Margins

Is America a rogue state? Opinions vary. Some believe the possibility of it becoming one is a real one, others believe that it already is one but can yet be reasoned back from the brink on account of what a rule-based order could do for America. More alarmingly, some see the American rogue state as not only a fact of 2025, but also one with devastating consequences for the environment moving forward.

I think the question is not so easily answered, but let us attempt one nonetheless.

What are rogue states?

In US Foreign Policy and the Rogue State Doctrine, Dr. Alex Miles traces the development of the concept of rogue states from Carter all the way to Clinton, observing a clear break from “internal to external behaviour as the criteria for rogue states”. In other words, whereas before the 1970s rogue states were designated rogue for violating republican values to the detriment of their own citizens (think Po Pot Cambodia, or apartheid South Africa), ever since the 1980s the label was increasingly used to label states that behave contrary to establish norms, to the detriment of states that stand the most to benefit from these norms.

As to what these states could possibly do that would warrant such a label, it is generally agreed to come down to the following: (1) state-sponsored terrorism and (2) the amassing of weapons of mass destruction. Paradigmatic states were North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya. It was said that these states were “backlash”, “outlaw” states that threaten the peace and stability of not only their own regions, but also of the world at large. Caprioli 2005 looked into the number of times so-called rogue states actually either initiated interstate conflicts or fired the first shot in interstate conflicts. In doing so they established empirically that these states were no more likely than non-rogue states to act aggressively. This was true even for a “failed state” such as North Korea which had the most to gain by being unhinged. The finding exposes a crucial truth in the discourse about rogue states: So-called rogue states are countries that exhibit perceivably aggressive behaviour without actually being more aggressive than usual.

This truth has a massive implication for the way we think about rogue states. It reveals that which belies the criteria themselves. As Robert S Litwak pointed out painstakingly in his seminal work Rogue States and US Foreign Policy, countries such as Syria which tick both boxes nonetheless was not included as a matter of policy in the big 5 rogue states. This is because it is not only that a country must seek to sabotage their enemies via terrorism or develop weapons of mass destruction, it must also do so to the displeasure of whoever is capable of labelling it as a rogue state.

When perception overtakes reality, the question of Is America a rogue state? becomes one of optics, and can be reasonably rephrased as Does America exhibit enough unlikeable behaviour in the eyes of those capable of labelling it to be plausibly engaged with as a rogue state?

But I am getting ahead of myself. The case for now is not simply that some countries are de facto unlikeable, and so ought to be branded a rogue state under some yet-to-be-specified norm regulating likeability in international relations. Rather, it is to pave the way for con(per)ceiving America as a rogue state in 2025 by deconstructing rogue state as a concept: It is all too easy to imagine labelling a country rogue as the reaching of some universal solution to a universal problem. To apprehend the exercise as one of perception, however, is to render any potential labeling as the reaching of some local solution to a regional problem.

What more can we say against a universal rogue state concept? For one, if it is truly the case that there is some universal property of rogue states that justifies their naming as such, then we would expect this property to be present across all these states’ behaviour. And yet this is not we find in reality. Iraq’s provocative approach to the United States during Saddam Hussein is not an exact mirror of Mohammad Khatami’s reformist brand of cautious pessimism. Similarly, Cuba’s isolationism is not the same as Kim’s tug of war with the Clinton administration. Realistically how a state behaves depends on factors such as the prevailing international climate (how much attention and resources their chief adversaries can afford to pay them), the availability of alliances (the greater this is the more emboldened a state would be), the capability of the state (in terms of both raw military prowess and soft power), and the existence of interests across borders (more interests means more likely to be involved in overseas conflicts). There is very little a state’s intrinsic rogueness can do compared to just any one of these factors. And so it is at this point that most analysts denounce the rogue state concept as intellectually impoverished and advocate for its abolition. And yet, as the opening of this post shows, journalists continue to use it in present discourse. And I can only guess this is because the concept has an intuitive appeal – There is just something about these countries that makes them the way they are. My point here is: If we are ever to justify this take, then we have to discover our responsibility in the act of labelling. A rogue state cannot be labelled as such until the labeller realises the act as one of perception, with unlikeability at its centre.

