The American and European intellectuals, along with their illiberal ruling and non-ruling elites, continue to define the nature of the state according to their own requirements within the parameters of development. The conceptualisations of the terms such as ‘developed countries,’ ‘underdeveloped countries,’ the ‘developed North’ and ‘underdeveloped South,’ ‘Third World countries,’ ‘developing countries,’ ‘African and Asian states,’ ‘modern states,’ ‘secular states,’ ‘religious states,’ ‘terror-sponsoring states,’ ‘narco states,’ ‘failed states,’ ‘criminal states,’ and ‘rogue states’ are part of their conceptual narratives, constructed on the basis of different parameters and shaped by their ideological orientations.

Most of these narratives were developed to undermine post-colonial states, non westphalian states and to construct an ‘other’ that supposedly requires modernisation, aid, and other forms of support for development. Such a colonial framework, along with its so-called civilising mission, continues to survive within contemporary knowledge traditions. These traditions shape debates on the ‘rogue state’ and help sustain dominant narratives about the nature and character of states across the world, often serving to undermine peoples and control their resources in the name of combating crime, containing terrorism, ensuring regional stability, promoting peace and democracy, protecting human rights, eliminating weapons of mass destruction, and curbing narcotics trafficking.

The notion of the ‘rogue state’ has been central to American elites in shaping US foreign policy during and after the Cold War, and later during the Global War on Terror, as well as in current wars justified in the name of destroying nuclear programmes or exporting democracy under the banner of human rights and women’s rights. In reality, these military interventions are often about changing political regimes to make them more compatible with American corporate interests and to secure access to oil, gas, and other natural resources.

Such a colonial framework of imperial plunder derives its ideological lineage from racial capitalism, which creates and sustains a........

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