Strategies for Managing Rogue States

by Colin Dueck
Colin Dueck (Colin.Dueck@colorado.edu) is an assistant professor of political science at the
University of Colorado, Boulder, and the author of Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture and
Change in American Grand Strategy (Princeton University Press, 2006).

Abstract: In the ongoing debates on how to manage relations with rogue states
such as North Korea and Iran, the opposing policies of both hawks and doves
are unrealistic in their pure forms. Throughout American history, presidents
have faced the same choices the Bush administration now has when dealing
with adversaries abroad: appeasement, engagement, containment, rollback,
and non-entanglement. Each of these five basic strategic alternatives has
potential advantages and risks. In analyzing how these have applied to U.S.
relations with Iraq, North Korea, and Iran—the so-called axis of evil—it
becomes clear that rollback and appeasement are the riskiest options and
containment the most promising. Elements of diplomacy, however, can be used
in conjunction with a primary policy of containment to head off threats from
rogue states.

W
hen serious foreign policy challenges are refracted through the
prism of American party politics, the resulting debates are often
characterized by false and misleading dichotomies. This has cer-
tainly been the case with the ongoing challenge of how to manage ‘‘rogue
states’’ such as North Korea and Iran. Foreign policy hawks advocate punish-
ment, sanctions, and regime change; doves advocate rewards, inducements,
and diplomatic engagement. Neither side, in its pure form, offers strategies that
are likely to be realistic or effective in the face of capable adversaries.
The United States and its allies have long histories of dealing with
hostile, threatening, and revisionist powers on a much worse scale than at
present—and of outlasting or defeating them. We also have ample experience
with failed and mistaken strategies in dealing with such states. A brief survey of
the basic strategic alternatives and their effectiveness in the past will illuminate
the current debate over U.S. policy toward rogue states. It will also help to
clarify the proper long-term tone and direction of U.S. policy.
The term ‘‘rogue state,’’ which has come into wide usage only over the
past decade, has more to do with American political culture than with

# 2006 Published by Elsevier Limited on behalf of Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Spring 2006 | 223

DUECK

international law.1 Nevertheless, it does capture certain undeniable interna-

tional realities, namely, the continuing existence of numerous authoritarian
states that support terrorism, seek weapons of mass destruction, and harbor
revisionist foreign policy ambitions. Loosening this definition a bit, we can see
that rogue states are really nothing new. Over the past century, Western
democracies have been faced with a series of challenges from autocratic,
revisionist, and adversarial states of varying scope and size. The democracies
have always had five basic strategic alternatives in relation to such adversaries:
appeasement, engagement, containment, rollback, and non-entanglement.

Appeasement

The strategy of appeasement, while seemingly discredited after 1938,

has recently attracted surprising and favorable attention from scholars of
international relations.2 Part of the problem surrounding the term has been
a failure to agree on its meaning. Properly speaking, appeasement is not
synonymous with diplomatic negotiations or diplomatic concessions, but
refers only to those cases where one country attempts to alter or satiate the
aggressive intentions of another through unilateral political, economic, and/or
military concessions.3
It is sometimes argued that appeasement can work under certain
circumstances, and that Neville Chamberlain’s performance at Munich in
1938 was simply a case of appeasement badly handled.4 The drawbacks of
appeasement, however, are inherent. They lie in the fact that concrete
concessions are made by one side only, while the other side is trusted to
shift its intentions from hostile to benign. With this strategy, there is nothing to
stop the appeased state from pocketing its gains and moving on to the next
aggression.5 Britain’s rapprochement with the United States in the 1890s is
often described as a successful case of appeasement.6 Skillful British diplo-
macy indeed played a part in significantly improving relations between the
two over the course of that decade, but that case does not deserve the term.
The United States was not particularly hostile to Great Britain in the first place,

1
Robert Litwak, Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Containment after the Cold War
(Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000), pp. 47–56.
2
See, e.g., Stephen Rock, Appeasement in International Politics (Lexington: University Press
of Kentucky, 2000).
3
John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002),
p. 163. For competing definitions, see Gordon Craig and Alexander George, Force and State-
craft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 247; and
Rock, Appeasement in International Politics, p. 12.
4
Craig and George, Force and Statecraft, p. 251; Rock, Appeasement in International
Politics, pp. 49–76.
5
Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, pp. 163–4.
6
Rock, Appeasement in International Politics, pp. 25–47.

224 | Orbis
 Rogue States

and no vital conflicts of interest existed between the two powers. The Anglo-
American rapprochement was more the result than the cause of that common-
ality of interests.7 In sum, appeasement—strictly defined—is a strategy best
avoided. Realistic bargaining or negotiations involving mutual compromise
and presumably fixed intentions is another matter entirely, however, and
should not be confused with appeasement.

Engagement

Engagement, a popular concept in recent years, actually has several

possible meanings and is used in a number of different ways. It can refer to
(1) a stance of diplomatic or commercial activism internationally;8 (2) the
simple fact of ongoing political or economic contact with an existing counter-
part or adversary; (3) using such political or economic contact as a strategy in
itself, in the hopes that this contact will create patterns of cooperation,
integration, and interdependence with a rogue state;9 (4) a strategy under
which international adversaries enter into a limited range of cooperative
agreements, alongside continued rivalry or competition;10 or (5) the very
act of diplomacy, negotiating, or bargaining, regardless of its content. Only the
third definition, focusing on integration through contact, is analytically useful.
The first is too vague to be of much use; the second is a condition rather than a
strategy; the fourth is more accurately captured by de´tente; and as to the last
definition, there is no compelling reason to abandon the words ‘‘diplomacy,’’
‘‘negotiating,’’ or ‘‘bargaining’’ when they have served very well up to now.11
Engagement as a strategy of integration through contact rests upon
liberal assumptions regarding international affairs. Specifically, it typically
assumes that increased economic interdependence, membership in interna-
tional organizations, and transnational contact between civil societies will
combine to shape adversarial regimes in a more democratic and peaceful
direction.12 In the 1970s, Western analysts viewed America’s détente with the
Soviet Union as this sort of strategy, and the collapse of the USSR is in fact
frequently attributed in large part to the subversive influence of increased

