Nationalism and Politics: The Political Behavior of Nation States 9781626370067

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NATIONALISM & POLITICS

NATIONALISM & POLITICS THE POLITICAL BEHAVIOR OF NATION STATES Martha L. Cottam Richard W. Cottam

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2001 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2001 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cottam, Martha L. Nationalism and politics : the political behavior of nation states / Martha L. Cottam and Richard W. Cottam. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-55587-919-5 1. Nationalism. I. Cottam, Richard W. II. Title. JC311.C66 2000 320.54—dc21 00-032858 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America

∞

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. 5 4 3 2 1

In memory of my father, this book is dedicated to Patricia, Russell, Douglas, Carolyn, Elizabeth, and Mark. —M. L. C.

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

1

Introduction

1

2

Nation States

27

3

Compound-Identity Nation States: Egypt, the United States, and China

61

The Political Psychology of Political Identities and Nationalistic Behavior

87

4

5

Nationalistic Values and the Capability Base of Nation States

123

6

Nation States and Foreign Policy: A Case Study

161

7

Non–Nation States: Core-Community, Multinational, and Multiethnic States

195

Nationalism and Conflict in the Post–Cold War Era

241

8

279 295 305

References Index About the Book

vii

Acknowledgments

Many friends and colleagues deserve thanks for reading all or portions of the manuscript and for generosity with their time and thoughts regarding the ideas presented in this book. I extend our appreciation to Otwin Marenin, Elena Mastors, and Chih-yu Shih, who gave us their thoughts on the entire manuscript, in some cases in multiple iterations. Others who contributed insights on portions of the manuscript in various forms include Andrew Appleton, Wendy Clayton, Patricia Cottam, Buzz Fozouni, Joe Hagan, Amy Mazur, Dorcas McCoy, and Tom Preston. I benefited as well from the many conversations with and insights of members of the Research Training Group of the Mershon Center at Ohio State University, including Bob Billings, Marilyn Brewer, Peg Hermann, Rick Herrmann, John Levine, Dick Moreland, Paul ’t Hart, and Jim Voss. Richard Cottam died just days after the final rough draft of the manuscript was completed, and many among his vast network of colleagues who contributed to his scholarship will not receive the acknowledgment they deserve. For that I apologize. He thrived on his interactions with that group of friends, scholars, and policy activists, and they were all important in the development of his ideas. Lengthy discussions and debates with Paul Hammond, Jim Malloy, and Bert Rockman helped him stay focused on life and its great political challenges, and for that I thank you as well. —Martha L. Cottam

ix

1 Introduction

The impact of nationalism as a factor producing intercommunal violence, the disintegration of states, and central characteristics of emerging new governments has captured the interest of the policy and academic communities. Nationalism is not always salient in politics, but when it is, it has a profound effect on behavior. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid by policymakers to the prediction and prevention of the violence that nationalism can produce. In the academic community, the general interest in nationalism has only recently extended to efforts to examine systematically patterns of nationalistic behavior. Those patterns are the focus of this book. What kinds of behavioral predispositions are systematically evident in nationalistic communities? Are states with nationalistic people more aggressive than states with nonnationalistic societies? What produces nationalism? Why are some societies nationalistic while others are not? How do nation states differ in domestic and international politics when compared to non–nation states, and why do they differ? All of these are important behavioral questions that the literature addresses too infrequently. These are the questions that will be addressed in this book. Behavioral patterns associated with levels or degrees of nationalism are only a part of the giant puzzle of nationalism. The history of its emergence, for example, is very competently covered by others and is not offered here. Neither is this book concerned with developing a typology of nationalism. Although typologies of nationalism are useful in demonstrating nuanced differences in nationalism in a particular country or region (e.g., Citrin et al., 1994), the focus here is on broad commonalities in nationalistic behavior. We are, however, interested in behavioral pattern variations given particular degrees of nationalism. The definition of nationalism used here is drawn from the works of Rupert Emerson. He noted that in an era of mass politics people have a 1

