These states meet certain criteria, such as being ruled by authoritarian or totalitarian governments that severely restrict human rights, sponsoring terrorism, or seeking to proliferate weapons of mass destruction.
[6] Cuba was put on the list solely because of the political influence of the Cuban-American community and specifically that of the Cuban American National Foundation [citation needed] (pre-Jorge Mas Santos), whereas Syria and Pakistan avoided being added to the list because the United States hoped that Syria could play a constructive role in the Arab-Israeli peace process, and because Washington had long maintained close relations with Pakistan.
[citation needed] Three other nations, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Sudan, and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, were treated as rogue states as well.
In March 1999, NATO launched a massive air-bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in response to the Yugoslav Army's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in the province of Kosovo.
Some figures of the Venezuelan government, like Vice President Tareck el Aissami and Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino López, were permanently banned from entering US territory, due to their involvement with human rights abuses and drug cartels.
[13] On 19 June 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the People's Republic of China a "rogue actor" at the Virtual Copenhagen Democracy Summit, saying that "General Secretary Xi Jinping has green-lighted a brutal campaign of repression against Chinese Muslims, a human rights violation on a scale we haven’t seen since World War II."
[16] Because the U.S. government remains the most active proponent of the expression rogue state, the term has received much criticism from those who disagree with American foreign policy.
Both the concepts of rogue states and the Axis of Evil have been criticized by scholars, including philosopher Jacques Derrida and linguist Noam Chomsky, who considered it more or less a justification of imperialism and a useful word for propaganda.
[21] On 23 February 1999, Turkish President Süleyman Demirel described Greece as a "rogue state" because of its alleged support of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
These rogue states, dating back to Israel, Greek Administration of Cyprus and the Syrian regime, persecute their own citizens and destabilize the world.