming ever more tribal and answerable to only one hyper-dominant party (Alabama, Mississippi, Rhode Island), and most others more contested and more roiling. And those states deliver the public services they are expected to, most with mediocrity. Ailing, but not failing.

Failing is an emergency that demands action now. It is a radical collapse that opens up the maw of chaos. It is an acute and terminal condition. Ailing, however, is a chronic problem. Yes, ailing can become failing suddenly and sharply, which is why we should never be complacent about it. It too demands attention. But it doesn’t demand the extreme measures of the Second Season of the Trump Show. You wouldn’t amputate someone’s arm if they showed up to the emergency room with a deep and infected cut—at least not before trying a course of antibiotics and some sutures. That’s the ongoing problem of DOGE and the tariff war. Which may be why the former seems to be stalling, and the latter soon will be: if you’re ailing, you’re sensitive to the possibility that some treatments might kill you. Americans may have lost faith in government, but they don’t want it to ruin their lives.

So welcome to the age of ailing states, with the United States as an unfamiliar star in the dysfunctional Olympics. It’s not much fun ailing, but it’s a far cry from failing. And if we continue to act like we are failing, we may indeed fail to respond well—just as surely as a doctor who misdiagnoses a patient may do more harm than good. That goes for left and right, Democrat, Republican, and independent. New mantra for all of us: ailing, not failing.