7
Howard Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (New York:
Collier Books, 1970), pp. 85–158.
8
This appears to be one of the senses in which the Clinton administration used the term. See
William J. Clinton, A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement (White House,
1996).
9
Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan, ‘‘Terms of Engagement: Alternatives to Punitive
Policies,’’ Survival, Summer 2000, p. 114.
10
Chas W. Freeman, Arts of Power: Statecraft and Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: United
States Institute of Peace Press, 1997), pp. 80–81.
11
Craig and George, Force and Statecraft, pp. 163–79, 245–57; Freeman, Arts of Power, p. 80.
12
Haass and O’Sullivan, ‘‘Terms of Engagement,’’ pp. 114, 121–2; George Shambaugh,
‘‘Containment or Engagement of China?’’ International Security, Fall 1996, p. 181.

Spring 2006 | 225

DUECK

contact with the West. But Western trade, technology, and recognition in the
second half of the Cold War did as much to prop up as to undermine the Soviet
bloc.13 Western policies toward various rogue states (and toward China) over
the last twenty years have often been predicated on the assumption that
increased political and economic contact with the outside world will under-
mine these regimes. Yet there is remarkably little evidence that integration
through contact has ever actually worked in managing existing international
adversaries.
The Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy team, with which détente is most
closely linked, did not see it primarily as a strategy of integration, but rather as a
strategy of disciplined rivalry alongside expanded areas of cooperation.14 In
other words, they held to the more traditional definition, in which tensions
were reduced while continued competition with one’s adversary was con-
sidered inevitable. In this very limited sense, the Soviet-American détente of
the early 1970s was indeed a positive achievement, in that the risks of war were
reduced for both sides. Only when liberals came to view détente as having
more ambitious, overarching goals—as restraining Soviet expansion through a
web of interdependence—did it have to be considered a failure.
Engagement as integration, engagement as détente—what about
engagement as diplomacy? Observers often call for the United States to
‘‘engage’’ rogue states such as North Korea or Iran when what they seem
to mean is ‘‘negotiate.’’ Obviously one cannot speak of ‘‘negotiations’’ in the
abstract: it all depends on the precise bargain that is on offer. Yet this is exactly
what observers so often do when they urge the United States to ‘‘try diplo-
macy’’ without regard to the particular terms that are actually available from the
other side. If a rogue state is willing to come to an agreement, however limited,
that advances American interests, then diplomatic efforts should be embraced.
If not, then we ought to recognize that diplomacy is not an end in itself.

Containment

Containment is the strategy most closely associated with America’s

Cold War policies. It is also a strategy with considerable prior use. Britain,
France, and Russia in effect ‘‘contained’’ Germany after 1900 by coming to a set
of diplomatic understandings. Before that, Bismarck contained France in the
1870s and 1880s with his web of European alliances. The Vienna peace
settlement of 1815 contained Restoration France by creating a number of

13
See, e.g., in the case of East Germany, Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany
and the Divided Continent (New York: Random House, 1993), pp. 367–8; and M. E. Sarotte,
Dealing with the Devil: East Germany, De´tente, and Ostpolitik, 1969–1973 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2001), pp. 169–78.
14
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American
National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 274–308.

226 | Orbis
 Rogue States

medium-sized buffer states.15 In a sense, containment is nothing more than

traditional balance-of-power policy, creating military and diplomatic counter-
weights against a potential aggressor. The early Cold War version of contain-
ment, however, had certain distinct qualities that went well beyond the
balance-of-power approach, in that U.S. officials abjured meaningful negotia-
tions with the Soviet Union. Instead, they attempted to quarantine that country,
in the hopes that it would eventually mellow or collapse.16 The distinction is
significant. With traditional balance-of-power diplomacy, adversaries often
engage in straightforward negotiations and ignore ideological strictures, even
as they attempt to outmaneuver one another. However, under early Cold War
forms of containment, such negotiations were viewed as essentially futile
and counterproductive, due to ideological differences between the two super-
powers.17
In the end, of course, containment led to astounding and unexpected
success, allowing the United States to avoid either catastrophic retreat or great-
power war. Yet containment, in the abstract, can be combined with other
approaches. The Nixon-Kissinger team pursued a strategy of containment plus
diplomacy with a certain degree of success. So while it does not rule out
the use of negotiations, containment does require patience, strength, and
vigilance.

Rollback

Rollback has gained new appeal since 9/11. It is the most assertive of
the five alternatives. In its direct form, it involves full-scale war against a rogue
state to achieve regime change. But there are also less extreme versions of this
strategy. Rollback can involve, for example, intense military, economic, and
diplomatic pressure, short of outright invasion, in the hopes of precipitating
the collapse of a given regime. These can also be combined with containment.
There are historical cases where nothing short of direct rollback would
have sufficed to remove a deadly international threat. These are cases where
the threatening states combined risk-acceptant aggressiveness with an intol-
erable conglomeration of military power. Nazi Germany is the obvious case.
Napoleon also seems to have been bent on aggression and unlikely to have
15
F. R. Bridge and Roger Bullen, The Great Powers and the European States System, 1815–1914
(New York: Longman, 1980), pp. 24–27, 115–36, 155–9.
16
The most articulate statements of these goals and assumptions were contained in the
writings and memoranda of State Department official George Kennan. See especially Kennan to
Secretary of State James Byrnes, Feb. 22, 1946, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, vol.
6 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), pp. 696–709 (‘‘Kennan to
Byrnes’’); and ‘‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct,’’ Foreign Affairs, July 1947.
17
Walter Lippmann, a leading foreign policy realist of the 1940s, criticized the strategy of
containment for this very reason. See Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy
(New York: Harper, 1947), p. 60.