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Nationalism and Politics

strong tendency to identify at a primary intensity level with communities that they believe should serve as the collective basis on which governmental organizations should rest. These communities become the locus of “terminal” loyalty: The nation is a community of people who feel they belong together in the double sense that they share deeply significant elements of a common heritage and that they have a common destiny for the future. . . . The nation is today the largest community which, when the chips are down, effectively commands . . . loyalty, overriding the claims both of the lesser communities within it and those which cut across it or potentially enfold it within a still greater society. . . . In this sense the nation can be called a “terminal community” with the implication that it is for present purposes the effective end of the road for man as a social animal. (Emerson, 1960: 95–96)1

Emerson’s conceptualization of nationalism as a modern-day behavioral manifestation of identity community attachments is one of the earliest examples of an effort to theorize about nationalistic behavior. People are capable of granting loyalty simultaneously to several identity communities, such as religious, racial, and ethnic communities, in addition to the national community. A state is a nation state when people identify with the territorial unit organized as a political entity, that is, a nation, more strongly than with any other politically relevant identity group (racial, ethnic, etc.), and they give the nation primary loyalty. Members of the community insist that the government organization is entitled to recognition as a free and independent sovereign state. A person who identifies with the nation first and foremost, who gives the nation primary loyalty and identifies with it with greater intensity than any other group, is a nationalist. Emerson’s conceptualization of nationalism as a modern-day behavioral manifestation of terminal identity community attachments is one of the few examples of a serious conceptualization strategy. Given this conceptualization of nationalism, it should not be surprising that in this book much of the analysis of nationalism and the behavioral patterns associated with it draws heavily upon political psychology. However, the analytical framework also combines the concepts and findings of political psychology with an analysis of state power and capability to arrive at a predictive and policy-relevant theory of nationalistic behavior. The book begins with a look at other works on nationalism in an effort to place the approach and analytical goals in the context of the broader theoretical literature on nationalism. We then proceed to the development of a checklist of characteristics crucial for assessing the degree to which nationalism is present in a society. This is followed by some illustrations of nation states in which people have multiple politically relevant identities yet devote primary loyalty to the nation. After description and illustration come the theoretical arguments. Psychological studies examining group attach-

Introduction

3

ments and behavior are used to explain why people become deeply attached to groups, why the nation is a natural identity group, and how people behave toward their groups and toward those groups they regard as different. Finally, image theory from political psychology is introduced to provide a framework linking perceptions of other political actors to policy preferences. To analyze nationalism and nationalistic behavior solely at the political psychological level is to invite accusations of reductionism and to miss additional important analytical factors. Not only is the behavior of nationalists different from that of nonnationalists; so is the behavior of nation states from non–nation states in which the nation is not the primary identity community for most citizens. Therefore, we also explore power-based capability theories drawn from political science to examine the power and capabilities of nation states compared to non–nation states. Pulling the psychological and capability factors together, we offer a multivariate argument: the political psychological propensities of nationalists differ from nonnationalists, producing distinct patterns of policy preferences and willingness to sacrifice for the nation. The difference lies in the intensity with which community members identify with the national community. In the case of nation states, there will be a primary and intense identification with the national community. Community members will be strongly committed to the security, welfare, and dignity of the nation. In non–nation states, there is likely to be some sense of identity with the broader national community, but the intensity and priority given to that identity will be weaker and lower. We then shift levels of analysis to examine the capability base, or power, of nation states. It differs from non–nation states in that, while their resources and power instruments may be the same, the ability of a nation state government to mobilize those resources and instruments and to make difficult demands upon its populace is significantly greater than that of a non–nation state. Thus, the power of a nation state in international politics is greater than that of a non–nation state even given equal resources. Drawing upon psychological and political studies of group behavior, cognitive properties in political decisionmaking, and variations in state power, it will be argued that the following patterns characterize the behavior of nationalists and nation states when compared to nonnationalists and non–nation states: 1. There will be an enhanced proclivity in nation states to see a threat from others and an enhanced tendency to see the threatener in highly simplified stereotypical terms; 2. There is a greater likelihood that the leaders of a nation state will advance and seriously consider the option to expand state influence at the expense of others;

