For all the attention that presidents and the Pentagon have given to the problem of rogue regimes, there is no universal or legal definition of such a regime. The idea of “rogue regimes” has become the diplomatic equivalent of Justice Potter Stewart’s quip about pornography, “I know it when I see it.” Generally, we recognize a rogue when we see it. Just as few would dismiss the threat posed by terrorism to the United States simply because there is no single definition of terrorism, so the absence of an international consensus on a definition of rogue regimes does not mitigate their threat.
The concept of rogue regimes has roots in the 1970s, when political scientists used the term “pariah states” to describe isolated countries that aimed to acquire nuclear arms. Applying no value judgment to the governing ideology of such states, they singled out Taiwan and Israel as pariahs. Those countries might be pro-Western and, in Israel’s case, democratic, but both sought nuclear capability because they faced hostile neighbors and were susceptible to arms embargoes.3 In 1979, the New York Times, quoting intelligence officials, spoke of a “nuclear club of outcasts” comprising South Africa, Israel, and Taiwan.4
At the same time, a new definition of rogues was emerging, one which focused more on regime behavior than on diplomatic isolation. Television beamed stories of slaughter in Cambodia and Uganda into living rooms, transforming atrocities that policymakers might once have ignored into public obsessions. This led the Washington Post editorial board to articulate the difference between rogue regimes and mere dictatorships. “How does the international community deal with rogue regimes, those that under the color of national sovereignty commit unspeakable crimes against their own citizens?” the Post asked in 1979, naming Pol Pot and Idi Amin. As Tanzanian troops invaded Uganda, the Post editors applauded, saying, “It seems hypocritical to say border-crossing is never justifiable.”5 It is an enduring political irony that so many American politicians and academics today are willing to approve of force when it comes to rogues that commit atrocities against their own people, while calling for engagement with regimes that threaten U.S. national security.
In the late 1970s, terrorism also started to shape public discussion of rogue behavior. The State Department began labeling some regimes as state sponsors of terrorism in 1979. Iraq, Libya, South Yemen, and Syria were inaugural members of the club, soon joined by Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Sudan. Nearly seventeen years before President George W. Bush would identify an “axis of evil,” President Ronald Reagan spoke of “a confederation of terrorist states.”6 Parallel definitions of rogues as proliferators, human rights abusers, and terror sponsors quickly converged. U.S. officials began to describe proliferators who were also terror sponsors as rogues, outlaws, or renegades.7 Against the backdrop of optimism about dawning freedom in the former communist bloc, lofty hope for a peace dividend, and a “new world order,” the contrast between responsible states and rogues grew starker.
It was during the Clinton administration that the term “rogue” came into vogue. When Defense Secretary Les Aspin unveiled the Defense Counterproliferation Initiative in 1993, he warned that “the new nuclear danger we face is perhaps a handful of nuclear devices in the hands of rogue states or even terrorist groups.”8 Speaking the next month in Brussels, Clinton himself described Iran and Libya as “rogue states.”9 And, giving an address at Georgetown University in October 1994, Secretary of State Warren Christopher repeatedly referred to Iran and Iraq as rogue regimes.10 In each case, the Clinton administration focused more on threats to the United States than on dangers that rogue leaders posed to their own people. Saddam was a rogue leader because he pursued nuclear weaponry and invaded Kuwait, not because he gassed Kurds and massacred Shi’ites.
It fell to Anthony Lake, Clinton’s national security advisor, to define the concept precisely, although he used the slightly more diplomatic term “backlash states” as a label for Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya. “Their behavior is often aggressive and defiant,” he explained. “The ties between them are growing as they seek to thwart or quarantine themselves from a global trend to which they seem incapable of adapting.” They are “ruled by cliques that control power through coercion, they suppress basic human rights and promote radical ideologies.” And, most important for the purposes of U.S. diplomats, Lake noted, “These nations exhibit a chronic inability to engage constructively with the outside world, and they do not function effectively in alliances—even with those like-minded.”11
William Cohen, as defense secretary, tweaked the definition slightly to emphasize regimes that were immune to traditional deterrence. Iran’s Islamic Revolution and suicide terrorism had propelled apocalyptic ideologies to the fore. The “mutual assured destruction” of the Cold War was predicated on the fact that no matter how antagonistic the Soviet Union was toward the United States, it was not going to risk annihilation in pursuit of its ideological goals. But if post–Cold War rogues aimed to cause destruction even if it put their own existence at risk, then traditional U.S. strategies could no longer apply.
Hence, although the fight against rogue regimes would be attached in the public mind to the George W. Bush administration with the “axis of evil” speech and the “global war on terror,” it was actually Clinton’s team that first explained the necessity of breaking with traditional diplomacy, even at the cost of antagonizing friends and rivals. European allies criticized Clinton for skirting international law in his approach to rogues, while Russia criticized U.S. moves to develop a missile defense system against the backdrop of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.12
Critics of American policy toward rogue regimes are correct in saying that the United States has been inconsistent. The radical thinker Noam Chomsky even argued that the United States was the true rogue, and the economist Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr. has suggested that American disdain for international organizations and many treaties make it a “rogue nation.”13 Robert Litwak, a Clinton national security aide, noted the inconsistency of demonizing Cuba while treating (pre–civil war) Syria like a normal state despite its place on the State Department’s terrorism list and its weapons of mass destruction programs.14 The roots of such inconsistency lie in the desire for diplomacy. First the Clinton administration and later the first-term Obama team treated Syria benignly because the White House sought to reel it into the Middle East peace process. The effort failed spectacularly and became an illustration of the price that engagement with rogues can exact.
If there is debate over which countries are rogue, there is consensus with regard to certain regimes. The Islamic Republic of Iran broke with diplomatic norms when it took American diplomats hostage, and North Korea’s reclusive communist regime has thumbed its nose at traditional diplomacy for decades. The brutality and terror sponsorship of the Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi and the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein led both to become subject to sweeping international sanctions. Pakistan may appear to be a normal state, but the inordinate power and rogue behavior of its intelligence service places it within the definition of rogue regime. American diplomats have faced down Afghanistan’s Taliban first as a government and, after 9/11, as an insurgent group. The Palestine Liberation Organization took the opposite trajectory: When American diplomats first began their dialogue, the PLO was an unrepentant terrorist group. Diplomacy led it to become a government. Other terrorist groups remain pariahs, but this has not prevented some officials from counseling engagement with them.
Why Engage?
How the United States can best handle rogue regimes is a problem that continues to confront presidents, secretaries of state, senators, and generals. Presidents have a broad menu of options ranging from diplomatic to economic to military. They have invaded and occupied, sanctioned and talked, bombed and bribed.
Each strategy has costs and benefits. The key for policymakers is to determine how to achieve goals at minimum cost. In the face of intractable foes, hard power can be tempting: Reagan bombed Libya; George H. W. Bush attacked Iraq and Panama; Clinton bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Serbia, and came very close to launching airstrikes against North Korea. George W. Bush invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq. Bombing and military strikes may be effective, but the costs are high: military action is expensive, it antagonizes the international community, and it risks blowback. Every administration, for good reason, adopts the