Troops storm Madagascar presidential palace

By Josh Emberton

As the world makes the turn towards an economic crisis the risk to already weakly held countries losing their stabilitiy increases. Such is the case in Madagascar, which is now running a tight line between losing control completely. On the one hand you have the government and the President in particular pleading for everyone to pretty much calm down and solve things peacefully. On the other hand, you have the opposition calling for him to quit and the leader of the military supporting the opposition. The president's recent purchase of a private jet doesn't help his cause out either.

Situations like these generally do not have a history of ending peacefully (although I would prefer this to not be true).

The importance of this to international relations is that the world is effected however minor, by the stability of each of its state actors. A team is only as strong as its weakest members is an example that I would feel works well here. Furtheremore, will the rest of the world be to focused on Middle East and the economic crisis to even pay attention to the potential pitfalls that this conflict could cause? In a time such as this one, the world needs to play a larger role in making sure a everyone is stable and that a domino effect doesn't occur.