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The good, the bad, and the ugly: Comparing the notions of ‘rogue’ and ‘evil’ in international politics

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Abstract

The identification and naming of an ‘enemy’ is an age-old element within foreign policy and (domestic) security policy discourses. It serves to stabilize speakers’ benign conceptions of the self, to structure threat perceptions of ‘the world outside’ and to legitimate ultimately violent policy options. This article compares the notions of ‘rogue’ and ‘evil’ in order to analyse the political implications of such a use of derogative actor categories. The notion of ‘rogue states’ has played an important role in the security strategies of the US presidents Clinton and in particular George W. Bush and alludes to criminal law. ‘Evil’ has been a much older, religiously loaded concept and has been invoked in politics for describing the inconceivable, monstrous violence and destruction. While many liberal critics argue that one should abandon the metaphysical category of evil and dispose of the stigmatizing category of the ‘rogue’, this article concludes with the suggestion that a self-reflexive use of these categories can be instructive: It can make ‘us’ – the very modern secular liberals – think about ourselves, about responsibility and moral standards as well as about the fundamental ambivalence of our actions.

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Notes

  1. See, for example, from different theoretical-methodological backgrounds Balzacq (2011), Ish-Shalom (2010) and Jackson (2005).

  2. As Peter Singer notes, ‘tens of millions of Americans’ have an apocalyptic view of the world (Singer, 2004, p. 208). He also refers to David Frum, Bush’s speechwriter at the time of his ‘axis of evil’ speech, who said of Bush’s use of the term ‘evil ones’ for the terrorists: ‘In a country where almost two-thirds of the population believes in the devil, Bush was identifying Osama bin Laden and his gang as literally satanic’ (quoted in Singer, 2004, p. 208).

  3. A list of references to ‘evil’ in the speeches of US presidents is presented in Jeffery (2008a, p. 145). At the top of the list is G.W. Bush with more than 800 references, followed by Ronald Reagan (351) and, perhaps more surprisingly, Bill Clinton (309). Fourth and fifth come Roosevelt (141) and Truman (111).

  4. Speech on Pearl Harbor Day, 7 December 2001. cf. also the State of the Union Address by the President on 28 January 2003.

  5. Speech to the German Bundestag, 24 May 2002.

  6. Speech on Pearl Harbor Day, 7 December 2001.

  7. Speech on the Middle East, 3 April 2002.

  8. Speech at West Point Academy, 1 June 2002.

  9. For an overview on the ‘rogue state’ concept see, for example, Henriksen (2001), Klare (1995), Litwak (2000), Wagner et al (2014).

  10. The National Security Strategy of 2002 characterized the ‘rogue state’ as follows (The White House, 2002, pp. 13–14): ‘These states brutalize their own people and squander their national resources for the personal gain of the rulers; display no regard for international law, threaten their neighbors, and callously violate international treaties to which they are party; are determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction, along with other advanced military technology, to be used as threats or offensively to achieve the aggressive designs of these regimes; sponsor terrorism around the globe; and reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands’.

  11. For an alternative perspective on ‘rogue states’ as norm entrepreneurs in international politics, see Wunderlich (2014).

  12. Q&A with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, USA Today, 18 September 2002, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-09-18-iran-full-interview_x.htm.

  13. BBC ‘Bush’s “evil axis” comment stirs critics’, 2 February 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1796034.stm.

  14. For a similar argumentation, see Chomsky (2000, p. 1), Litwak (2000, p. 254), Thompson (2002) and Derrida (2006, p. 113).

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Geis, A., Wunderlich, C. The good, the bad, and the ugly: Comparing the notions of ‘rogue’ and ‘evil’ in international politics. Int Polit 51, 458–474 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2014.19

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