Rogue Regimes

Explores U.S. foreign policy with regard to nations such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya, uncovering the reasons why these countries are so menacing to the United States.

The world has seldom been as dangerous as it is now. Rogue regimes—governments and groups that eschew diplomatic normality, sponsor terrorism, and proliferate nuclear weapons—threaten the United States around the globe. Because sanctions and military action are so costly, the American strategy of first resort is dialogue, on the theory that “it never hurts to talk to enemies.” Seldom is conventional wisdom so wrong. Engagement with rogue regimes is not cost-free, as Michael Rubin demonstrates by tracing the history of American diplomacy with North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, the Taliban’s Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Further challenges to traditional diplomacy have come from terrorist groups, such as the PLO in the 1970s and 1980s, or Hamas and Hezbollah in the last two decades. The argument in favor of negotiation with terrorists is suffused with moral equivalence, the idea that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Rarely does the actual record of talking to terrorists come under serious examination. While soldiers spend weeks developing lessons learned after every exercise, diplomats generally do not reflect on why their strategy toward rogues has failed, or consider whether their basic assumptions have been faulty. Rubin’s analysis finds that rogue regimes all have one thing in common: they pretend to be aggrieved in order to put Western diplomats on the defensive. Whether in Pyongyang, Tehran, or Islamabad, rogue leaders understand that the West rewards bluster with incentives and that the U.S. State Department too often values process more than results.

America and the Rogue States traces and examines the policies and interaction of the United States with the main adversarial nations in the post-Cold War era. The book concentrates on the three major rogue states-North Korea, Iran, and pre-invasion Iraq. What are termed as lesser rogue nations-Libya, Syria, Cuba, and the Sudan-receive summarized treatment in one chapter together with a brief discussion about why Afghanistan and Venezuela are not rogues. The author makes clear the distinctions among these confrontational regimes, noting that North Korea, Iran, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq aroused much more anxiety in Washington than lesser rogues and other troublesome states. After an opening chapter placing the rogue-nation phenomenon in historical and current context, the manuscript devotes one chapter each to the three major adversarial rogues. A final chapter deals with the less threatening rogue regimes. Each chapter follows a chronological format with description and analysis. The work is intended for a general reader interested in the topic; it also will have appeal as a supplemental text for university classes in international relations covering the period after the Cold War ended.

An eye-opening look at North Korea, a brutal Stalinist country that has become one of the most volatile hot spots in the world.

"Identifies and characterizes the most repressive states and singles out which are aggressive. Defines the actions constituting repression and proposes a method of measuring human rights violations, presenting an index of nation-state repressiveness. Offers a way to decide which repressive and rogue states are most deserving of strong policy attention"--Provided by publisher.