Home › Books & Reviews › Capsule Reviews › Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment After the Cold War

Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment After the Cold War

Robert S. Litwak
Reviewed by By Philip Zelikow
September/October 2000
Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.
Robert S. Litwak
Johns Hopkins University Press
2000
277 pp.
0943875986
$49.95

President Clinton and some of his leading officials, especially Anthony Lake and Madeleine Albright, have emphasized the critical challenge that "rogue states" pose to U.S. foreign policy. In response, Litwak makes two arguments. First, he finds the "rogue" label much too simplistic; it lumps together quite different countries and problems so as to satisfy the American appetite for exemplary villains. Although Litwak could have been more forgiving about the need to find some way to describe those closed, dictatorial states that reject American norms, his argument against oversimplification is persuasive. Second, he argues that the "rogue" category keeps Washington from fashioning the differentiated policies it needs for nations like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. This second point is less persuasive. Litwak's good case studies prove that U.S. policies toward these "rogues" already vary considerably to take account of differing circumstances. Since "rogue state" rhetoric does not seem to mean much in practice, Litwak's critique knocks down a straw man. Still, he was not the one who stuffed this scarecrow.

Related

Essay, Mar/Apr 1995
Lessons of the Next Nuclear War
Michael Mandelbaum

Nuclear weapons, as great enhancers of national power, are attractive to U.S. allies, orphan states left outside the U.S. nuclear umbrella, and hostile rogue states. The collapse of the Soviet Union has brought into the open the growing desire for nuclear status, which the United States will have to discourage through continuing diplomacy and security commitments. Thwarting rogue states like Iraq and North Korea may eventually require preventive war, though it might take a nuclear exchange for Washington to reach that conclusion.

Read
Essay, May/Jun 1997
Differentiated Containment
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft and Richard Murphy

Every president since Richard Nixon has recognized that ensuring stability in the Persian Gulf is a vital U.S. interest. In its first term, the Clinton administration attempted to deal with the twin dangers of Iran and Iraq through a strategy of "dual containment" that kept both countries boxed in with economic sanctions and military monitoring. Dual containment, however, is more a slogan than a strategy, and far too blunt an instrument to serve American interests in the Middle East. The United States must employ a more nuanced approach, keeping the straitjacket on Saddam while seeking improved relations with Iran.

Read
Response, Jan/Feb 2006
The Cost of War
Christopher Gelpi and John Mueller

How Many Casualties Will Americans Tolerate?

Misdiagnosis

CHRISTOPHER GELPI

In "The Iraq Syndrome" (November/December 2005), John Mueller argues that public support for the American wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq can be explained with "a simple association: as casualties mount, support decreases." He goes on to say that support for the Iraq war has dropped so fast that it makes sense to talk about an "Iraq syndrome," a casualty-induced aversion to the future use of force by the United States.

Read