Rogue States: The Making of America's Global War on Terror

You are invited to join us virtually for the launch of Dr. Matthew Frakes’ new book, Rogue States: The Making of America's Global War on Terror, on Wednesday, March 18.

In Rogue States, Dr. Frakes reveals the connection between U.S. national security strategy at the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the War on Terror. Throughout a series of crises from 1981 to 1991, the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations recognized that emerging threats to global security—terrorism, regional aggression, weapons of mass destruction, and narcotics trafficking—were converging into a single growing phenomenon that they eventually called "rogue states." In confronting Libya, Panama, and Iraq, Reagan and Bush developed the strategies that drove U.S. national security policy after 9/11.

Dr. Frakes argues that Reagan and Bush’s improvised responses to crises of terrorism, aggression, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction—culminating in the Gulf War of 1991—established a lasting enforcement role for the United States against rogue states in the post–Cold War world. The effort to redefine U.S. national security around this threat created a new framework to guide the country’s approach to global security after the Cold War—one that ensured that, after 9/11, the War on Terror became a war on rogue states.

We will begin at 5:45 PM with a conversation moderated by the Reagan Institute’s Director of Scholarly Initiatives, Dr. Anthony Eames. The event will conclude at 6:30 PM.