Larbi Sadiki
Israel’s unjustified and unforeseen bombing of Doha poses questions about the possibility of major world powers’ being guilty of ‘rogue’ behaviour. That ‘superpowers’ and ‘regional hegemons’ intermittently commit rogue-like actions leaves a blind spot unaddressed by the West-centric theories of International Relations (IR).
Israel’s illegal bombing of Doha on September 10, with prior US knowledge of the missile attacks, is cause for revisiting the term ‘rogue state’. The term hails from the American National Security’s apparatus of realist language of power politics. It is a designation that is couched in a cutting up of the world into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ states, the former law-abiding and the latter law-less, often guilty of terrorism, inhospitality to human rights, and pursuit of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). At some point in history, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea formed the usual suspects in a long list of rogues, including non-state actors (e.g. Hamas and Hezbollah).
At the core of the designation of ‘rogue’ acts is a two-fold explanation: firstly, acting outside the international system and, secondly, defying norms that underpin its security architecture. But this complicates IR itself as Euro-American theorists leave no room for accommodating diversity of interests, much less plurality or equality of norms. Increasingly, one criticism levied today against IR is its ethnocentrism. Colonial histories, local cultural identities, and political experiences including of dependence of the Global South (periphery) on the Global North (centre), have not been factored into the construction of IR as to sensitize it to global differences in need of representation.
The adjective ‘rogue’ has not been ascribed to ‘superpowers’ and ‘regional hegemons’. These brands of states are hypothesized to be ‘rational actors’ whose power calculus and matching means of deterrence equip them to navigate the international anarchic order by heeding the norms-based rules of engagement in the pursuit of state interest.
World politics today seems to mirror self-interest more than reason. Bias-leaning policies favouring one country over another group of states provoke power imbalances and inter-state conflict, to the detriment of reliable alliances, trust-building and adaptable diplomacy. As state actions align more with narrow state interests and cultural norms, and less with established collective norms, state actions and behaviour become subject to unpredictability.
The bombing of Doha by Israel under the pretext of self-defense against Hamas is a case in point. It forces a kind of puzzlement about what sense can be made of the international system’s seeming descent into a state of ‘chaos’. Aspects of this system like ‘order’, ‘rational state behaviour’, ‘norms’, and ‘rules-based system’ are constructs that defy the trajectory of world politics today. Increasingly, there is a blurring of the boundaries between what is ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ state behaviour, or norm-based and gain-based or deviant behaviour.
There is no rationality in the bombing of Qatar, the most pro-active Middle East and North Africa mediator. This is a case of a small state whose statecraft of trust and peace-building should draw praise, not bombing and the threat of further bombing by Israel. The bombing has not weakened Qatar’s foreign policy for mediation and conflict resolution. To the contrary, it has exposed Israel globally as a rogue state, undermining regional stability and its own standing as a reliable peace partner in the Middle East region.
The bombing provokes thinking along two lines.
One regards the extent to which the aggressive and expansionist behaviour of Israel – acting ever more like a ‘regional hegemon’ – differs from that of Iran, a country ‘demonized’ for sponsoring terrorism and non-rational behaviour that threatens regional stability. In the days leading up to the Doha bombing, Israeli air force struck Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and possibly Tunisia, where there are claims of drones targeting the ‘Global SumudFlotilla’ heading to Gaza.
After the bombing of Doha, the number of Arab countries attacked by Israel over the years outweighs those who have not. In the minds of many Arabs, the bombing of Doha renews thinking along the lines that the longest-running conflict in the Middle East is not Palestinian-Israeli, but rather Arab-Israeli. This is despite the fact that several Arab states have retired the narrative denying the founding of modern Israel, and some have made peace or joinedthe Abraham Accords with the Jewishstate.
The second level of thinking poses questions about superpowers’ roles in abetting, enabling or acting deferentially to the rogue behaviour of close allies. Questions here may be asked about rogue behaviour by association. The US’s standing as a global leader and superpower has been tarnished by its deviating from its own rules-based international system.
Can it be argued that the US’s role in enabling the genocide in Gaza and the bombing of Doha, and before it the bombing of Iran, at a time of intense negotiation and diplomacy regarding Tehran’s nuclear programme, may be a good approximation of ‘rogue behaviour? These acts, even if packaged as ‘recalibrated diplomacy’, may render the US guilty of undermining international norms and the rules-based system hoisted in Western narratives as a reference when judging states’ behaviour.
Similarly, do Russia’s so-called ‘special military operation’ (SMO) of February 2022, and its occupation of the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine, mirror an existential threat to its security as NATO integrates former Warsaw Pact and post-Soviet countries, joined in 2023 and 2024 by Finland and Sweden? The Realist school’s obsession with security may qualify the SMO as a ‘rational’ act responding to a real security threat.
However, explaining malign behaviour by superpowers should not obviate attention from the inadequacy of IR and its various schools of thought to shield major power players in the international arena from culpability of rogue conduct.
Both the US and Russia, with their unmatched military prowess, may be immune to enforcement consequences due to ‘rogue-like’ behaviour. However, in a normative sense, their status as superpowers should not absolve them from guilt, at times, for acting in ways that undermine the legal standards that supposedly bind all sovereign states equally.
The bombing of Doha is not just a matter of theoretical musings about imaginings of order in our world. It is also a matter of threat to the ontological security of states. States are theorized to be equal and deserving of fair treatment, except when the security of one superpower or another may be interpreted as superior to that of a lesser state. This does not just produce strain on the much-vaunted morals of equal sovereignty but constitutes flagrant acts verging, sometimes, on rogue statecraft.
Scholar with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Chiba University, Japan. He is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs; and a Fellow at the Toda Peace Institute, Japan. He is also editor of the series, Routledge Studies in Middle East Democratization and Government. His most recent co-authored book, Revolution and Democracy in Tunisia: A Century for Protestscapes, is published by Oxford University Press in 2024.
