ABSTRACT
The foreign policy and security discourses of the North have increasingly come to focus on two types of states: failed and rogue states. Failed states signify the descent into lawless violence, a kind of post-sovereign nightmare within the territorial boundaries of an erstwhile state. Rogue states, by contrast, denote the wilful defiance by a sovereign state of international law's rules and norms. While the former type of state calls for international assistance, the latter demands punishment. Failed and rogue states thus represent two different problems and two different responses. But for all the differences exhibited by the two types of state, there are some significant commonalities in the way the North views these states, largely because they are identified with the South. This chapter seeks to elaborate some of the distinctive features that characterize how the North views the South.