Spring 2006 | 227

DUECK

stopped his expansionism unless overthrown.18 But not every rogue state fits
into this category. Some rogues are simply not that powerful; others, while
implacably hostile, are not actually prone to taking chances against deter-
mined opposition. Here was one of George Kennan’s crucial insights into the
leadership of the Soviet Union: that while they were truly hostile toward the
West, they were not inclined to risk war in the way that Hitler had been.19 This
critical factor made possible the containment of the USSR.
At the time, of course, during the early years of the Cold War, many
Americans were not so sure: containment seemed to promise only indefinite
cost and commitment, leaving the option of rollback rather appealing by
comparison.20 During the Korean War, prominent U.S. officials attempted to
‘‘roll back’’ North Korea, while seriously considering air strikes against both
China and the USSR. In the end, direct rollback or military attack against the
Soviet bloc was rejected, for the obvious reason that it was appallingly risky
and expensive.21 The United States continued to employ covert operations and
psychological warfare against the Soviet Union and its allies, but rollback
became more of a rhetorical commitment than a real alternative. Only in the
1980s was the United States able to hit on a version of indirect rollback—the
Reagan doctrine—that delivered considerable gain at minimal expense. By
providing aid to anticommunist guerrillas in the periphery of the Soviet bloc,
the United States helped to put Moscow into an intolerably over-extended
position. In sharp contrast—and just as indicative of the typical outcome—was
America’s earlier experience at the Bay of Pigs, where the attempted rollback
of Castro’s regime resulted in humiliation for the United States.
It is hard to conclude from the historical record that rollback is always
the best alternative against hostile rogue states. When successful, it has the
incomparable advantage of removing a given threat altogether. To employ
Hans Delbruck’s classic formulation, rollback is a ‘‘strategy of annihilation,’’
whereas containment is a ‘‘strategy of exhaustion.’’22 Historically, Americans
have preferred strategies of annihilation, which promise immediate and
decisive results.23 But this very feature comes with a downside. Just as rollback
is the most assertive of the five alternatives, so it is also potentially the most

18
Paul Schroeder, ‘‘Napoleon’s Foreign Policy: A Criminal Enterprise,’’ Journal of Military
History, April 1990.
19
Kennan to Byrnes, pp. 706–8.
20
The most searching arguments in favor of a Cold War strategy of rollback or ‘‘liberation’’
were written by James Burnham. See Burnham, Containment or Liberation? (New York: J. Day,
1953), pp. 34–36, 43, 128–40, 251–2.
21
Rosemary Foot, The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean
Conflict (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 117–21, 128–39.
22
Gordon Craig, ‘‘Delbruck: The Military Historian,’’ in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern
Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 341–4.
23
Russell Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy
and Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), p. xxii.

228 | Orbis
 Rogue States

costly and risk-prone. When it fails, it tends to fail spectacularly. Furthermore,

arguments for rollback always run into the dilemma of whether to impose
one’s stated commitment to regime change through force. Direct implementa-
tion entails all of the costs and risks of war. A rhetorical commitment alone, on
the other hand, complicates diplomacy and even invites preemptive attack,
but without actually removing the threat. A strategy of rollback is preferable to
appeasement, but it carries considerable dangers.

Non-entanglement

Non-entanglement is the fifth and final alternative. Properly under-

stood, a stance of non-entanglement is neither hawkish nor conciliatory.24 It
eschews both sticks and carrots. Its defining characteristic is the unwillingness
to make any sort of military, diplomatic, or economic commitment—whether
as threat or inducement—in relation to a given rogue state. Historically, the
option of non-entanglement has been especially appealing to maritime and
democratic powers such as Britain and the United States, but it has often had
disastrous consequences. The British were happy to abstain from any
European security commitment for much of the nineteenth century, which
posture allowed them to pursue economic and imperial opportunities abroad
without the need for an expensive military establishment. Yet this same
posture also cost them decisive influence over critical events on the continent,
such as Bismarck’s unification of Germany. Without the willingness to inter-
vene in a potentially costly manner, the British could not expect to carry any
weight in Europe’s balance of power. Even as late as July 1914—and despite
preexisting diplomatic and military agreements with Paris—the British cabinet
refused to make any firm commitment to the defense of France and Belgium
until it was too late. There is at least the possibility that a strong, clear warning
beforehand would have deterred the Germans from attacking, but none was
given.25 In this sense, the ultimate fruit of ‘‘splendid isolation’’ was a cata-
strophic war into which Britain was dragged in any case.
America’s experience with non-entanglement over the past century has
been no better. In both world wars, the United States tried to avoid involvement,
only to eventually discover that vital interests were at stake. The failure to act
earlier against the Axis helped shape the postwar consensus against isolation-
ism. But efforts at and perceptions of U.S. disengagement continued to plague
American foreign policy. In 1950, North Korea attacked the South under the
mistaken impression that the United States would not intervene. In the 1960s and

24
Eric Nordlinger, Isolationism Reconfigured: American Foreign Policy for a New Century
(Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 34.
25
Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (New York: Basic Books, 1999),
pp. 56–104, 143–73; Sean Lynn-Jones, ‘‘Détente and Deterrence: Anglo-German Relations,
1911–1914,’’ International Security, Fall 1986.

