SAMUEL WEBERtioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of an imminent threat—most
often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack.
We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives
of today’s adversaries.Rogue states and terroristsdo not seek to attack us using con-
ventional means. They know such attacks would fail. Instead, they rely on acts of
terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction—weapons that can
be easily concealed, delivered covertly, and used without warning....
The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to
counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater
is the risk of inaction—and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory
action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of
the enemy’s attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the
United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.^4This statement, written by then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, links
‘‘rogue states’’ to ‘‘terrorists’’: the phrase thus is used to designate not only a state that
‘‘relies on acts of terror’’ itself, but also ‘‘terrorists,’’ who presumably are not integral
parts of the state. Rogue states thus are held to subcontract out what traditionally has
been regarded as their exclusive prerogative: the massive and systemic use of violence. The
notion of ‘‘rogue’’ thus marks the turning point at which the legitimate use of violence by
the nation-state is delegated to nonstate agents who, precisely because they do not wear
the uniforms or uniformity of the state, are increasingly difficult to identify, localize, and
anticipate. They are less visible than official agents of the state, and they are also less
accountable. It is as though the rogue state is a state in the process of being taken over by
the parasitically private interests and agents it itself has produced.^5 This takeover consti-
tutes the threat against which the world’s one remaining ‘‘superpower’’ seeks to react by
promulgating its doctrine of preventive and preemptive military action, even and espe-
cially in situations where no ‘‘imminent’’ threat can be established. The very notion of
‘‘imminence’’ and the temporality upon which it depends is thereby called into question,
if indeed not entirely emptied of meaning, as was the case in regard in the American
decision to attack Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in March 2003, and as appears to obtain once
again at the time of this writing in certain arguments being brought forward ostensibly to
prepare for and justify military action against Iran.^6
Used as an adjective, then, to modify or qualify the notion of ‘‘nation-state,’’ the term
rogueraises the question of the relationship between the monopoly of violence historically
accorded the state and a state-delegated use of violence to nonstate agents whose very
heterogeneity positions them to be effective producers of ‘‘terror.’’^7 Analyses of the notion
of ‘‘rogue state,’’ such as those by Noam Chomsky, Robert Litwak, and William Blum,
whose works Derrida gratefully acknowledges (96 ff. / 138 ff.), all make the point that the
use of this phrase by the United States to designate—and often attack—other countries is
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