When powerful states play games with citizenship when citizenship is weaponised).78 In fact, the U.S. has frequently celebrated the provision of U.S. citizenship as a “gift” or a social good, even when such status leads to disastrous social and political consequences for the new Americans in question. Gaming the system To conceptualise this “gaming” of the system, consider Jeffrey S. Bachman’s work on the politics of genocide and outlaw states.79 Bachman’s view of the outlaw state differs from much of the existing literature; from his perspective, the law has no practical meaning for persistent outlaws because they simply bend the law to their will, guaranteeing their actions remain technically legal even if ethically suspect. He argues that some of the world’s most powerful governments engage in “persistent outlawry” that few can achieve, thus acting with perpetual impunity. With the creation of the UN Genocide Convention, for example, powerful states such as Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States ensured that the prevention of genocide is firmly limited by a system of territorial jurisdiction.80 (Those powerful states now remain untouched by the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, which they sometimes wield against weaker states).81 They also insisted that certain groups or crimes were omitted from the final draft, including cultural genocide and the targeting of political groups – crimes that permanent members of the UN Security Council could be guilty of, if constituted as genocidal acts under the Convention. ‘Persistent outlawry is not defined by perpetual engagement in illegal activities, such as genocide,’ Bachman writes. ‘Rather, persistent outlawry is defined by the perpetual impunity with which persistent outlaws act domestically and/or internationally. When it comes to oppressive nationality, the international community’s firm commitment to state sovereignty – as enshrined in the UN Charter, again at the insistence of influential states – leaves it up to state governments to protect the “right to a nationality” and to determine how and when citizenship is granted or revoked.82 This takes the bite out of existing international law related to citizenship, including the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.83 This does not mean only powerful states take advantage of these systemic weaknesses – there are plenty of examples of weaker states invoking sovereignty as grounds for non-interference with their internal affairs. But this system was created by powerful actors who gamed the system for their own benefit, not out of concern for the state interests of weaker players. Given the United States’ role as a global hegemon and a self-proclaimed champion for human rights, it is worth acknowledging how it has benefitted from oppressive nationality while engaging in a form of persistent outlawry – and how its game playing continues to impact citizenship and rights today. Oppressive uses of citizenship by the United States The United States offers various examples of how citizenship provision can be weaponised by a powerful government as a tool of assimilation and subordination, rather than a guarantee of rights protection. Many cases begin before the creation of the UN, but the normative foundations underpinning such oppressive nationality remain intact. By the time the United States offered Indigenous peoples the “gift” of U.S. citizenship with the 1887 Dawes Act in hopes of creating “good Americans,” for instance, citizenship was increasingly understood in assimilationist terms. For Indigenous peoples, Cristina Stanciu notes that ‘the forced assimilation and Americanization was 78 Džankić 2022. 79 Bachman J. (2022), The Politics of Genocide: From the Genocide Convention to the Responsibility to Protect, Rutgers University Press. 80 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted 9 December 1948, entered into force 12 January 1951, 78 U.N.T.S. 276. 81 WHAT IS R2P?, Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, Background briefing, What is R2P? - Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (globalr2p.org). 82 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, adopted 28 September 1954, entry into force 6 June 1960), 360 U.N.T.S. 117. 83 UN 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, adopted 30 August 1961, entered into force 13 December 1975, 989 U.N.T.S. 175. European University Institute 16