Does the notion of 'Rogue states' make sense?

Résumé du document

According to George Bush's declaration in his state of the union speech to Congress on January 29th, an axis of evil threatens the peace of the world reminds us of Reagan's description of the USSR as an evil empire. In this speech, he clearly pointed a finger directly at three countries (Iraq, North Korea and Iran) which he accuses of arming themselves with weapons of mass destruction and forming an axis of evil similar to which Reagan had addressed. After 1991 and the collapse of the USSR, US foreign policy became increasingly concerned with regard to regional conflicts and promoting regional stability.

Extraits

[...] May be conducting research related to biological warfare. The situation concerning nuclear weapons is more complicated: Whereas Syria is NOT pursuing development of nuclear weapons, Iran is attempting to acquire fissile material for weapons development and North Korea has produced enough plutonium for at least one nuclear weapon. The case of Iraq is rather different: Iraq had a wide variety of chemical warfare agent available before the 1991 Gulf War and Could quickly restart production of biological and chemical warfare programs. [...]

[...] Among the concerns is the reinforcement of Iranian military positions on disputed strategic island in the Persian Gulf, which the US claims raises the prospect of disrupting shipping. Iraq: the single most outrageous act by the Middle-East's rogue states was Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. One of the key concepts of international law in the 20th century is the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by military force. Stability is such areas as Middle-East is a really problematic issue and attitudes such as the rogues' threatens peace in the region. II. [...]

[...] Conclusion To conclude, I would say that, the crimes committed by rogue states, while frequently exaggerated and not always unique, are still very real. Similarly, double standards are not unusual in the foreign policy of any great power. Yet it is becoming increasingly apparent that the most serious offences by Iran, Iraq, Lybia, Sudan and Syria in the eyes of the US policy makers are not in the area of Human Rights, terrorism, nuclear ambition, subversion or conquest, but in daring to challenge American hegemony in the Middle-East. [...]

[...] In fact, the traditional criteria established by US officials to classify a state as seem to evolve depending on the country. - terrorism: many international observer believe that US ally Saudi Arabia has contributed more funds to extremist groups connected with terrorism than has Iran or any of the other “rogues”. It seems interesting to notice that US officials repeatedly offered to drop Syria from the list of terrorist states if it co-operated more with US strategic and economic interests in the region. [...]

[...] This was in stark contrast to the depiction of the Soviet leadership of the Cold War years as highly rational. One wonders whether the fact that none of the rogue states were Western led to their being conveniently labelled “irrational”, and or whether this was just part of an overall process of demonising the It is hard to count how many times one has read the characterisation “crazy or nutty” to describe Muammar Qaddafi of Lybia or Kim Il Sung of North Korea. [...]