Spring 2006 | 229

DUECK

early 1970s, North Vietnam conducted its war against Saigon by relying upon the
half-heartedness of American involvement. In 1990, Iraq attacked Kuwait
under the misapprehension that the United States would remain disengaged.
Even 9/11 can be partially attributed to Al Qaeda’s perception that the United
States would not fight a costly war against it, but would rather withdraw from the
Middle East after suffering heavy casualties.26 If true non-entanglement were
actually an option for the United States, these perceptions would not matter. But
since the United States is inevitably drawn by its own interests into various
conflicts overseas, the very impression of American non-entanglement tends to
operate as a dangerous source of instability and war.
Obviously, the United States does not have an obligation to intervene
in every single circumstance of international or civil conflict. In those cases
where American interests are limited, threats are modest, and the costs
outweigh the benefits, non-entanglement may be a perfectly good option.
But as a general strategic posture or default response, the disadvantages of
non-entanglement outweigh the advantages. Americans typically believe that
a relatively open, democratic, and free international order is in their interest.
This order is not self-sustaining; it requires protection, which non-entangle-
ment does not provide. When the United States adopts a strategy of non-
entanglement, it allows free rein to rogue states to pursue their own revisionist
ambitions and robs itself of the ability to influence events overseas. Whenever
the United States pursues a strategy of non-entanglement, it eventually ends up
having to intervene anyway, at greater cost. In the long term, non-entangle-
ment is often the riskiest and costliest strategy of all.27

Case Studies

In order to better weigh the costs and benefits of these various alter-
native strategies, it is instructive to examine both their actual and their potential
use in relation to each of the three ‘‘rogue states’’—Iraq, North Korea, and Iran—
singled out by President Bush in his January 2002 state-of-the-union address.

Iraq

From the spring of 1991 until the fall of 2001, containment—with

elements of indirect rollback—was Washington’s de facto strategy toward Iraq.
Saddam had been left in power after the 1991 Gulf War, but concerns
continued about his ability to build WMD and threaten his neighbors. The

26
For evidence of this perception, see Osama bin Laden, ‘‘Declaration of War (August
1996),’’ in Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, eds., Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle
East: A Documentary Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 140.
27
Robert Art, A Grand Strategy for America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003),
pp. 172–222.

230 | Orbis
 Rogue States

American response over those years was fourfold. First, the George H. W. Bush
and then the Clinton administration developed and maintained a significant,
permanent military presence within the Persian Gulf region, in order to deter
Saddam from future aggression. Second, with its allies, it created and enforced
no-fly zones in both north and south Iraq. Third, it encouraged UN inspectors to
locate and dismantle any WMD within Iraq. Finally, it attempted to corral
international support for continued economic sanctions against Iraq, in order
to enforce weapons inspections, degrade Iraqi military capabilities, and
weaken Saddam Hussein’s regime. These last two tactics, in particular, broke
down over the course of the 1990s. In 1998, Saddam forced UN inspectors out
of Iraq, and by 2001, it was clear that the sanctions regime was both porous and
unpopular. The successive administrations of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton,
and George W. Bush tinkered with covert options, clearly hoping that Saddam
might be overthrown or killed in some sort of palace coup. ‘‘Regime change’’
became official U.S. policy in 1998, with the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act,
according to which Washington would materially support Saddam’s domestic
opponents. A continuous series of U.S. air strikes against Iraq began that same
year. But there was never any sense, prior to the fall of 2001, that the United
States was seriously preparing to launch a major ground invasion, and Saddam
apparently continued to have as firm a grip on power as ever.
This was the record of U.S. strategy toward Iraq prior to 9/11, and out
of discontent with its obvious imperfections, many critics decided that contain-
ment had failed. But compared to what alternatives? Obviously, if the primary
American goal up until 2001 was to overthrow Saddam, then a full-scale
invasion was the most certain instrument toward that end. But it is important to
be precise here: if the American goal was to ‘‘keep Saddam in his box,’’ to deter
him from aggression, and to prevent him from attacking his neighbors—as U.S.
officials said it was—then containment did not fail, but in fact succeeded.
Saddam was not only contained prior to 2003, but militarily much weakened.
The sanctions regime, in particular, had a devastating effect on Iraq’s military
capabilities across the board. Indeed, it was his eagerness to remove these
sanctions that led Saddam to largely dismantle his existing WMD capabilities.28
Precisely because of American vigilance between 1991 and 2003, Iraq was in
no condition to threaten or attack its neighbors.
Now that the United States is engaged in a lengthy armed struggle in
Iraq, it would be irresponsible not to ask whether the benefits of rollback in
this case have outweighed the costs. The administration and its supporters
argue that there have been several benefits: the removal of a monstrous
dictator whose human rights record turns out to have been even worse than

28
‘‘Excerpts from the Comprehensive Report of Charles A. Duelfer, Special Advisor to the
DCI and Leader of the Iraq Survey Group, on Iraq’s WMD, October 2004,’’ in Craig Whitney, ed.,
The WMD Mirage: Iraq’s Decade of Deception and America’s False Premise for War (New York:
PublicAffairs, 2005), p. 248.

