The Foreign Service Journal, October 2005

F O C U S O C T O B E R 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 29 administration’s definition, are not content to stake their security on the good word but limited power of the United Nations. As Ted Galen Carpenter and Charles V. Peña explain in the summer 2005 issue of The National Interest , North Korea and Iran’s apparent nuclear ambitions can be seen as “a logical, perhaps even inevitable, response to the foreign policy the United States has pursued since the end of the Cold War.” These rogue states have responded to the threat of preventive war by developing the one instrument which enables even the smallest and most impoverished of countries to face down the strongest and richest — a nuclear weapon. For while most Americans believe that U.S. actions are guided by the best of intentions, Carpenter and Peña point out, “other nations may not concede that the motives of an activist power are benign.” Knowing Our Limits Recognizing that America’s limited capacity for shap- ing the world in our own image may give rise to a host of unintended consequences, policy-makers must pri- oritize based on our vital interests, carefully defined. In this context, some rogue states prove useful allies; others are troublesome nuisances that do not threaten the United States. Still others might offend modern sensibilities in terms of how they treat their own citi- zens, but may at the same time be powerful or impor- tant enough that their precipitous regime change is either not in America’s interest or beyond our capacity (China, for example). Ultimately, therefore, U.S. policy toward rogue states should resemble our policies toward … well, states in general. Most of the time, we will maintain peaceful relations with most countries around the world; occasionally containment and isolation might be necessary; and in a few very rare cases, confrontation might be required. The rogue state of Afghanistan under the Taliban was actively and knowingly harbor- ing individuals who had already committed, and were prepared to commit again, horrible crimes against American citizens. The United States, acting with allies both inside and outside of Afghanistan, removed the Taliban from power. The particular policy options that we employ should be contin- gent upon states’ actual behavior. The United States may cooperate with rogue states on some issues, even as we oppose them on other fronts. After all, a China that behaved like a rogue state by threatening to use “non-peaceful means” to prevent Taiwan from formally declaring its indepen- dence has proved to be a helpful state with respect to pressuring North Korea to return to the six-party talks on their nuclear program. The willingness of policy-makers within the Bush adminis- tration to work with Beijing on that issue does not imply that they condone the Chinese regime’s behavior on any other issue. And, lest we forget, at least two of the states that assisted the United States in its war to remove the rogue regime of the Taliban — Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — are governed by petty despots who do not derive their authority from any- thing approaching the Jeffersonian standard (i.e., the consent of the governed). If it were true that “America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one,” as President Bush declared in his second inaugural address, then there would be no hard choices in foreign policy. But the world doesn’t work that way. Policy-making entails making choices, virtually all of them difficult. National interests and abstract “values” must be kept largely separate; otherwise, it becomes harder and harder to differentiate those actions that are neces- sary and warranted from those that are unnecessary and unwise. A half-century ago, President Dwight Eisenhower had a vision of national security that was shaped by his perception of national interests — interests that were, in turn, shaped by his sense that American power was limited. These limitations necessarily forced policy- makers to pick and choose where and when to inter- vene, and in what fashion. This was crucially important during the Cold War, when miscalculation risked pro- voking a global thermonuclear war. Neoconservatives enamored of America’s unipolar moment in the aftermath of the Cold War believe that With its coercive posture U.S. policy aims to convince despotic regimes to forgo their autocratic ways, or else suffer the fate of Saddam Hussein.