Rogue states: The stick or the carrot?

In this article from café
babel, Prune Antoine underlines that
the US and the EU have very different approaches when it
comes to dealing with rogue states. 

“One of the great challenges of our age is to deal with rogue
states, because their sole objective is to destroy the
international system”, declared American president Bill Clinton
during the first year of his mandate. However, the punitive
strategy adopted by the United States with regard to these “rogue
states” seems far from successful.

Initially restricted to seven countries – Iraq, North Korea,
Cuba, Iran, Syria, Libya and Sudan – the expression rogue state
designates “recalcitrant and outlaw states that not only choose to
remain outside the family of democracies but also assault its basic
values”. In short, nations which, according to Washington, support
international terrorism, develop non-conventional armament programs
(such as manufacturing biological, chemical or nuclear weapons),
encourage the drug trade or oppress their own populations. These
rebellious entities also present the characteristic of being
anti-Western, and thus likely to threaten American “vital
interests”. The theory of the rogue state, enshrouded in a blurred
legality and brought to the forefront by the attacks of September
11, turned into that of the “axis of the evil”, then into that of
“outposts of tyranny”, giving rise to the disputed doctrine of
“preventive war”.

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