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Nationalism and Politics

3. There will be a greater tendency among the publics of nation states to become preoccupied with the objective of an ingathering of communities existing outside the borders of the state whom they regard as a part of their community; 4. There will be a greater concern with maintaining face and dignity on the part of the people in nation states and a greater willingness to take action to rectify perceived affronts; 5. There will be a greater likelihood that the public of a nation state will be susceptible to grandeur interests; 6. Leaders of nation states will have a greater ability to make effective appeals to the citizenry to accept major sacrifices to enhance the power of the state, including a willingness on the part of the citizenry to become part of the armed forces; 7. There will be a more intense commitment of the military in a nation state to the defense of that state; and 8. There will be a greater likelihood that the citizenry of a nation state will grant its leaders the decisional latitude to take risks in defending state interests but a lesser likelihood of granting them the decisional latitude to accept defeats or the loss of face. Finally, this book is also driven by policy concerns: unless nationalistic behavior is examined systematically and theoretically, the patterns necessary for “good” policymaking, that is, policymaking that reduces rather than inflames the extraordinary levels of violence that can come from nationalism, will have to remain ad hoc and at the mercy of decisionmakers with or without a simple intuitive basis for understanding nationalism and its effect on the way people behave in politics.

Studies of Nation States and Nationalism A review of some of the major works on nationalism is necessary in order to place this book in the context of the existing literature and to describe the gap in that literature we seek to fill. The many studies of nationalism reflect a widespread agreement that nationalism is of critical importance to an understanding of political and social life. Central questions addressed by this literature include What is nationalism? and Where, when, how, and why did this important phenomenon emerge? There are numerous competing explanations both with regard to nationalism per se and with regard to specific nationalisms. Many scholars emphasize structural conditions conducive to nationalism; others emphasize sociological factors and political and philosophical transformations; and others attempt to balance multiple sources of nationalism. Questions such as the importance of a class basis

Introduction

5

in the development of nationalism are exhaustively argued, and because so much of the literature is written by Europeans with an acute sensitivity to ethnicity, a major concern is cataloging ethnic conflict. Unfortunately, despite debates regarding the utility of different theories of nationalism, those theories generally fail to go far beyond definitions of the term. The concept is rarely discussed in operational terms and thus is often reified. Assertions abound regarding the central characteristics of nationalistic behavior, but those assertions are often abstracted from comparative discussions of sets of ethnic nationalism rather than from careful theoretical elaboration and conceptual development. In the discussion to follow, several characteristics of the literature on nationalism are identified that have limited the development of theory. The first is a misleading debate as to whether nationalism is an ideology, a debate that derives from the question What is nationalism? The second is a focus on a developmental-historical approach to the study of nationalism resulting from the questions of when, where, and how. This focus is valuable in supplying the understanding of nationalism with richness, but it diverts attention from the development of rigorous theoretical concepts. Third, in response to the question of why nationalism occurs, a pervasive ambivalence about the origins of nationalism has emerged. It has been difficult for scholars of nationalism to separate the inevitability of group attachments from revulsion at the violence such attachments, including nationalism, have produced. Consequently, there is often in the literature on nationalism an assumption that it is “primordial,” that it will fade with the advancement of civilization, and that it is evil.2 In this regard, our position is that nationalism is neither good nor bad but rather a natural outgrowth of particular patterns of human psychology that produce particular patterns of political behavior. Those patterns are predictable given the factors that produce them. Fourth, there has been little attention devoted to specific and systematic patterns of political behavior produced by nationalism. As we demonstrate below, behavior is sometimes described, but it has not received theoretically grounded attention, and it has not been broadly cataloged and explained. We are particularly interested in addressing this gap in the literature. Following is an incomplete look at some of the most important works on nationalism. Because the literature is vast, much cannot be reviewed, and in this section only the more theoretical literature is examined, leaving specific case-study material for later chapters. We begin with one of the classic early studies of nationalism, Carlton J.H. Hayes’s The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism, published in 1931. Hayes’s work is selected as a starting point because it illustrates the four trends mentioned above and sets the stage for a more general examination of the nationalism literature.

