On October 21, the Cambridge Union Society held a debate on the motion that “Israel is a rogue state.” According to the Balfour Street blog, “the proposition was defeated, but the event proceeded with an unusual twist. It seems one of the members of the side in favor of the proposition, a student who was apparently selected at random (or not at random), decided to argue the point from a decidedly pro-Israel perspective.”
According to the Oxford English Dictionary the work “rogue” means “aberrant, anomalous; misplaced, occurring (esp. in isolation) at an unexpected place or time.” The debater focused on the unexpected and uncommon nature of being rogue. He extended this to his definition of a rogue state: a state that “acts in an unexpected, uncommon or aberrant manner.” “A state that behaves exactly like Israel,” the debater noted.
Unfortunately, he got this definition wrong. You cannot apply the definition of “rogue” as a stand-alone adjective to a sovereign entity that you’re calling a rogue state.
In 2005 The Journal of Conflict Resolution published an article titled “Rhetoric versus Reality: Rogue States in Interstate Conflict,” which was written by University of Minnesota Professor of Political Science Mary Caprioli and Oakland University Professor of Political Science Peter F. Trumbore. They note that the term “rogue state” became a part of the common language of American foreign policy beginning in the 1980s, but proliferated during Clinton’s first term after the end of the Cold War. During this period, America foreign policy makers constructed the “rogue doctrine,” i.e. “the characterization of hostile (or seemingly hostile) Third World states with large military forces and nascent WMD [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities…bent on sabotaging the prevailing world order.”
States that the US currently considers to be rogue states are Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria, and North Korea. The classic example of turning a rogue state into a relatively stable and friendly one is Libya. Muammar Gaddafi ascended to power in 1969 by way of a coup d’etat, and his regime sponsored terrorism and committed gross human rights violations, but Gaddafi has apparently reformed his ways.
The Cambridge debater replaces the actual, technical, and political definition of a rogue state with one that is value-neutral. Watering it down into something that’s value-neutral defeats the purpose of this rogue state debate. “Rogue state” is a loaded term with “exceptionally damning connotations,” but debaters cannot change the meanings of terms to suit their own purposes. People debate the usage of the term “rogue state,” but they do not deny that it has damning connotations.
So what, exactly, is the debater’s point? That Israel is unique? Yes, we know Israel is unique. Israel is certainly rogue in the original sense of the adjective, but it is ridiculous to argue a pro-Israel stance under the guise that it’s actually a rogue state.
