The Securitization of Rogue States in the US

Abstract

The rogue states narrative has been an important continuity in US post-Cold War security discourse, but it specifically appeared in two principal contexts. First, it was used in the context of reflections on US grand strategy, constructing a new ‘international order’ for a perceived new strategic era and discussing the role, scope and purpose of the US in this new environment. John Dumbrell (2012: 82–83) argues that at this level of the discourse ‘long-standing arguments about the relationship between ideals and interests in US foreign policy were transformed and re-energized’, with several US elites searching for ‘a new way of grounding [America’s] internationalist engagement’ in the post-Cold War environment. Second, this broader debate occasionally merged with a more specific debate on a new principal weapons of mass destruction (WMD) scenario, a ‘second nuclear age’ after the end of the Cold War, marked specifically by the threat of horizontal proliferation to hostile Third World powers. In this context, particularly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and more strongly towards the end of the 1990s, the rogue states narrative was used as part of an argument for replacing traditional methods of arms control, using arms control regimes and non-proliferation treaties including the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), by more ‘pro-active’ strategies of counterproliferation, preemptive strikes and regime change as well as ballistic missile defence.