This term ‘Rogue States’ are primarily associated with the Clinton administration. Rogue States (or ‘backlash’ states) are those “recalcitrant and outlaw states that not only choose to remain outside the family of nations but also assault it’s basic values” (Lake 1994:45). However, R Looney (2009:264) goes on to state that “despite the absence of any evidence, he [Lake] contended that the rogue states were developing ties among themselves allegedly to curb the “global trend to which they seem incapable of adapting””. This lack of evidence to support Lake’s accusations towards these states is significant. In the Clinton administration era, the USA faced a unique situation of not facing an obvious ideological enemy. Lake used categorisation to
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Ansari (2006:187) expresses this notion as “is it possible to have a dialogue with a state that was evil”? Especially considering that the notion of ‘evil’ is subjective. Declaring another state to be evil removes rationality from such state and thus removes any ambitions of diplomatic negotiations or sanctions against such a state. It can be argued that the administration of President Barack Obama noticed this negative consequence on state-state relations as there is a lack of this terminology present President Obama’s statements. Soon after President Obama was elected, the term ‘Rogue State’ was removed from the National Security Strategy of 2010 (US White House, 2010). This may be an attempt to reduce the damning effects of the demonisation and categorisation of deviant states that was evident in the administrations of presidents before him. However, despite these efforts Roele (2012:577) states that the removal of this language has not resulted in policies opposing the ‘othering’ policies from the Bush Jr administration in that “concept of the rogue state can promote a sense of international community, can smooth the way for collective security action and can avoid the appearance of conflict
Ansari (2006:187) expresses this notion as “is it possible to have a dialogue with a state that was evil”? Especially considering that the notion of ‘evil’ is subjective. Declaring another state to be evil removes rationality from such state and thus removes any ambitions of diplomatic negotiations or sanctions against such a state. It can be argued that the administration of President Barack Obama noticed this negative consequence on state-state relations as there is a lack of this terminology present President Obama’s statements. Soon after President Obama was elected, the term ‘Rogue State’ was removed from the National Security Strategy of 2010 (US White House, 2010). This may be an attempt to reduce the damning effects of the demonisation and categorisation of deviant states that was evident in the administrations of presidents before him. However, despite these efforts Roele (2012:577) states that the removal of this language has not resulted in policies opposing the ‘othering’ policies from the Bush Jr administration in that “concept of the rogue state can promote a sense of international community, can smooth the way for collective security action and can avoid the appearance of conflict