The end result of a failed state is hardly caused by chance, a simple misnomer, snake eyes when the dice are rolled. Corruption and mismanagement are usually the culprits of a nation engulfed in turmoil, with most opportunity for rebound squandered.

Elizabeth Dickinson argues that its no coincidence that Zimbabwe’s anual GDP growth plummeted from 14 percent to nearly -5 percent during Robert Mugabe’s near three decades-long rule. She rhetorically ponders if it is really a coincidence that immunization rates in Equatorial Guinea fell 10 points over the last 30 years as the country became a petrostate.

Many representatives of such failed states, Ms. Dickinson reports, failed to take the blame, admit their respective government’s failings. More often, they blamed external sources such as the media and even neighboring countries.

In lieu of our publishing the CNN-provided video of ex-Liberian President Charles Taylor pleading innocence to the charge of war crimes, I thought the article from Ms. Dickinson is a timely addition to why some states continue to struggle – no one claims the onus of responsibility, no one admits change must be made, even if that change is with themselves, their position, or, dare I say it, their executive.

As excerpted from Foreign Policy Magazine:

“Our country is a victim of much biased propaganda and biased pressures from outside,” said Fatahelrahman Ali Mohamed, a top official at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington. Representing the views of Sudan’s neighbor, Chad, Ambassador to the United States Mahamoud Adam Bechir said, “It is not strange to be on this list, Sudan is sinking and wants to drag us down with it“.

There is something to the idea that foreign meddling contributes to state failure. A fresh influx of weapons, for instance, is one of the surest ways a conflict can reach new levels of violent intensity. As international negotiators flooded Kenya in early 2008, hoping to end post-election violence, 40,000 Kalashnikov rifles were reportedly entering the country via Ukraine in a legal transaction. Last year, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Yemen also purchased weapons from willing suppliers in China, Ukraine, Italy and Belgium, despite strapped government budgets and pressing humanitarian concerns. China and Russia, which together represent 27 percent of the global conventional weapons market, made 40 percent of the major arms sales to the 60 worst-performing states in the index, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Weapons designed in the West and licensed to manufacturers in countries such as Pakistan, Egypt, and China are a proliferating source of small arms worldwide. The numbers are already staggering, but they might as well be an underestimate, experts say, because they include only officially recorded transactions. And weapons dealers are, of course, just some of failed states many enablers.

Clearly, theres a lot more blame to go around. A lot of players help failed states get and stay that way.