Perceiving rogue states – two POVs

To have a rogue state at all presupposes a labeller and a labellee, and the labelled is labelled by the labeller as unlikeable in some way. It is a dyadic relation to which only asymmetrical attention is often paid, focusing mostly on the labellee as settled rouge states whose conduct should “speak for itself.” But our story does not begin at the point of rougueness as fait accompli, but instead rougeness as something that the labeller is prepared to ascribe to a nation.

Litwak identifies a number of factors that might have motivated the United States to proactively deploy the language of rogue states ever since the 1980s: The end of the Cold War brought about the need to justify a military-industrial complex designed to counter the influence of the former Soviet block. It was unsurprising then that the United States sought, and therefore should find, enemies in Greece, Kosovo, Iraq, etc. The commencement of horizontal proliferation moves the conversation about nuclear weapons from possession to possession potential. Ever since the 1970s an increasing number of countries began developing the capability of producing nuclear arms. These “undeclared bombs” as Cochran, Arkin and Hoenig call them, spread across most of the continents, with countries like Israel, India and South Korea being subject to even less scrutiny than countries under the Non-Proliferation Treaty due to their strategic significance to major nuclear powers in their respective regions. Some of these aspiring powers, chief among them being Iran and Iraq, directly threatened America’s interest overseas. Litwak furthermore argues that American foreign policy has always been ideologically driven, and given the power differential between itself and the countries it relegated to rogue status, there was very little to lose (at least to those who were already convinced that there is such a category of states as rogue states) and everything to gain from being the labeller.

To abstract from the historical context in which America was the chief labeller, we can broadly discern three motivating factors: (1) Perceived low cost of labelling, coupled with or “triggered by” the labeller’s endogenous ideological leaning, (2) Perceived exercise of agency through labelling, usually to justify a positive apparatus conferring only indirect or long-term benefits, (3) Perceived necessity of labelling, usually tied to material interests in the region of which the labellee is a part. There is a logical structure to a state’s motivation to label, as each factor connects a reason to label to some fact about the labeller that makes it receptive to this reason in the first place. In the case of the United States: Had foreign policy in the 1970s-1990s been less ideologically driven, or less framed as an “us versus them”, strategists would not have even considered labelling as a viable option (as was the case with European countries such as France at the time), let alone come to the conclusion that labelling this or that country was the most economical one. Similarly, had the United States not been factually invested in the transatlantic alliance (and all that it stood for) as a non-immediate and long-term interest, there would have been no sense in which it was “choosing” (and not “forced”) to enter into confrontations with Iraq.

This structure (any single motivation as a reason/fact pair) is one of perception. It matters what the labeller “sees” at the time, whether the conditions are such that it does in fact perceive itself as a power in defence of some universal value, a part of some greater institutional order worth defending, and a material actor with something to lose by not interfering.

