In the Bush era Iran and North Korea were branded "rogue" states for their flouting of international norms, and changing their regimes was the administrationβs goal. The Obama administration has chosen instead to call the countries nuclear "outliers" and has proposed means other than regime change to bring them back into "the community of nations." Outlier States, the successor to Litwakβs influential Regime Change: U.S. Strategy through the Prism of 9/11 (2007), explores this significant policy adjustment and raises questions about its feasibility and its possible consequences.
Do international norms apply only to statesβ external behavior, as it might relate, for example, to nuclear proliferation and terrorism, or do they matter no less for statesβ internal behavior, as it might affect a populationβs human rights? What is the appropriate role for the United States in the process of reintegration? Americaβs military power remains unmatched, but can the nation any longer shape singlehandedly an increasingly multi-polar international system? What do the precedents set in Iraq and Libya teach us about how current outliers can be integrated into the international community? And perhaps most important, how should the United States respond if outlier regimes eschew integration as a threat to their survival and continue to augment their nuclear capabilities?
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