Capacity-Building Outside the State-Building Framework?

International state-building has been severely criticised for being an externally led intervention based on a liberal democratic blueprint, with the rapid collapse of the Afghan state to the Taliban in 2021 epitomising the failures of such state-building. A better solution, many have argued, is to support locally led state-building. For many areas of capacity-building this may indeed be a much-improved approach, but it remains unclear what this local turn means for military capacity-building. Harmonie Toros argues that such changes are likely to result in capacity-building interventions with non-state armed groups that do not promote and may directly oppose state-building, and concludes by examining the principal risks and benefits of adopting such an approach. ◼