But if there is to be a labeller state, then there must be a state that is labelled. The labellee and the labeller enter into a kind of communion, as one affords the other the conditions the satisfaction of which creates the perception of a rogue state. And so here we not only ask, what motivates one country to label another as rogue?, but also what is it like for a country to be on the other side of the label? Once again, the motivation of a country to “settle into” an order in which one is constantly antagonised and treated as an outlier can be analysed as a reason/fact pair. On this I was much inspired by Litwak’s meticulous descriptions of Iran’s journey to becoming one of America’s rogues: With Khatami’s rise to power in 1997 Litwak portrayed the event as a crossroad for American foreign policy: Would they initiate a kind of detente with Iran? Or would they double down on the so-called roll-back strategy which potentially had Iran’s change of leadership as an end game? The eventual lack of diplomatic progress Litwak attributed to a large extent to Iran’s idiosyncratic nature as a revolutionary republic. The way Iran was described – as a nation caught between what ideological purity dictates and what reasons of state necessitate, I think, is very helpful for constructing a workable model of how rogue states potentially see themselves in being classified as rogue: On the one hand, the reason or the conscious thought in the minds of policy makers might be We are different, or We should be different. This is the reason leg of the motivation, namely the realisation that strife with the world or the dominating power is perennial, and that through this strife there is the makings of an identity or even the power to pursue unilateral measures. We can observe the same thought in North Korea’s junche, where the state’s overriding reason to be self-reliant translates into the exploitation of its opaque nuclear possession potential as a kind of bargaining chip. Suffice to say doing so does little to increase its likeability. This self-perception as some kind of radical alterity to the dominant order is “backed up”, or enabled by, the satisfaction of some factual conditions. For one there is the world’s inevitable inability to form a united front against it, meaning settling into the role of being a rogue state does not mean the world will then eliminate you like a virus. And then there is also the high stakes domestic politics featured in many would-be labellee states. Weak institutions mean strife is frequent, and peaceful transfers of power are unlikely. Dictators would then have to hold onto power by any means necessarily, including for example, leaning into the rougue state label. These two conditions make up the fact leg of a labellee state’s motivation for “embracing” the label. We see this in the west’s lack of multi-lateral response to Libya and Iran resulting in the latter’s even more trenchant belief that they were singled out for ideological reasons, and in Saddam Hussein’s domestic rhetoric which served the function of keeping the Kurdish and Shiite factions at bay (dissidents sought to weaken the Hussein regime, and therefore got equated to outside, antagonistic, and world-assimilating forces).

Before I move on, it is crucial to point out what I am not claiming, namely, some kind of coincidence between what the labeller is labelling and what the labellee perceives itself to have been labelled as. There is no telling whether the big 5, or any other state eligible for the rogue status, will ever match the paradigmatic rogue state held in the minds of those who make policies for the labeller states. But what we do know is that in order to peel back the layers of the rogue state concept, and understand its intuitive appeal, one must then look beyond one point of view and imagine what it is like to apply the concept, and the effects doing so engender in the states so labelled. It is, in other words, to be aware that a state cannot be rogue unless there is labelling, and labelling takes more than one country to accomplish.

It takes work to be unlikeable

It is easy at this juncture to mistake a fitting-in with an intentional desire, in the sense that countries’ assumption of their role as the rogue states of the world is taken to be an indication that they somehow perversely enjoy or even desire to be rogue. The move from being to desire is fallacious as desire is not the only motivation in the world. What rogue states are are countries who seem to bank on sheer unlikeability, because their very being is perceived as such. But just like how the labeller state is constituted by the internal organs of various state apparatus, and subject to the mercy of factors beyond its control in being the labeller state, the rogue states’ seemingly doing nothing may also belie a more complex reality. It is unfortunate that only the labeller state’s complexity is respected whereas the labellee states are often flattened into a simplex axis of evil to which the only sound response is to “give them a firm response.”

Let us now turn to rogue states’ appearance of effortlessness – Is there any depth to this appearance? I believe so. A country is run by people, and people do not idle if there is a country to run. We might be tempted to perceive rogue states as characterised by their unlikeability in our eyes, this does not mean that there is nothing they actually do when they eventually provide us with the raw perceptual data for us to arrive at the object which is their unlikeability. Turns out rogue states do not have to consciously strive to be unlikeable in order to survive as rogue states. If we look at how rogue states cope with their being perceived as such, three broad strategies can be discerned:

