America and the Rogue States

Though President Clinton ushered the term "rogue states" into the vernacular of international relations in 1994, countries that refuse to "[join] international society" are nothing new%E2%80%94Thucydides wrote of them over 2000 years ago in his account of the Peloponnesian War. But whereas sovereign nations once fought their battles with swords, ships, and shields, today's "errant entities" gain their "deadly salience" from their potential to create nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Here, Henriksen (American Power After the Berlin Wall), a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, explores the threat posed by the main triad of post-Cold War rogue states (Iran, North Korea, and Iraq before the U.S. invasion), and how America has dealt and continues to deal with each. The author lays out the behaviors of outlying nations, which include "exporting terrorism, seeking nuclear weapons, and disrupting the peace in their respective regions," and holds that "rogue states will always be with us." Though Henriksen's solution (democracy) is unsurprising, his elucidation of the problem is enlightening. (June)