Pernicious states: Towards a new grammar of international relations

Senior Research Fellow, The Global Institute for Strategic Research (GISR), Hamad Bin Khalifa University.

What happened

Injustice extends not only to individuals and states, but additionally to words and concepts. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in international relations, where power often prevails over wisdom and prudence. Those who control funds, trade, technology and resources additionally seek to control the concepts through which the world is understood. Naming and framing can define enemies, discredit dissenters, create pretexts for war and aggression, burnish one's own image and advance political interests. In short, concepts manufacture the image of reality.

In practice, the vast US machinery of concept production has generated an array of loaded and unjust terms that American power has then supported impose on the world. There is, of course, a vast difference between the ability of powerful states to produce and circulate such concepts and the capacity of weaker states to do the same. In a bid to bring greater justice to this unequal terrain of ideas, this piece proposes a different category: the pernicious state.

The bottom line

Taken together, the developments around pernicious states: Towards a new grammar of international relations point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.