State hooligan

The expression of state hooligan returns to the concept of a State which does not respect the most essential international laws, organizes or supports attacks, or violates in a systematic way the most elementary rights of the human being.

Name was used initially by the government of the the United States and some their allies, like the the United Kingdom. The principal charges against these States are the support, reality or supposed, that they grant to the international Terrorisme and the possession or the ambition to have weapons of massive destruction.

The use of this expression then was strongly discussed, some speak even about the United States like first state hooligan in the world.

First uses of the expression

The concept of state hooligan ( rogue state in English) was born under the presidency from Ronald Reagan in the Années 1980 to qualify the mode and the policy adopted by the Libya of the colonel Kadhafi. In this first approach, the definition of a State hooligan rested on the threat which it represented for the collective security and the American interests.

In 1994, Anthony Lake, adviser with the national security, defined the States hooligans as being “those which express a chronic incapacity to treat with the outside world”. Four criteria can measure this incapacity: the attempt to acquire weapons of massive destruction, the support for terrorist groups, the ill treatment of the population even of the country or a declared animosity against the United States. The objective of the foreign Politics American is to bring a regime change or at least an important inflection of the foreign politics of the State hooligan.

Another change of denomination intervened under the cane of the Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 2000, in order to better do to admit the threats emitted by reticent allies. One spoke then about the “alarming” States ( states off concern in English) during the last six months of the administration Clinton. However, as of its taking up the duties, the Bush administration and in particular Colin Powell took again old name.

At the end of the Nineties, the American administration regarded as states hooligans the North Korea, the Pakistan, the Iraq, the Iran, the Afghanistan and the Libya. Pakistan was withdrawn from the American list after the co-operation of this country after the events of September 11th, 2001. Afghanistan was removed of this country at the time of the invasion of this country by the United States. Same manner, Iraq was removed of this list since the Anglo-American invasion of 2003. Libya was withdrawn from this list after the concessions of Mouammar Kadhafi and the step taken towards a democratization, according to the US government. Several other states like Cuba, the Sudan or the Venezuela are sometimes quoted by the American administration as being states hooligans

Since the Attacks of September 11th, 2001, the concept evolved/moved in “Axe of the Evil”, expression appeared at George W. Bush the January 29th 2002.

Other uses of the expression

Same manner that the US government was and is still the principal defendant of the concept of state hooligan, the critics of the American foreign politics denounce the use of this term which according to them, is used against any hostile mode in the United States without necessarily being a true threat. Some discuss for example the case of Pakistan which did not respect the Traité nuclear non-proliferation by exporting technologies of nuclear weapons, however this state is not more in the American list of the states hooligans to have cooperated with the United States at the time of the Guerre against terrorism. Robert S. Litwark strongly criticized the concept of state hooligan in the American daily newspaper The Washington Post.

Other personalities like the writer William Blum or the economist Edward S. Hermann defend the idea according to which the term of state hooligan is applicable to the United States because this country is that which has the most important stock of nuclear weapons in the world, it intervenes militarily without mandate of UNO, supports dictatorial modes and does not respect the agreements of Kyoto on the Pollution. Mark Curtis off explains in his book Web deceit that the term state hooligan is applicable to the the United States or even with the the United Kingdom for the foreign politics applied by these states.

Like the term axis of the evil , personalities like the philosopher Jacques Derrida or the linguist Noam Chomsky denounce the use of this term, being, according to them, a justification of the Impérialisme and an expression propagandist.

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