Rebels without a conscience: The evolution of the rogue states narrative in US security policy (original) (raw)
Related papers
2011
The George W. Bush administration resorted to war to respond to the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, whereas it virtually ruled out the use of force to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue. By utilizing various strands of realist international relations theories, we trace motivations behind the administration's divergent foreign-policy choices toward rogue states. That the United States rushed to war against Iraq while procrastinating on North Korea presents a puzzle to conventional realism, which postulates that great powers observe changes in relative capabilities and respond accordingly. We argue that policy differences should be embedded in discussion of the administration's foreign-policy grand strategy, which sought to sustain the hegemonic status of the United States in the world. Iraq and North Korea had different implications for Bush's grand strategy, thereby calling for different approaches. By tracing the strategic design of the Bush administration, we attempt to provide a more complete account of policy differences toward rogue states, as well as indicate the significant changes in US policy during the George W. Bush administration and since.
This article explores the construction and reconstruction of 'new world orders' as a dominant narrative framework in American foreign policies. While several scholars have made productive inroads to investigating how this terminology has shaped US security agendas and actions, it is suggested that how we conceptualise the language of the 'new world order' is in need of constant updating. Adopting a critical constructivist framework, this article examines how competing conceptions of 'new world orders' have been framed in the past and present. It is argued that by sketching the continual reconstructions of 'new world orders' it becomes possible to examine how 'old' and 'new' world orders interact, overlap and even collide to create fault lines in national and international affairs. One of the biggest intellectual challenges advanced here is to reaffirm the tensions and complexity behind an axiomatic part of the lexicon of US security matters.
Rogue States Conundrum: An Exploration of the United States' Foreign Policy Toward North Korea
African Journal of Culture, Philosophy and Society: Aworom Annang, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 12-22., 2013
This article examines the United States' foreign policy toward North Korea since the end of the Cold War, adopting the Rational Actor model as framework of analysis and attempting a conceptual elucidation of the rogue state. The paper contends that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the concerns over suspected North Korean nuclear aspirations in the early 1990s, the focus of the U.S. foreign policy toward North Korea shifted from the Cold War containment policy to nuclear non-proliferation through constructive engagement, appeasement and negotiations. And that, though North Korean nuclear development/enrichment has serious regional and global consequences adverse to the U.S. vital interest in East Asian region, the classification of DPRK as rogue state by the U.S. is more or less a justification for imperialism and a useful word for propaganda. It is recommended that, the U.N. Security Council should negotiate with DPRK as part of its responsibility to maintaining international peace and security, based on the concept of mutually reducing threats and disarmament in general.
The years of the Cold War were characterized by a clear US strategy: the containment of Soviet power. Once it was over, the United States emerged as the only superpower, with a great military capacity. With the collapse of USSR, though, America was left without a clear enemy and therefore without a clear strategy for its foreign policy. Therefore, if the United States did not want to go back to the isolationism that characterized its first centuries, it needed to find a new rationale for its international engagement. Nevertheless, the world after Cold War had a much wider agenda. New challenges such as the threat of terrorism and the risk of cultural clashes put in danger the stability of the Western order. Besides that, the idea of the democratic peace started to be developed. Without the contradictions of the Cold War, the United States could justify its internationalism by presenting the spread of democracy as its duty as the hegemon in the post-Cold War era. This view of the US role was consolidated during President Clinton`s mandate and is yet dominant in the country`s foreign policy. This essay will argue that the end of the Cold War left the United States with a great military capacity and means to continue its internationalist foreign policy but also without clear objectives. The route chosen by American foreign policy makers was to keep the global stability and the democratic values worldwide. Therefore, its new enemies became every actor – state or not – that defied this new world order, characterized by democracy, free trade and stability.
Antipode, 2011
This paper considers a key academic support of US geopolitics overseas, which I term the “military–strategic studies complex”. The paper begins by outlining the development of Strategic Studies in the US since the early 1980s. It then uses the example of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments to work through a discussion of the palpable agency of the military–strategic studies complex in advancing a dual military–economic securitization strategy for what it calls the contemporary American “leasehold empire”. This strategy is focused especially on the Persian Gulf and involves both an enduring US military presence and long-term neoliberal designs for the region. Finally, consideration is given to alternative military–strategic visions before attention is turned to the task of Geography in countering US geopolitical and geoeconomic scriptings of the Middle East, all expedited under a vernacular of “national security”.
This dissertation addresses the following research question: How did the US government construct the triple threat of terrorism, ‘outlaw’ regimes, and weapons of mass destruction after the September 11th attacks, and use this triple threat to justify subsequent policy decisions? In answering the question, this work has adapted the Copenhagen School’s theory of securitization as a framework of analysis. Through a critical examination of the political rhetoric employed by the Bush administration following the September 11th terrorist attacks, this dissertation traces the process of threat construction, and its utilization for the justification of any means necessary in combating security threats. Over 40 official government texts have been analyzed, resulting in the isolation of certain verbal triggers that serve to elucidate the securitizing moves of the government, and American public acceptance of the securitization. This dissertation seeks to demonstrate the subjective nature of security threats, and make evident the consequences of a successful securitization. It emerges that securitization, cocooned in sanitizing discourse, enabled the government to make sordid practices seem clean. Buttressed by teachings of political psychology, the second half of the dissertation is devoted to examining how this obfuscation facilitated moral disengagement in the American public, which allowed for a successful securitization. This dissertation concludes with raising concerns for the next generation of political elite and ordinary citizens alike, and urges a reconsideration of how states approach conflict and peace.
Rogue en Vogue: North Korea and the War on Terror
Global Crises and Risks, 2008
North Korea occupies a unique place in the thinking of US policymakers insofar as it represents both a direct, physical threat and also a reminder of the limits to American power. In numerous ways, North Korea is anathema to the US: it has fulsomely rejected America’s systems of political–economic organisation, its gradual rapprochement with South Korea threatens to undermine the rationale for America’s military presence in Northeast Asia, and its possession of nuclear weapons threatens the safety of the US and its allies. For these reasons, and despite its lowly standing in the international political system, North Korea continues to severely frustrate the superpower’s interests and thus represents an existential threat to the US.