Weathering – A rogue state can utilise connections or resources at their disposal to “wait out” or even recontextualise its ostracisation. Larson and Shevchenko in Quest for Status: Chinese and Russian Foreign Policy discusses the strategy of social creativity whereby countries such as China and Russia were able to reframe supposedly negative traits about them as positives. The audience of such reframing is often domestic, as citizens are sold national myths of national rejuvenation or ethno-religious greatness. The ingenuity of this approach lies in its adopter’s ability to then square the world’s attempt to villanise it with its continued engagement with the world. For example, China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation was framed as a historical event “after 15 years of discrimination” which “facilitated (cf. enabled) the refinement of socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Crucially it was something that the World Trade Organisation “itself required”. On the other hand, looking at China’s commitments to the World Trade Organisation, much of it involved radical reforms with far-reaching ramifications on the Chinese economy: For one tariffs were slashed from 55.6% in 1982 to 12.3% in 2002. Foreign firms were allowed to sell services to Chinese clients. The International Monetary Fund noted specifically that telecommunications, financial services and insurance were the three sectors that had hitherto been blocked off from international access. Competition’s encroachment into socialism did not stop there, as foreign investment approvals would (at least on paper) no longer be subject to mandatory content requirements. China also promised enforcement of intellectual property, which in itself represented a significant structural reform that, from a different perspective, could easily be seen as a massive compromise from a country that mere decades ago were on the other side of the trenches from America in Vietnam. And yet, by shrewdly contextualising its WTO accession as the grand and long overdue recognition which decades of oppression had been building up to, China subtly weaved its engagement with an antagonistic world into a narrative arc in which it emerged triumphant.

Threatening – Alternatively, a rogue state can enact belligerent policies in order to quell internal woes. China during Trump’s first term dabbled in this via the so-called “Wolf warrior diplomacy.” For better or for worse, China has since jettisoned this tactic (Yuan 2024). Due to the power differential that often exists between the labeller dominant state and the labellee rogue state, in order for the latter to successfully threaten the former, it must be able to define the terms of engagement. Externally, the rogue state must be in possession of some minimal leverage (e.g., the uncertainty surrounding the maturity of North Korea’s nuclear programme) that the rogue state can hold onto by digging its heels and doubling down on its diplomatic self-isolation. Internally, the extremity of the external threat is often exaggerated to justify militant measures against the citizenry. This is necessary as threatening the dominant labeller state often results in tough measures being taken by it, and these measures (e.g., military operations, sanctions) disproportionately harm those on the ground level of the labellee state. This makes it easy for those on the ground to wonder: why support a regime that makes itself so unlikeable, when doing so does not benefit me? Rogue states that are externally threatening are therefore often internally oppressive. For example, after the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein appointed his sons Uday and Qusay to oversee ways to navigate around the intensifying sanctions regime against Iraq. Uday also had controls over the Iraqi state propaganda appataus, and Qusay the secret police. It was no coincidence that those responsible for mitigating the world’s pressure campaign against Iraq (a direct result of Iraqi belligerence) were themselves the chief architects of a pressure campaign against the domestic populace. This is very much a high-risk, high-reward strategy. Risks of backfiring is ever-present. Saddam Hussein’s eventual downfall was a cautionary tale for would-be threatening rogue state leaders, and it remains to be seen how Iran is going to extract itself from its current crisis that is its conflict with Israel.

Embedding – A third approach rogue states can take is to deepen their embedment within a pre-existing network of mutual self-interests. This is likely to succeed as internationally, sanctions against a rogue state are already unlikely to garner multilateral support. America’s sanction regimes against Libya and Iran famously caused a rift with its European allies, who preferred “strategic dialogue” over a firm hand. Labeller states are also unlikely to entertain the idea of, and hence facilitate, a change in leadership within the rogue states themselves. There is therefore no immediate urgency to act belligerent. Furthermore, as foreign intervention is unlikely to be a bipartisan issue, that many labeller states experience democratic elections means that politicians within these states are already predisposed to work with, rather than punish, labellee states, being keenly aware that the middle-ground position is the most likely to score votes. As for how embedding actually works, studies have shown how weak institutions (often a salient feature of rogue states) serve as a main draw for multinational corporations seeking to assert their financial (preferably deregulated) interests (Holburn and Zelner 2010, Shin et al 2016). This means multinational corporations have an economic incentive to work with politically unlikeable countries. Countries (e.g., South Africa, see Coulibaly 2009) also find ways to adapt to sanctions regimes. The longer sanctions go on, the less likely compliance will be strict (Dorff and Minhas 2017). Here we see how a rogue state’s resilience and the world’s inability to genuinely ignore it come together to severely limit the effectiveness of sanctions in the long run. Gaur et al 2013 also found that in the case of Russia, domestic firms were tacitly allowed to restructure to maintain profits as their profitability aligns with the government’s economic interests. So whereas one might like to think of sanctions as a one-way train from policy to pressure to capitulation, the reality is that policy is mediated by actors, vested interests, and most importantly, time. All of these have the tendency to absorb policy impact. Rogue states can still work within the confines of their unlikeability and operate on a kind of “underbelly” level which has built-in everything the global governance level has save for nominal legitimacy. The European Union recently took a firm stance against the infamous Russian “shadow fleet.” It remains to be see how serious the effort actually is.