Spring 2006 | 231

DUECK

expected; the encouraging movement in Iraq, and potentially the region,

toward democratic forms of government; and the creation of a new credibility
in relation to compellent threats by the United States—an indication that the
United States cannot easily be coerced, but will punish those who threaten its
interests and its citizens.29
These are no small benefits, were they all to be secured, and as of yet,
the final ledger is unclear. Yet many of the advertised benefits of this war
remain uncertain. In terms of the development of Iraq into a strong, friendly,
and democratic power, progress has been uneven, to say the least. Iraq is more
a loose collection of squabbling and mutually hostile sects and ethnicities than
a stable nation-state. Many Sunni Iraqis are profoundly alienated from the new
regime. To this day Iraq’s own security forces are extremely weak. And by
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s own criterion, the insurgents seem able to
replace their losses as quickly as we are able to capture, turn, or kill them.
Even if Iraq becomes a functioning democracy, there is no guarantee that a
popular, Shiite majority government will remain an ally of the United States.
Nor is it obvious that steps toward democracy in Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
and the Palestinian Authority will ultimately redound to American interests.
Consequently, it is still too early, from the perspective of American national
interests, to talk of a democratic ‘‘springtime’’ in the Middle East.
The value of the war in terms of its spin-off, compellent effects in other
regions is also uncertain. New diplomatic opportunities with regard to
Libya, North Korea, and Iran seem to have had as much to do with local
circumstances—and in some cases, American concessions—as with anything
else. In fact, it could be argued that America’s military, and therefore political,
leverage in regard to these other cases has actually been reduced, since U.S.
armed forces are preoccupied with Iraq. Indeed, the war in Iraq has opened up
an arena for a potential American military defeat that did not previously exist. If
U.S. forces eventually disengage or withdraw from Iraq without having defeated
the insurgents, that will naturally be interpreted as a success for the international
jihadist movement and a defeat for the United States. In that case, America’s
compellent credibility will be less, not greater, than it was before 2003.
Against the mixed evidence on the issues of democratization and
compellent credibility is the hard fact of numerous other costs. More than 2,200
Americans have been killed, and 16,000 wounded, in Iraq. Tens of thousands
of Iraqi civilians have also been killed or wounded, not all of whom worked
with the insurgency. The war has cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of
dollars for operational expenses alone. It has dealt a serious blow to America’s
reputation among friends, allies, and ‘‘neutrals’’ as a self-restrained and non-
aggressive great power. Most frustrating and tragic of all, perhaps, is the extent
to which the issue of Iraq has weakened and divided both domestic and
international support for the war on Islamist terrorism—a war that is almost

29
Victor Hanson, ‘‘Has Iraq Weakened Us?’’ Commentary, February 2005.

232 | Orbis
 Rogue States

universally agreed to be right and necessary. By associating Saddam so closely

with the terrorist threat, the Bush administration succeeded in building support
for a strategy of direct rollback. But as the American public grows increasingly
disenchanted with the slow progress in Iraq, the war only provides ammuni-
tion for those who would question the administration’s whole approach,
including the wider war on terror.
In this sense, the Iraq issue may come back to undermine domestic
political support for other hardline and worthwhile counterterrorism or
foreign policy initiatives. Internationally, it shifted the focus of global attention
from Al Qaeda to the United States itself. And even in terms of the jihadist
movement itself, the war has acted as a recruiting tool and a new arena for
operations, arguably strengthening rather than weakening the terrorists inter-
nationally.30 It is a bitter reflection that a war undertaken in response to 9/11
may have done more to strengthen than to hurt jihadist terrorists. It is not
obvious that the United States would have been in a worse strategic position
overall if it had merely continued to contain Saddam.
At this point, of course, the undertaking in Iraq has truly become a part
of the international war on terror, if only because jihadists have flocked into
Iraq and taken it up as the newest proving ground for their cause. For that very
reason, the United States cannot afford to fail in that country. An American
retreat would constitute a humiliation for the United States and a victory for the
terrorists, and would leave Iraqis to fend for themselves against violence and
disorder, without a stable central government to protect them. President Bush
has been under significant domestic pressure to disengage American troops
from this war. It is to his credit that he has consistently rebuffed these demands,
at considerable political risk to himself.
Ultimately, history will judge whether the Bush administration was
right to invade Iraq. If that country becomes a democratic power over the next
few years, then Bush will look visionary. Yet it would be imprudent to
conclude, based upon the current evidence, that direct rollback rather than
containment ought to be our guiding template against other rogue states. The
costs of this strategy against Saddam have been very high, and most of the
benefits uncertain.

North Korea

With Iraq, the only real choice was between containment and rollback.
In the case of North Korea, the plausible alternatives also include engagement.
This is not because Kim Jong Il is any less malicious or aggressive than was
Saddam: on the contrary, Kim’s government is both threatening and brutally
repressive. Unfortunately, however, North Korea is thought already to have

30
International Institute for Strategic Studies [IISS], Strategic Survey 2004/5 (London:
Routledge, 2005), pp. 8–9.

Spring 2006 | 233

DUECK

several nuclear weapons or the ability to assemble them.31 This alone makes
the Korean situation far more dangerous—and delicate—than Iraq ever was.
During the 1990s, the Clinton administration followed a North Korea
strategy that could be described as engagement plus containment. The
administration apparently hoped that diplomatic and economic contact and
inducements would lessen North Korea’s insecurities, encourage political and
economic reforms within the North, and secure peaceful coexistence on the
Korean peninsula. At the same time, the Clinton approach contained strong
elements of containment as well as straightforward bargaining. Under the 1994
Agreed Framework, North Korea agreed to freeze and eventually to dismantle
its nuclear weapons program, with international inspectors to monitor and
verify the process. In exchange, Washington and its allies agreed to provide
the North with heavy fuel oil and eventual help in building civilian-use nuclear
energy plants. In the following years, both sides to some extent dragged their
feet on the implementation of this accord. But the most crucial and blatant
violation was by North Korea, when that country revealed in October 2002 that
it had a clandestine nuclear-weapons program based upon highly enriched
uranium. Leading officials within the Bush administration had always been
skeptical of the benefits of engaging Pyongyang. In January 2002 and later,
President Bush described North Korea as part of an international ‘‘axis of evil,’’
condemned Kim’s regime altogether, and characterized the primary U.S. goal
in relation to the North as regime change. Pyongyang, meanwhile, kicked out
international inspectors, withdrew from the Nonproliferation Treaty, and
restarted its nuclear reactors. Washington responded by saying that it was
open to a peaceful solution, so long as the North took the first step in
dismantling its uranium program. Intermittent and sometimes acrimonious
six-party talks involving the United States, North and South Korea, Japan,
China, and Russia began in the summer of 2003. In fall 2005, those talks moved
in a more serious, businesslike direction, and the gap between Pyongyang and
Washington’s positions narrowed somewhat. But the resolution of the long-
standing Korean nuclear crisis remains uncertain.32
On the question of the appropriate American response to this situation,
two schools of thought within the United States have been especially vocal in
recent years, one advocating engagement and the other rollback. Advocates of
engagement suggest that North Korea has legitimate security concerns, espe-
cially in relation to the Bush administration, and that these concerns should be
addressed through corresponding assurances from the United States.33 Freed
31
Ibid., p. 39.
32
‘‘The Deal That Wasn’t,’’ The Economist, Sept. 24, 2005.
33
Selig Harrison, ‘‘Did North Korea Cheat?’’ Foreign Affairs, January/Febuary 2005, pp. 99–
110; Leon Sigal, ‘‘Bush Policy Backfiring in Asia,’’ Boston Globe, July 8, 2005; and Disarming
Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998),
pp. 251–4. See also Chadwick I. Smith, ‘‘North Korea: The Case for Strategic Entanglement,’’ in
this issue of Orbis.

