What Is a Rogue State?

by Paul R. Pillar

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The concept of a rogue state (or outlaw state, or any equivalent term) cannot just refer to a state pursuing interests that we do not happen to like or do not identify with. States must be expected to pursue their interests, and every state on the globe has at least some interests that differ from those of the United States. Rather, rogue or outlaw behavior has to do with how a state pursues its interests. To be a “rogue” means pursuit through methods contrary to accepted standards of international behavior and contrary to international law. It means cheating or reneging. It often means the use of violent methods when peaceful ones are available.

The Trump administration, notwithstanding its recent declaration of a cold war with China, which is too large to be dismissed as a rogue, or the longstanding outlaw behavior of North Korea, whose dictator has become Donald Trump’s latest love interest , has depicted Iran as the preeminent rogue state. That depiction makes especially interesting the upshot of the latest contest between the United States and Iran.

That contest took place before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ruled unanimously in favor of Iran, in a lawsuit in which Iran called for an end to U.S. sanctions that prevent shipment to Iran of humanitarian goods, including food, medicine, and aircraft parts needed to keep passenger planes safe. Iran argued that the sanctions violate, among other things, a U.S.-Iranian friendship treaty from 1955, a treaty thatboth sides have invoked from time to time. The U.S. response was a declaration from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the United States was terminating the treaty.

Compliance with rulings of the ICJ is supposed to be mandatory, although the court has no means of enforcement. Maybe Trump is taking a cue from Andrew Jackson, whose portrait he has hung in the Oval Office, about Chief Justice John Marshall having made a decision in the U.S. Supreme Court and Jackson purportedly saying “now let him enforce it.” Pompeo claimed the ICJ should not have jurisdiction in the present case because the United States was acting on behalf of national security—the same rationale the administration invoked in flouting rules of the World Trade Organization when it imposed steel and aluminum tariffs on the likes of Canada. The timing of Pompeo’s statement, however—coming after the ICJ’s ruling—suggests the administration would have been happy to accept the court’s jurisdiction if the ruling had gone the other way.

The most important observation about this whole episode is that the administration’s pouty response was to Iran taking a peaceful action in an international court, an action that followed both the procedures and the substance of international law. There is certainly nothing rogue-like in what Iran was doing. It is the United States, not Iran, that is saying it will dispense with international law, standards, rules, and peaceful settlement of disputes and will use whatever methods it wants in pursuing its campaign of hostility against another state.

This case is not the only recent international legal proceeding in which the Trump administration has said it will take its ball and go home. National Security Advisor John Bolton stated last week that the administration was withdrawing from a protocol to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations in response to a suit brought to the ICJ by Palestine, which alleges the United States violated the convention when it moved to Jerusalem its embassy to Israel.

The U.S. sanctions that cut off humanitarian shipments to Iran violate not only that 1955 friendship treaty but also, even more clearly, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the multilateral agreement commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, and United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 , which endorsed the JCPOA and passed the council unanimously. The Trump administration and other opponents of the JCPOA take a very fluid approach to UN Security Council resolutions. They have placed much emphasis, for example, on a clause in that same Resolution 2231 that refers to Iran’s missile activity and is only hortatory but say nothing similar about the firm obligations that the Trump administration has violated and that the other six parties to the JCPOA, including Iran, have so far observed.

The administration’s playing fast and loose with international agreements puts into perspective, by the way, some of the other arguments that opponents of the JCPOA have long used. Brian Hook, who heads the administration’s task force on promoting hostility toward Iran, justifies the reneging on the JCPOA by saying that “the deal is not legally binding . . . it’s not an agreement…it’s a plan of action.” If that were so, then why all the storm and stress over the “sunset” clauses that place expiration dates on some of the provisions in the JCPOA? After all, if nothing in the agreement were binding, Iran could feel just as free as the Trump administration has felt in blowing off its commitments whenever it wants, and the expiration dates would be meaningless anyway. Many of the JCPOA’s opponents also have complained that the agreement did not take the form of a treaty (of course, we all know what would have happened, or not happened, in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate if that were done). But the administration’s latest cavalier trashing of international treaties that date to the 1950s and 1960s suggests that, if the administration’s behavior were to be the standard for handling treaties, then this detail about the diplomatic art form would have made no difference at all.