Hopefully it is at least arguable by now that a rogue state being perceived into being is also an active agent in an active pursuit of various policy outcomes. While it trades on, or even settles into, the role of “the unlikeable one” in international relations, this act is not necessarily pathological, or amelioratory, against the world’s righteous backlash. Often this is a perfectly sustainable way for a country to be, consummated by the world’s unwillingness to look on these states differently.

Looking at America…as a rogue state

The groundwork is now laid for us to answer the question we set out to answer: Is America a rogue state?

Given that application of the rogue state concept is ultimately an act of perception, we must then ask ourselves: Who has what it takes to see America as a rogue state, thereby perceiving America the rogue state into being? China in this comically provocative opinion piece eagerly sends in her audition tapes. But what about the European Union? Until recently, that Europe as a block is capable of seeing America as anything but the single backbone of the trans-Atlantic alliance was as unthinkable as Zelensky’s public humiliation in the Oval Office. But for some, the time has certainly come to evaluate Europe’s standing vis-a-vis the United States. “Impossible” questions are now being asked: Should Europe re-arm? Does Europe have enough nuclear arms to shield Ukraine from Russia without the help of the United States? Is it time to open talks with central Asia, or even China?

The idea that Europe and the United States have never been at loggerheads with each other on select international relations issues is simply untrue. The 20th century was full of examples of American unilateralism that earned the country no small amount of European ire: President Clinton’s embargo of the Teheran regime was at a strategic deviance with Europe’s approach to Iran. More specifically, the United States’ imposition of secondary boycotts or sanctions against European businesses trading with Iran directly harmed Europe’s interests. The American and the European stances also differed on Vietnam and Suez, and America’s bombing of Kosovo represented to many on the right the ultimate America disregard of European diplomacy in the Balkans. But it still matters to ask: Is the EU-US rift this time around different? Notice how in many of the instances just referred to Europe and America did not disagree on who the enemy is, merely how it is to be dealt with. And so there is a convergence of policy but a divergence of strategy. But fast-forward to 2025 and it seems like what underlies Europe’s disagreement with America is a fundamental and ideological difference in outlook over the future of global governance (or a lack thereof.) Trump is interested in exporting MAGA, a goal a tad less modest than say safeguarding American interest in certain parts of the world. This creates uncertainty by potentially returning international relations to a former, more militaristic sort where conflicts are defined not in terms of costs and benefits, but in terms of who is left standing to write the history. A more ideological Europe (not necessarily a more liberal one) still has the potential to resist American influence while wielding the same language and mindset to reframe international relations as an us versus them, good guys versus bad guys.

But post-Cold War America was strong and Iran was weak. Is Europe even unified enough to be able to look on America as a rogue state? Much will depend on whether it is able to formulate a united defence strategy, made more likely by Russia’s aggression from the east. It is also a matter of its ability to pre-emptively open up new strategic alliances in the far east and in Latin America. By securing a tangible alternative for defence, energy and trade, Europe has a real chance to envision itself as a big player in a new world where America is not the singular exporter of democracy. As of now, America still supplies over half of NATO’s arms, its nuclear capability far outstrips both France and Britain combined, and Russian energy still warms European homes and offices. There may still be some ways to go before the emergence of the kind of self-sufficiency required for America to be acknowledged in Europe as a genuine rogue state.