6

Nationalism and Politics

When Hayes published this influential book, Benito Mussolini was already the dictator of Italy and Adolf Hitler was a rising force in Germany. Hayes viewed the form of nationalistic behavior associated with these two leaders with both alarm and revulsion. Still, he chose to treat nationalism as a body of doctrines, as a political philosophy. True to his title, his book is a description of the evolution of nationalism from its “humanitarian” beginnings to its culmination in a form he called “integral nationalism,” a name taken from the writings of Charles Maurras and depicting a totalitarian populism in which nationalism served as the basis for the populist appeal. Hayes did not go so far as to assert a historical determinism, but he did identify five types of nationalism that appear in his narrative as following a natural evolutionary pattern.3 Hayes induced his five types of nationalism essentially from an examination of two hundred years of European history. Following his “body of doctrines” definition of nationalism, he inferred his two-century picture from the writings of political philosophers whom he saw as giving definition to nationalist doctrine at different stages of its evolution. Hayes did assert something of a logic to this doctrinal progression but made no real effort to construct a theory of the development of nationalism as a political philosophy. Neither did he make the effort to relate to the doctrinal evolution his basic assumption: that people are social animals driven, possibly instinctively, to defend and advance the interests of the group in its much larger, modern-day community version. The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism was an important contribution to an understanding of nationalism and is rightfully regarded as a classic in the literature on nationalism. However, it also illustrates the four tendencies mentioned above that have appeared in that literature that act to inhibit progress in understanding that phenomenon. The first of these tendencies is the treatment of nationalism as an ideology. This is evident in Hayes’s book and in many works since. He had difficulty identifying the characteristic features of such an ideology, which is typical of this tendency, and ultimately argued that nationalism per se is at most a partial ideology and one that can exist, depending on the circumstances, in harmony with a wide range of other partial ideologies. Nationalism is thus less than an ideology in that it has no clearly identifiable philosophy of politics; it is also much more than an ideology in terms of its emotional power and impact on human behavior. Even though many citizens in a country espousing a liberal philosophy may know little of the details of that philosophy, if they are nationalists they will willingly die for their country. The point was made with eloquence by Ernest Gellner (1983) when he wrote: “There is something bizarre in the suggestion that a force so widespread and pervasive, a flame that springs up so strongly

Introduction

7

and spontaneously in so many disconnected places, and which needs so very little fanning to become a devouring forest blaze, should spring from nothing more than some extremely abstruse lucubrations of philosophers” (1983: 126). Other efforts to treat nationalism as an ideology share these weaknesses. James Kellas, in The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity (1991), regards nationalism as an ideology and ideology as a system of ideas. Yet nationalist ideology appears in no particular form, that is, no specific system of ideas but any system of ideas. Moreover, Kellas does not consider nationalism, as a system of ideas, to have ever become a “great system of ideas, as did liberalism or Marxism” (p. 29), although he maintains it is a powerful force in political life. It is unclear throughout how nationalism relates to those “great” ideologies or what behavioral patterns are produced by nationalism. Nationalism is, to Kellas, both an ideology and a form of behavior, yet specific illustrations of nationalism as behavior are few, national passions regarding sports teams being one. Anthony Smith also defines nationalism as an ideology in Theories of Nationalism (1983: 171), yet he, too, treats nationalism as something less than a complete ideology. For Smith, as an ideology nationalism is composed of a desire for an “independence ideal” that in turn is composed of autonomy, individuality, and pluralism motifs (p. 172). This is not much of an ideology, and in fact Smith equates nationalism not with well-developed ideologies such as liberalism or Marxism but with political doctrines such as imperialism, racism, and populism (p. 173). Smith’s discussion of the evolution of nationalism in Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (1979) is equally devoid of any discussion of a concrete system of beliefs associated with nationalism as an ideology. Here nationalism is considered a “practical ideology” (p. 41) that historically drew “inspiration and sustenance” from neotraditional fundamentalist movements, religious reform movements that followed, and the neoclassical ideal of assimilation (pp. 30–39). These were all central elements in elite and popular mobilization around common nationality, but they do not constitute elements of an ideological belief system. In general, Smith’s use of the term ideology is loose and imprecise. Everything, it seems, can be an ideology, from nationalism, to fascism, Nazism, and even race and color (p. 86). Hugh Seton-Watson (1977), in contrast, explicitly rejects the argument that nationalism is in and of itself an ideology. It is instead “the application to national communities of the Enlightenment doctrine of popular sovereignty” (p. 445). He goes on to explore the appearance of nationalism in conjunction with political movements, such as socialist, liberal, or fascist movements, in history. This separation of nationalism as a concept from both political movements in history and ideologies in general permits

