Rogue Rage

Engagement is sure to be a principal legacy of the Clinton era, creating precedents and expectations that may shape the next president and even the one after that. In the first scholarly bid to capture this legacy, the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Robert S. Litwak has penned Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy, a book-length indictment of those who would contest engagement’s worth. Having previously authored a sympathetic chronicle of the detente years, Litwak seems to have imbibed the lesson that, in the game of international politics, binding an adversary in a web of economic, political, and military linkages nearly always achieves better results than wielding the big stick.

But rather than celebrate the fact that this opinion has become canonical on the Washington panel circuit, Litwak insists that American foreign policy has lately been marred by “political demonization” and “containment.” What most rankles the author is the inconsistency that has led American policymakers to engage states like Pakistan and Syria while dealing harshly with countries such as Cuba and Libya, whose malfeasance seems for the author to have abated in recent years. Fair enough: There is something hypocritical about maintaining sanctions against week states of marginal significance, while actively engaging nations like China, which boast no less abysmal records but have large markets and political heft. This has left U.S. policymakers unable to explain why it is they tolerate in one instance conduct they loudly condemn in another.

To achieve a measure of consistency, a few lawmakers have suggested expanding the rogue state category to include states like Sudan and Syria, which clearly warrant the designation, but that, for reasons either of commercial interest or political utility, have thus far been exempted. Litwak’s solution, though, is to do exactly the reverse — that is, to abandon the label altogether. For, according to the author, the phrase “rogue state” is a uniquely American invention “without standing in international law.” More important, the widespread use of the epithet has distorted U.S. policy, “making it very difficult politically for policymakers to adapt U.S. strategy to changing conditions.” What little utility the label does possess derives merely from its being a sop to “influential domestic constituencies,” who use it “for purposes of political mobilization.”

In the author’s telling, such “threat inflation” is nothing new. It conforms neatly with the tiresome American tendency to “view international relations as a moral struggle between forces of good and evil.” By indulging this tendency, moreover, the Clinton administration is merely repeating the mistakes of the Truman and Reagan administrations, which, rather than seeing the Cold War as the great power contest it so clearly was, cynically depicted it as a “moral crusade.”

Now, ideally, a nation’s foreign policies derive from a realistic assessment of the world around it and its own political values. Litwak’s reading of the international scene responds to neither. To begin with, the claim that the rogue state designation derives less from the actual conduct of states like North Korea, Iraq, and Iran than from our own self-interested aims is plainly inconsistent with the facts. Whether measured in terms of their repressive rule at home or their execrable conduct abroad, the countries on our rogue list surely belong there. If anything, the roster is too short.

As for the fanciful rendering of the Clinton White House as a purveyor of demonization and militancy, this portrait, too, does not bear scrutiny. Nor, for that matter, does Litwak’s claim that the policy has constrained its architects. On the contrary, the current administration has demonstrated a willingness to engage regimes of any stripe, often without conditions and regardless of consequences. It was in line with this policy that, during the past few months alone, the president favored Pakistan with an official visit, though power was just seized there by a military coup; hinted at removing either Libya or North Korea from the State Department’s list of terrorism-sponsoring nations; lifted selected sanctions against Iran; and launched an all-out drive to win China entry into the World Trade Organization, its caustic threats to “spill blood” on Taiwan notwithstanding. This pattern, however, seems not to have made the slightest impression on Litwak.

If anything, it is Litwak’s own proposals that would constrain U.S. policy, creating an interest in maintaining the status quo and inhibiting our ability to use power for political ends. For such is the author’s determination to avoid employing pejorative terms that he appears to eliminate any obligation to link punishment to offense in the conduct of foreign affairs. Indeed, enshrining his suggestions in official policy would merely encourage America’s adversaries to conclude that they enjoy more room to maneuver than U.S. rhetoric suggests. In this respect, the test case of engagement with China has been instructive. Far from improving, China’s conduct on the international scene has demonstrably worsened under the policy’s terms.

Beyond its lack of strategic underpinnings, Litwak’s relativistic approach to foreign policy would ensnare the United States in deeply troubling moral complications. Simply put, the international conduct of the United States would become indistinguishable from that of a frankly cynical country like France.

“Outside the American political culture,” he observes approvingly of our European friends, “the term rogue state is an alien concept.” Hence, it must be an illegitimate concept, an artificial notion that signifies nothing more than our own prejudices. To pretend otherwise is, for the author, simply to engage in an act of willful hubris and arrogance.

Despite its unmistakably postmodern ring, Litwak’s contention that there really is no such thing as a rogue state has found a receptive audience in the broader foreign policy community. Indeed, many of its members — both liberal and conservative — have taken to referring to America itself as a rogue state. The United States, they argue, is too naive, too sentimental, too judgmental to decide what sort of behavior merits censure.

True, Litwak is correct to note that the American inclination to view the world in terms of “good and evil” often leads to oversimplification. But it is equally true that evil does exist and that this nation’s moralistic impulse, however diminished, frequently gets things exactly right.

America the naive, after all, reigns preeminent. Its creed has been adopted by a majority of states and its ameliorative influence has led to a revolution of international norms — including the expectation that conduct such as that indulged in by rogue regimes will not be countenanced.

The question we should be asking, then, is not whether America should follow in the nonjudgmental footsteps of the secondary European powers Litwak invokes, but rather how best to avoid their fate.

For now, this much at least is evident: Were the United States to heed the author’s counsel, not only would the cause of American leadership and world order suffer irreparable harm, but a suitably high price would be exacted from this nation’s soul.

Lawrence F. Kaplan is executive editor of the National Interest.