Rogue-gretfully So, The Manhattan Project
As my signature literary device, I have a habit of debunking definitions commonly used in political debates and conversation. After all, the entire point of politics is to define and redefine ideas, ideals, and societal thought. The term of choice today is relatively new to the realm of politics and was not officially theorized until the late 80s and early 90s. The term is, rogue state. A rogue state is a term utilized in foreign policy to characterize a sovereignty as breaking international law and posing a threat to the security of other nations. Initially introduced in the early 1990s in an issue of Foreign Affairs, US National Security Advisor Anthony Lake labelled North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Libya (Muammar Ghaddafi regime) and Iraq as rogue states. Each regime was characterized as remaining outside the family of democratic nations and an assault to its basic values. In addition, the classification to qualify as a rogue state included seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction, supporting terrorism, and severely abusing its own citizens. While the international community can apply this term with ease today, rogue states have existed decades prior to the formulation of the term. In fact, the term rogue state could have as justly been applied to its very own curator, the United States.
In the year of 1939, self-proclaimed as a democratic state, the US exemplified characteristics rogue state. Shortly removed from the abolishment of slavery and further removed from the initial terrorizing contact with Native Americans, the US continued to violate human rights throughout the 1940’s era. Without the ability to vote and facing possible fatal retaliation if one chose to overtly express political or societal opinions, the rights of citizens of color were continuously violated according to today’s International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948). What’s more, United States sponsored a form terrorism too. In the era While terrorism is too a recent term in the political diaspora, terrorism has existed in forms of the KKK, the burning of Black Wall Street of 1921, and various other unreported tactics. Along with violating human rights and terrorizing marginalized citizens, the United States “Manhattan Project became a catalyst of nuclear warfare and weapons of mass destruction.
Under the codename, the “Manhattan Project”, the United States nuclear proliferation program soon became one of the leading influences of international law and cohesion, ironically so. Through information from intelligence opps, the US learned of the Germans partaking in propelling the advancement of nuclear fission. Nuclear fission is a process in which the nucleus of an atom is divided into two or more fragments, which in return releases neutrons and energy. Please use the rest of your imagination because I am not an Nuclear Engineer and I will proudly spare those details. However, it was the discovery of this process that influenced the Manhattan Project. Bringing scientist from Great Britain and Canada in cohort with Americans (inclusive of Eastern European immigrants), the United States formulated its own nuclear development program at Columbia University (hence, the name). Transforming into a government backed program, nuclear energy and the creation of nuclear weapons became an effort of many states in the US. Increasing in location, research spread to cities in Washington, Tennessee, Colorado and the infamous site of Los Alamos in New Mexico. Alamogordo of New Mexico would become the first site to test an atomic bomb on July 16, 1945. Soon after, the US would drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945.
All historical facts aside, while Germany was simply conducting nuclear fission research, the US decided to take it 0–100 and drop a WHOLE bomb on innocent folks. As Japan held no American prisoners of war and were not backing down, it served as the perfect opportunity to kill over 100,000 people by the way nuclear fission. In a contemporary era, this would be without a doubt problematic given our current fears of North Korea and Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. However, between years of 1939–1945 their only stood international war crime laws and an absence of nuclear weapons law because nuclear fission was nonexistent as well as the term rogue state. This period was pivotal and foundational as it enabled the United States to define the international norm and legality of nuclear weapons for every other sovereignty. Not completely unilateral, treaties such as the Treaty on Non Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons became ratified. Ironically so, the US who was the first to utilize nuclear weapons on a global scale would turn around and become the “police” in achieving nuclear disarmament.
The treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons founded the International Atomic Energy Agency. What an irony for the US to be one of first to utilize the use of nuclear technology as weapon and then turn around and “enforce” a treaty in aims to achieving nuclear disarmament. Even more overtly ironic, US Security Policy has become heavily involved in achieving nuclear disarmament in North Korea and the Iran Nuclear idea. As a bouncy realist, I believe sovereignties are completely entitled to their own weaponry development as what hegemonic body exist to truly stop them? Many would say the US, which is clearly untrue as we have seen this past year through the multilateral disengagement of the Iran Nuclear Deal. Nonetheless, I digress.
Returning to topicality a rogue state is simply an illustration of the realism theory, states will always act on their own interest. While we can utilize institutions to collectively uphold international norms and appease all state interest, it does not work that way and probably never will. Even recently, the United States has brushed a fine line of isolationism and disrupting world peace through threatening withdrawal from multiple international organizations such as the United Nations and yesterday, the World Trade Organization. Sovereignties will navigate their own government to which is most benefiting and create human rights standards based on what is most aligned with their cultural and societal beliefs. All sovereignties are rogue in their own way. To be rogue or to name a state rogue is all a matter of self-interest.

