Light summer reading — the other day I picked up “D’or et de jungle” (roughly, “Of Gold and Jungle”) by Jean-Christophe Rufin, bought at the train station. The book tells the story of the preparation and execution of a coup d’état in Brunei, a wealthy Southeast Asian sultanate. Beneath the plot, the book also offers a reflection on the destabilization of societies and the resilience of states.
The coup imagined by Rufin doesn’t primarily rely on direct military action or the brutal seizure of institutions. That phase exists, but it’s only the final step in the process. As is often the case, most of the work consists of preparing the ground: making a society receptive to upheaval, weakening its political and societal defenses, polarizing relationships, blurring points of reference, undermining trust — and thereby creating the conditions in which a series of seemingly unrelated events makes a change of regime inevitable. No event occurs except because its environment allows it.
Applied to a coup d’état, this chain of events pursues a precise political goal. Before overthrowing a government, one must first shake the system in which it operates. But this erosion of the foundations of society, the economy, and institutions can also happen without any overarching plan — almost without our noticing.
It’s the level of resilience that defines the crisis
This is precisely what makes resilience so important. Resilience is not a permanent state but an evolving property of political, economic, and societal systems. A state can appear solid while gradually losing the capacities that allow it to withstand a combination or succession of shocks. Yet contemporary crises don’t arise from isolated shocks followed by a return to normal. Health, security, economic, and climate shocks intertwine in their effects. They form systems of crises in which each shock changes the conditions under which the next one occurs.
The Covid pandemic, for example, structurally transformed global supply chains, increased the debt burden of many countries, and profoundly eroded trust between citizens and governments. None of these developments had returned to a prior state before the impact of the war in Ukraine, and then the current energy crisis, further intensified them.
What distinguishes an incident from a crisis, then, is not just the intensity of the shock. It’s also the ability of states and societies to absorb it, contain tensions, and maintain a minimum of collective trust and regulation. Given comparable exposure to forest fires, for instance, countries with emergency services, aerial firefighting resources, and warning systems are better equipped to intervene early — as we saw this summer. But their resilience also depends on other factors: trust in public information, compliance with evacuation orders, the robustness of energy networks, the continuity of essential services, and the strength of insurance mechanisms, among others.
Vulnerabilities as accelerators of crises
All societies experience tensions, political conflicts, inequalities, or institutions of varying robustness. These tensions are normal, but they become dangerous when they turn into mechanisms for the propagation of crisis.
This propagation can be intentional, when a society’s vulnerabilities are identified and amplified. Criminal networks have long exploited state failures to establish themselves and thrive. Disinformation campaigns are remarkably effective at creating or fueling anti-French sentiment in the Sahel, anti-European sentiment before Brexit, or “anti-anything” sentiment more broadly.
But crisis can also spread without malicious intent, through the gradual weakening of resilience systems. Underinvestment in justice, education, information, civic space, or a predictable environment erodes trust between citizens and institutions and reduces the collective capacity to respond to the small disruptions that characterize the normal life of a society.
A description attributed to a 1999 speech by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela captures this dynamic: when a system lacks the capacity to regulate a small disturbance, that disturbance goes unaddressed, and further unaddressed disturbances accumulate until the system loses its regulatory capacity altogether — at which point catastrophe follows. That this analysis comes from Chávez makes it, ironically and in hindsight, all the more strikingly relevant.
Rethinking cooperation to strengthen resilience
This reading of how crises spread has direct implications for international cooperation. If fragility stems in part from a system’s inability to absorb shocks, then development cooperation cannot simply be about financing projects. It must help create and restore reserves, room for maneuver, and buffering mechanisms that prevent an initial shock from turning into a systemic crisis for those least able to absorb it.
Development cooperation should therefore not be judged solely by the sectoral results it produces, but also by its ability to strengthen essential functions. Yet resilience capacities often remain invisible until they’re actually called upon. An unused financial reserve, strategic stockpiles, or even a local mediation mechanism can seem costly in normal times — which is why they tend to be underfunded. Their real value only becomes apparent at the moment they prevent a systemic breakdown.
Imagine a sharp rise in global wheat prices. In a country heavily dependent on imports, with little in the way of foreign exchange reserves and limited fiscal room to maneuver, this price increase inevitably passes straight through to consumers. Outside humanitarian aid may partially meet the needs of the most vulnerable populations, but the price increase will likely fuel social unrest. That unrest can then be presented as proof of the government’s illegitimacy. A disinformation campaign may further amplify the perception that the authorities are lying or concealing the truth. A violent response from security forces will confirm the narrative of a repressive regime. Foreign investors pull back, or international cooperation slows. Public revenues fall accordingly, leaving the state with fewer and fewer means to stabilize the situation or invest in the future.
What began as an economic problem stemming from an external shock quickly becomes a political crisis, and potentially a security crisis. The economic, political, societal, human, environmental, and security dimensions don’t operate independently of one another — they reinforce each other in a virtuous or vicious circle.
Resilience does not mean preventing every shock. No country can eliminate its exposure to crises, especially global ones. Resilience means preventing a shock from destroying the system’s capacity to function, by building buffers. Buffers slow the spread of failures. They give authorities time, offer populations alternatives, and preserve the possibility of political decision-making. Should we cut our energy consumption at the cost of economic growth, or should we keep economic activity going by subsidizing household and business access to energy? And if so, with what resources — more debt, or more taxes? These are the difficult choices currently facing every country heavily dependent on energy imports.
This conception of resilience is universal. It avoids dividing the world into fragile countries that supposedly need help and strong countries that supposedly hold the solutions. Every society faces the same need to maintain its cohesion, protect its essential functions, and renew its capacity to adapt. This is why the concept of resilience should not be reduced to disaster preparedness. It is fundamentally political. A resilient society is one that can weather a crisis without losing its decision-making mechanisms, its principles of legitimacy, or its ability to shape its own future.
Cyprien Fabre.
Cyprien Fabre is the head of the « crises and fragilities » unit at the OECD. After several years of humanitarian missions with Solidarités, he joins ECHO, the humanitarian department of the European Commission in 2003, and holds several positions in crisis contexts. He joins the OECD in 2016 to analyze the engagement of DAC members in fragile or crisis-affected countries. He has also written a series of “policy into action” guides then ”Lives in crises” in order to help translate political and financial commitments of donors into effective programming in crises. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Aix-Marseille.
Discover other articles from this edition:
- Links that unite – Alain Boinet
- Charity Lottery: An Idea That Has Been in the Works for Twenty Years—It’s Time to Finally Adopt It – Antoine Vaccaro
- Listen to Afghan women—but above all, hear them – Rayhana Karim and Laure Laroquette
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