234 | Orbis
 Rogue States

from its sense of external threat, the North would be able to concentrate on
domestic reforms, opening the road to peaceful reunification. Advocates of
rollback, on the other hand, maintain that the Kim regime is bent on aggres-
sion; that it is inherently untrustworthy; and that negotiations with it represent
futile concessions to extortion. Beyond that, these advocates suggest that Kim’s
peculiar, malignant narcissism leaves him dangerously insensitive to deterrent
threats. The policy implication is that Washington should ratchet up military,
economic, and diplomatic pressure against Pyongyang, isolate and ostracize
the North’s abhorrent regime, and aim at its destabilization and collapse rather
than its continuation.34
The problem with engagement is that it seriously underestimates the
Kim regime’s malevolence. It is rather naı̈ve to expect that any package of
economic, diplomatic, and strategic inducements will necessarily alter the
fundamentally hostile and authoritarian nature of the Kim regime by, for
example, integrating that regime into regional patterns of economic inter-
dependence. Kim will see any attempted integration as a potential threat to his
rule. Nor can negotiations be conducted under the assumption that they will
automatically result in softening or satiating the North’s foreign policy goals.
All prior experience indicates that Pyongyang will wring whatever concessions
it can from this process, without abandoning its revisionist ambitions. It is
absurd to suggest that Kim ‘‘feels’’ insecure primarily because of the policies of
the Bush administration. Both his insecurity and his clandestine nuclear-
weapons program predate President Bush. The United States certainly caused
alarm in Pyongyang with talk of regime change, but the root cause of this crisis
is with North Korea, not George W. Bush.
For practical reasons, however, direct rollback is not a plausible
alternative. To begin with, any preventive U.S. military strike against North
Korea and its weapons sites would probably result in a horrific conflict that
would make Iraq look tame. The United States would ultimately win this war,
but only at immense cost. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians would
be killed. So would thousands more American troops. South Korea would be
devastated. There would be no coalition support for such a preventive war
under current circumstances. Nor are there any guarantees that North Korea’s
weapons sites would actually be destroyed and its nuclear weapons unused.
This prospect should warn us not only against a preventive strike, but indeed
against any actions that might hasten war. A stated American policy of regime
change or indirect rollback against Pyongyang risks this very possibility.
Insofar as Washington appears to indicate that its primary goal is overthrowing

34
Nicholas Eberstadt, The End of North Korea (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise
Institute Press, 1999), and ‘‘North Korea’s Weapons Quest,’’ The National Interest, Summer
2005, pp. 49–52; Terry Stevens, et al., ‘‘Deterring North Korea: U.S. Options,’’ Comparative
Strategy, December 2003. See also Ralph C. Hassig and Kongdan Oh, ‘‘The Twin Peaks of
Pyongyang,’’ Orbis, Winter 2006.

Spring 2006 | 235

DUECK

the Kim regime, the fewer incentives Pyongyang will have to abstain from
lashing out in a dangerous policy course involving very high risk, coercive
diplomacy, and even full-scale preventive war.35
The baseline American strategy in relation to North Korea must there-
fore be neither rollback nor integration through engagement, but containment,
supplemented by some careful, hard bargaining. A successful strategy of
containment requires absolute clarity about the deadly consequences for
Kim and his government should he choose to act aggressively. It also requires
having military capabilities on the spot to make that threat credible. Fortu-
nately, the United States and South Korea have those capabilities. The North
can therefore be deterred, so long as U.S. defensive commitments are unam-
biguous. Kim cares little for the lives of his people, but he does value his own
power and survival. For this very reason, even in relation to a leader like Kim,
containment can work, as it has in the past.36
The United States is well served in supplementing this baseline strategy
of containment with some tough bargaining over the issue of North Korea’s
nuclear weapons. The broad potential outlines of a bargain have been
thoroughly discussed in recent years and are well within sight: essentially,
that the North agrees to fully disclose, freeze, and subsequently dismantle its
nuclear-weapons program, under international supervision, in exchange for
energy assistance and security assurances from, and normalized relations with,
the United States and its allies.37 Of course, it may be the case, as some critics
suggest, that the North will never agree to abandon its nuclear weapons. But
there is only one way to find out, and that is to try. If negotiations fail, then the
United States will be in a stronger position to return to a strategy of pure
containment, and potentially to turn up the pressure on Pyongyang, with
international support. That support will not be forthcoming unless and until
the United States demonstrates a genuine effort at a diplomatic agreement.38
Fortunately, in fall of 2005 the Bush administration was moving in this very
direction.
The precise details and implementation of any ‘‘grand bargain’’ with
North Korea are obviously crucial, as are the assumptions behind it. Several
guidelines can help inform this process. First, the assumption that diplomacy
will transform Kim’s regime or his intentions is a weak and dangerous one
upon which to rely, because it could tempt Washington into making unreci-
procated concessions toward a fundamentally hostile regime. The only con-
vincing reason for a diplomatic approach is to secure the dismantling of the
North’s nuclear weapons at relatively little cost. Second, in order to maximize
35
Victor Cha, ‘‘Hawk Engagement and Preventive Defense on the Korean Peninsula,’’
International Security, Summer 2002.
36
David Kang, ‘‘The Avoidable Crisis in North Korea,’’ Orbis, Summer 2003, pp. 497–9.
37
See, e.g., Michael O’Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki, ‘‘Toward a Grand Bargain with North
Korea,’’ Washington Quarterly, Autumn 2003.
38
Cha, ‘‘Hawk Engagement,’’ pp. 44, 71.