As for how America will cope under a righteous, labelling gaze, it is still too early to tell if any of the strategies identified above will be deployed. After all, America is still a global power, and this means it has less of a reason to be creative in flouting international norms (the long list of environmental, international criminal and human rights treaties that the United States refuses to ratify speaks for itself). But a big part of acting rogue is to be regionalist. The big 5 (perhaps with the exception of Iran) do not seek world hegemony, merely to exist in a way that does not signal a pre-existing agreement or acceding of the prevailing international norms. Whilst some might see Trump’s wavering support for Ukraine as America’s official retreat from the world stage, Litwak observes that America’s “shift from…globalism to regionalism can be traced to the early Bush administration.” He cites the “New Defence Strategy” in which the U.S. force structure was reduced by 25%. Does this conservatism still hold? According to USAspending.gov, from 2024 to 2025, 9 trillion USD of defence spending was slashed. But if we look at the the actual amount dedicated to international security assistance, nothing much has changed and the value still falls under the 10 billion to 20 billion ballpark. That the United States will be more selective in whom it throws in with does not mean that it will henceforth cease to defend its stategic interests overseas. It is therefore still too early to say if America will turn out to be a more militarily restrained, regional rogue state like Iran which “rogues by example” – that is, be unlikeable by enacting a paradigm of anti-normativity without being actively aggressive.

Turning to what is unfolding in America now, it seems like despite Trump’s tussle with congress, the judiciary and now the military, he has yet to consolidate power in the same way that many dictators in the big 5 rogue states did. To the extent that checks and balances still operate in the United States, it may still be more expedient for Trump to “game the system,” rather than to completely delegitimise it by exercising dictatorial power. It will be crucial in the next 4 years to see where the wind blows in American politics, for it could very well determine whether the American rogue state is one more mirroring the big 5 (in which case we can expect Trump, or his successor, to use more of the weathering, threatening and embedding tactics mentioned above as American democracy gradually decays), or sui genesis. For a long time, commentators such as Noam Chomsky argues for the latter – America as the hegemon unchecked, one that acts with absolute impunity. Yet the inverse of American exceptionalism remains a form of itself. And there is a limit to how much reputational damage America can sustain before the world is forced to reconfigure itself around a categorically different America. Speculatively, if Europe and China manage to pick up the pieces shattered by Trumpean isolationism, and form a bipolarity to counter American influence, then we can imagine a less dominant, downscaled version of America where paradoxically this waning influence gives it more of a leeway to act out its undemocratic tendencies. But only time will tell if this remains within the realm of reasonable possibilities. When this time comes, a case may be made, just like how it was made with Iran, for strategic engagement with a not only de facto, but also de jure, unhinged America. The hope then might be that the doctrinal inconsistencies of MAGA will simply implode under the need for stability.

But one thing that is already in full gear is Trump’s using of America’s unpredictability as a way to obfuscate, bewilder, and gain an upper hand in international relations. This is unlike what North Korea was doing while attempting to threaten the world with its nuclear possession potential. The “threat” to annex Greenland and Canada, the “warning” for all of Tehran to evacuate, the “promise” to leave Europe to the mercy of the Russians – Was any of these serious? At times it seems like getting the world into a frenzied state of wanton speculation over America’s intentions and next steps is precisely the point. China did this by passing its controversial coastguard law in 2021 (the equivalent of a formal declaration of intent in international law) while simulating an attack against a US aircraft, all the while reassuring the Philippines that it was all part of “a normal domestic legislative activity of China”. Russia did this with its “blitzkrieg” in Ukraine, which utterly embarrassed the West in 2014. There is clearly method to the madness, because the madness is the method.

Whatever the future has in store for America, one thing is certain: The days of America good, third world bad is not only over, their termination is also being perceived with increasing clarity, alongside what this perception entails.