Injustice extends not only to people and states, but also to words and concepts.
asserted
Injustice → extend → words
Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in international relations, where power often prevails over wisdom and prudence.
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power → prevail → wisdom
Those who control money, trade, technology and resources also seek to control the concepts through which the world is understood.
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world → control → which
Naming and framing can define enemies, discredit dissenters, create pretexts for war and aggression, burnish one’s own image and advance political interests.
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Naming → define → interests
In short, concepts manufacture the image of reality.
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concepts → manufacture → reality
The vast US machinery of concept production has generated an array of loaded and unjust terms that American power has then helped impose on the world.
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power → generate → world
In an effort to bring greater justice to this unequal terrain of ideas, this piece proposes a different category: the pernicious state.
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piece → bring → category
Every state, of course, can cause harm.
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state → cause → harm
But when a state’s historical structure is itself built around causing harm, perniciousness ceases to be an occasional response to necessity and becomes a sustained way of life.
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perniciousness → build → life
For that reason, the pernicious state is often gargantuan and imperial, with arms extending across the world.
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arms → extend → world
They have always been chaotic, violent, power-driven and bloody.
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They → drive → ?
Human history is marked by invasions, mass casualties and devastating conflicts waged by powers thousands of miles from the theatres of destruction.
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history → mark → destruction
Yet more insidious than physical violence are the concepts engineered by the powerful to sanitise and legitimise their own conduct while incriminating and smearing the victims of their perniciousness.
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concepts → engineer → perniciousness
A Western-centric political and academic lexicon has produced an array of categories used to classify and stigmatise states, while terms such as “rogue state” have become particularly embedded in United States foreign policy discourse.
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terms → produce → discourse
Ironically, these Western-minted terms are as theoretically flawed as they are politically aggressive.
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they → mint → ?
We now inhabit a “post-fact” world in which truth is subordinated to narrative noise.
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truth → inhabit → noise
In this arena, the aim is not to reflect reality but to secure global dominance.
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aim → reflect → dominance
This effort is fuelled by right-wing think tanks churning out loaded, pejorative vocabulary weaponised for geopolitical supremacy.
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effort → fuel → supremacy
By framing weaker states as existential evils that the West has a moral responsibility to curb, these concepts obscure a glaring blind spot: the structural violence of superpowers that may appear orderly at home while wreaking havoc abroad.
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that → frame → havoc
If existing categories focus scrutiny on weaker states while overlooking the harms caused by the most powerful, then a different analytical concept is needed: the pernicious state.
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concept → exist → powerful
The term deserves a place in international relations.
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term → deserve → relations
A pernicious state does not merely violate the rules of global order; it rewrites them to institutionalise its own impunity.
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it → violate → impunity
Crucially, perniciousness scales with capability.
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perniciousness → scale → capability
While mainstream discourse often presents fragile and weaker states as the principal sources of global instability, the capacity to cause harm internationally is inseparable from a state’s overall power.
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capacity → present → power
The greater that power, the greater its capacity for perniciousness; superpowers can therefore inflict harm on a scale unavailable to smaller states.
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superpowers → inflict → states
Anatomy of pernicious power
Pernicious power rarely relies solely on crude or impulsive invasions.
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power → rely → invasions
Instead, it operates through a quieter network of economic, cultural, legal and military mechanisms that drain foreign societies while deflecting accountability.
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that → operate → accountability
Economically, the pernicious state treats the global market as an engine of extraction.
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state → treat → extraction
Through asymmetrical trade agreements and predatory lending practices, it can paralyse developing economies, leaving them structurally dependent and unable to build sovereign domestic industries.
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it → paralyse → industries
This process is often enabled by close ties between state power and transnational corporate conglomerates.
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process → enable → power
To obscure this economic predation, pernicious power deploys its cultural apparatus.
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power → obscure → apparatus
It invents “civilising myths”, casting interventions in the noble language of democracy, development or human rights.
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It → invent → democracy
Beneath this facade, local cultures are marginalised and foreign populations portrayed as inherently backward or dangerous.
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populations → marginalise → facade
A powerful media apparatus then helps present superpower hegemony as both natural and benevolent.
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apparatus → present → hegemony
Legally, the pernicious state is a zealous advocate of a “rules-based international order” – provided that it writes the rules and remains immune from them.
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it → base → them
Pernicious superpowers exploit legal loopholes to shield themselves from accountability and cloak systemic injustice in legality.
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superpowers → exploit → legality
They may refuse to ratify treaties such as the Rome Statute, block independent global investigations, and outsource destabilisation to corrupt local proxies.
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They → refuse → proxies
When soft power reaches its limits, pernicious states pivot to less visible forms of violence.
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states → reach → violence
Rather than bear the political costs of overt military occupation, they may orchestrate covert coups, fund insurgencies, or impose collective punishment.
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they → bear → punishment
Through sweeping unilateral sanctions and embargoes, they can restrict access to medicine and food, pushing civilian populations towards political submission.
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they → restrict → submission
…and 28 more, not listed.
The Aporia