236 | Orbis
 Rogue States

its bargaining leverage, Washington should use sticks as well as carrots to

persuade Pyongyang to come to a peaceful arrangement. This could include,
for example, threats of new economic sanctions if negotiations fail. Third,
Washington should maintain a bargaining position in close consultation with
its regional allies, as well as China. It should typically be Pyongyang, rather
than Washington, that is diplomatically isolated. Fourth, there is no reason to
expect that any grand bargain with North Korea will necessarily end the
underlying rivalry or hostility between Pyongyang and Washington. North
Korea will probably continue to be, of its own choosing, a dangerous
adversary of the United States, with or without a nuclear accord.

Iran

Iran’s circumstances are in some ways quite similar to North Korea’s.

The Iranian government has been repeatedly found in violation of its commit-
ments under the Nonproliferation Treaty. Its nuclear weapons program, while
not as fully developed as North Korea’s, is by most indications well
advanced.39 Iran is a major state sponsor of terrorism, and its foreign policy
is in many respects predicated upon hostility toward the United States. The
Clinton administration followed a strategy of containment in relation to Iran,
supplemented by vague overtures at engagement. The Iranian government
rebuffed these overtures. President Bush, by placing Tehran within the ‘‘axis of
evil,’’ signaled that America’s goal for Iran was neither engagement nor
containment but regime change. More recently, the Bush administration
has allowed its European allies to take the lead in searching for some kind
of diplomatic solution to the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. Iranian negotiat-
ing behavior has been consistently obstreperous, and these talks now appear
to have reached an impasse.
Directly rolling back Iran—that is, an American invasion and
occupation—is impractical in the extreme. Even the more limited option of
preventive U.S. air strikes designed to destroy Iranian weapon sites has grave
disadvantages. They would very likely fail to destroy Iran’s nuclear program,
and the political fallout could be immense: a nationalist backlash among the
Iranian public; international condemnation of the United States; and Iranian-
sponsored terrorist attacks against American troops in Iraq.40 At the same time,
there is no reason to believe that diplomatic engagement will necessarily
succeed in turning Iran’s theocratic government from a bitter and duplicitous
adversary into a friendly acquaintance of the United States.
It is currently unclear whether the United States will be able to gather
support from all five permanent members of the Security Council for UN

39
IISS, Strategic Survey 2004/5, pp. 48, 205–6.
40
Geoffrey Kemp, ‘‘Facing up to the Iranian Bomb,’’ The National Interest, Summer 2005,
pp. 55–6.

Spring 2006 | 237

DUECK

sanctions against Iran. Stopgap European-led negotiations have not worked.

Iran is clearly on the path toward building nuclear weapons, but rollback is not a
viable option. There is an alternative. Iran’s outrageous president is obviously
not a serious counterpart for negotiations, but fortunately he does not direct
Iranian diplomacy. Iran can be contained and deterred from acts of external
aggression so long as U.S. deterrent signals are clear, strong, and credible.
This approach would have to be supplemented with a new bargaining
strategy in order to deprive Iran of nuclear weapons. The outlines of this
bargain would look much like the proposed one with North Korea: the
complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, undertaken in
verifiable stages, in exchange for technical assistance, economic benefits,
an end to sanctions, and security assurances. Any agreement would have to be
specific, incremental, and reciprocal, not unilateral; concessions would have
to be made in return for concessions, and not out of vague hopes of an
adversary transformed. Critics say that Iran has rejected similar offers and will
continue to do so.41 Perhaps it will. But Washington has never made a precise,
comprehensive offer. It has not taken the lead on this issue, or appeared
willing to consider the use of inducements as well as punishment. It has not
worked closely with its European allies to put a serious offer on the table, and
for those allies’ part, they have frequently been unready to consider punish-
ment as well as inducements. The good news is that Britain, France, and
Germany are now more willing than ever to consider economic sanctions
against Iran if it continues to be uncooperative on this issue. That gives the
American position new purchase. The United States should take this oppor-
tunity to gain maximum leverage, using—together with its European allies—a
bold strategy to induce Iran to surrender its nuclear weapons program. Should
the strategy fail, the United States would be no worse off than it is now, but it
would have built fresh international support for punitive action against Iran,
with or without the UN.42

Conclusion

With regard to both North Korea and Iran, engagement and rollback
advocates each commonly argue that their own approach is the surest road to
regime change. But regime change is an aspiration, not a strategy. Kim Jong Il
and the mullahs of Iran have already lasted longer than many predicted; there
are no signs that either regime is facing imminent collapse.43 A vague policy of

41
See Nazila Fathi and John O’Neil, ‘‘Ignoring Protests, Iran Resumes Atom Program,’’ New
York Times, Jan. 10, 2006.
42
Kenneth Pollack and Ray Takeyh, ‘‘Taking on Tehran,’’ Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005,
pp. 20–34.
43
Victor Cha and David Kang, ‘‘The Korea Crisis,’’ Foreign Policy, May/June 2003, pp. 22–23;
Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasri, ‘‘The Conservative Consolidation in Iran,’’ Survival, Summer 2005.

