Human Rights Rogues: Aggressive, Dangerous, or Both?

Since the end of the Cold War American foreign policy analysts and decision makers have stigmatized a small group of countries as rogue states and devised various policies intended to contain and confront them: the two-war doctrine, dual containment, ?rogue state rollback,? and the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive military action. These policies were driven by the assumption that rogue states represent aggressive military threats to their neighbors and their regions. Yet our own earlier research has shown that rogue states, as defined in US foreign policy terms, behave no differently in their international conflict behavior than other states. By contrast, we offer a definition of rogue states that hinges on observance of recognized international human rights norms. In this project we ask whether human rights rogues are more likely to engage in aggressive and/or dangerous international behavior. We seek to determine whether human rights rogues are more likely than other states to use force, and to do so first when involved in militarized interstate disputes, our benchmark for conventional aggressiveness. We also seek to determine whether they are more likely to engage in other dangerous activities, including pursuing weapons of mass destruction, sponsoring or supporting terrorism, and participating in the illicit international narcotics trade. The time frame for our analysis includes the period 1980-2004. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]