Having identified weak and failing states as a significant threat to both U.S. security interests and the international order, the Bush administration has failed to formulate any strategy for dealing with these states. Its new foreign aid initiative replicates this failure, targeting aid to the best-governed low-income states while ignoring the tougher, and in many ways more pressing, plight of poorly governed states.

In March 2002, the administration proposed a new foreign aid program called the Millennium Challenge Accounts (MCA). This is an incentive-based approach to foreign aid: make sure that aid is used effectively by giving it only to governments that can demonstrate a record of good governance. What such a record requires is "ruling justly" (promoting human rights and democratization), "investing in people" (education and health care), and "pursuing sound economic policies" (enhancing opportunities for economic well-being). This may sound like a reasonable, even enlig...

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