238 | Orbis
 Rogue States

integration through engagement risks strengthening these regimes,

without necessarily receiving much in return. A policy of rollback risks
American isolation at best and war at worst. Since the United States is not
about to invade and occupy either North Korea or Iran, a refusal to
negotiate directly with these governments is to effectively acquiesce in
their development of nuclear weapons. American officials must therefore
walk a fine line between opposing dangers, in relation to both countries, by
following a firm yet prudent strategy of containment alongside limited
bargaining. This is not a strategy that has ringing emotional appeal on the
campaign trail. Its only virtue is that it is demonstrably better than any of the
alternatives.
Appeasement, engagement, containment, rollback, non-
entanglement—while no single one of these is always the best option, one
can draw some general lessons regarding their use, along with their relative
costs and benefits. The first is that strategies that rely solely upon inducements
and rewards are unlikely to be effective against revisionist, adversarial rogue
states. The notion that such states can and must be accommodated or
appeased through positive incentives alone has a long and sorry history. In
fact, the dangers of firmness in the face of rogue state aggression are much less
than the dangers of weakness. Democracies’ policies of non-entanglement,
appeasement, or engagement frequently strengthen rogue states without
doing anything to alter their hostile intentions. If anything, these strategies
may actually increase the danger of war, by giving a possibly misleading
impression of unending indifference or passivity on the part of democratic
powers. At a minimum, therefore, the United States and its allies should rely
upon strategies of containment in relation to rogue state challengers—that is,
upon strategies of deterrence, of military preparedness, of strong alliances, and
of clear commitments.
Some versions of containment, however, are too simplistic to serve the
national interest, and here we come to the second lesson: that containment
often works best when supplemented with limited incentives and careful
negotiations. Adversaries are most likely to respond to demands when faced
with a broad combination of rewards and punishments.44 Economic incentives
and diplomatic or political recognition are forms of power that the United
States possesses alongside its military and economic tools. Why would we
renounce any one of these forms of power? To do so would be to voluntarily
reduce our influence over a given rogue state. The key is to treat economic and
diplomatic incentives as part of an overall strategy in which incentives
are linked to disincentives, as well as to reciprocal, verifiable actions or

44
Alexander George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War
(Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1991), pp. 10–11, 73–74; Paul Huth,
Extended Deterrence and the Prevention of War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988),
pp. 75–79.

Spring 2006 | 239

DUECK

concessions on the part of other states. A closely related prerequisite is to avoid

deluding ourselves about the purpose of diplomacy with such states. Every
foreign regime, no matter how hostile, understands the concept of hard
bargaining, and under certain circumstances the benefits of negotiating
may outweigh the costs for the United States. But negotiations must never
be initiated or concluded out of a vague hope in the transformational power of
diplomatic or economic contact. Rather, negotiations with rogue states should
only be undertaken under the limited assumption that we are bargaining over
reciprocal, concrete concessions, and not in the hope of altering our adver-
saries’ basic intentions. Any other approach is irresponsible.
Elements of rollback, like elements of engagement, can be used to
supplement baseline strategies of containment, but again, hybrid
approaches must be conceived and implemented with great skill and care
for each case. To directly roll back a given regime through force is, by its
very nature, typically more difficult, costly, and risk-prone than containment.
Even indirect forms of rollback carry considerable costs. A declared intention
to overthrow a foreign government is obviously provocative and may even
encourage the target state to launch a preventive strike. Such strategies are
also less likely to attract allied support. In some circumstances, elements of
indirect rollback can usefully supplement strategies of containment, for
example, by weakening, destabilizing, and/or delegitimizing target states,
and/or by holding out hope of change to political dissidents overseas. But
making regime change the official U.S. policy against a given state must be
based upon demonstrable, concrete advantages—including those for the
citizens of the target state—and not simply upon rhetorical, ideological, or
emotional appeal.
Commentators often fixate on the supposed beliefs or preferences of a
given rogue state’s leaders, so that the debate then circles around questions of
intentions that cannot really be conclusively or definitively answered in the
present. The safest assumption under such circumstances is to presume that
rogue leaders are hostile but strategic actors—that is, that they weigh the costs
and benefits of their own behavior within a given international framework.
The United States has considerable ability to shape that framework by offering,
threatening, or withholding various incentives and disincentives. It would be
self-defeating for the world’s only superpower to renounce a priori the use of
any instrument to promote its own interests. The only sensible conclusion is
for the United States to preserve its ability to offer a wide range of rewards and
punishments in meeting any particular rogue-state challenge. The default or
preferred strategy in most cases, therefore, is containment, supplemented from
time to time by a little hard bargaining. Inconsistency, weakness, or confusion
in implementing this strategy is usually a greater danger than that of provoking
one’s adversary.
Long-term hopes for rogue state rollback are reasonable and even
admirable under a variety of circumstances. At the same time, however, it is

240 | Orbis
 Rogue States

possible to pursue forms of rollback that are simply too ambitious or aggres-
sive to secure the national interest. Peace through strength is a reliable mantra
in virtually every case; peace through preventive war is not. The
burden of proof lies upon those who argue, whether as hawks or
doves, against tried-and-true strategies of containing rogue states.

Spring 2006 | 241