An end to the idea of ‘rogue states’
Barack Obama’s decision to remove Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism marks another important step towards the elimination of its pernicious but surprisingly resilient post-cold war concept of the “rogue state”.
Mr. Obama on Tuesday had notified Congress of his “intent to rescind” Cuba's inclusion on the blacklist, after a lengthy review launched late last year as Washington openly began a rapprochement with its Cold War foe.
In a roll call of supposed infamy that once included almost a dozen countries worldwide, only North Korea still scores as in all four “evil-doer” categories, as defined by the former U.S. President George W. Bush. Specifically, it maintains weapons of mass destruction, supports terrorists, abuses human rights and threatens U.S. interests.
Ronald Reagan kick started America’s fixation with recalcitrant second-tier powers that defy America’s will. In 1985, he warned the U.S. would not tolerate “attacks from outlaw states by the strangest collection of misfits, Looney Tunes, and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich”.
This switch in focus to what Reagan dubbed “Murder Inc” came despite the ongoing cold war struggle with the Soviet Union, a superpower rivalry that still had six years to run.
As if anticipating the next stage of global conflict, Reagan picked on Muammar Qadhafi’s noisily anti-American Libyan regime in 1986, firing cruise missiles at Tripoli in a failed attempt to silence him. The unilateral Libya attack, in part a punishment for Qadhafi’s involvement in terrorism, set a modern precedent in terms of ignoring international law on loosely defined grounds of self-defence.
Anthony Lake, Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, formally defined the rogue state concept in 1994, focusing on “recalcitrant and outlaw states that not only choose to remain outside the family [of democratic nations] but also assault its basic values”. Following Reagan’s Looney Tunes list, he nominated North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Cuba as founding members of the rogue state club. Conservatives such as John Bolton, a former senior Bush administration official, subsequently widened the definition and varied the terminology. Regimes in Afghanistan, Syria, Burma, the former Yugoslavia, Belarus, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Panama, Sudan and Zimbabwe have all been demonised at various times.
Washington uses a variety of tools to undermine rogue state foes. Economic sanctions are the norm, backed up by political and diplomatic ostracism and the targeting of key individuals, as in Iran and North Korea.
But Mr. Obama’s overall less confrontational approach since 2009 points to an end to the longstanding American policy of setting up international bogeymen, then knocking them down. Where U.S. interests and values are challenged, Mr. Obama has made increasing use of regional coalitions.
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