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Nationalism and Politics

nationalism to play a distinct role in the analysis of political movements. Considering nationalism in and of itself an ideology gets us nowhere because nationalism as an ideology has no specific substantive content. A second characteristic of Hayes’s work that is shared by others is the tendency to view nationalism primarily in terms of the movement from traditional society to modern society, a central characteristic feature of which is mass politics. This tendency ultimately results in a developmental-historical approach to nationalism’s evolution, emphasizing the emergence of various factors such as the printing press, common language, industrialization, the emergence of important philosophical writings and debates, and so on. However, the emphasis on historical developments, although interesting and important, has diverted attention from theoretical elaboration and operationalization of the concept of nationalism and from linking the concept to specific patterns of political behavior. In short, these are not theories of nationalist behavior, and they often attribute more causal power to accidents of history and technological development than may be warranted. Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism (1983) is a particularly noteworthy example of this tendency. Gellner defines nationalism as “a political principle, which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent” (p. 1). He further argues that nationalism constitutes a theory of political legitimacy in which the coincidence of the territorial state and ethnic boundaries is necessary. Gellner’s central argument is that nationalism is a by-product of industrialization. Industrialized states needed to socialize their citizens toward a “congruence of culture and polity” (p. 43). Such states need not be and may in fact not be ethnically pure, and nationalism is a way of overcoming potentially divisive allegiances. Gellner advances a compelling thesis that amounts to a general frame for describing social transformation from a traditional agrarian society to a modern society. In doing so, he pinpoints the stage at which nationalism begins to characterize sociopolitical behavior. But he does not engage in an examination of the phenomenon of nationalism or of its behavioral impact. Rather he almost trivializes it by assuming it is virtually a creation of individuals—political leaders of industrialized states—to be used for their own purposes. Karl Deutsch (1966) and Benedict Anderson (1983) share Gellner’s functionalist interest in the importance of certain historical moments in origins of nationalism. For Deutsch, the spread of communications facilities from shared languages to increased interactions through travel and other forms of communication were the aspects of modernization giving rise to nationalism. For Anderson, the development of the ability to communicate and interact through the print medium gave rise to common languages and other social elements producing nationalism. Hans Kohn (1944, 1955), Elie Kedourie (1960), K. R. Minogue (1967), Boyd Shafer (1972), Hugh Seton-Watson (1977), Eric Hobsbawm

Introduction

9

(1990), William Pfaff (1993), and Josep Llobera (1994) all take a historical approach and explore the emergence of nationalism as a result of political, economic, and intellectual developments in Europe in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The impact of the ideas of John Milton and John Locke—who propagated ideas of popular sovereignty at opportune moments in political and economic history, such as the Puritan Revolution—along with the emergence of a growing middle class are considered crucial in producing the first vestiges of nationalism in England (Kohn, 1944). From there, and in different political, economic, and intellectual contexts, it spread to France and elsewhere in Europe. Whatever the historical order of the development of political ideas, however, France is often considered to be the “first European people to be formed into a nation, and French governments were pioneers of the European form of centralized administration and uniform national culture” (Seton-Watson, 1977: 42; see also Minogue, 1967). The importance of political doctrine, trends affecting the legitimacy of monarchy, religious debate and change, and the increasing use of common language are also often noted as important historical developments related to the growth and spread of nationalism (Shafer, 1972; Hobsbawm, 1990). Case studies of nationalism, such as those of Hugh Seton-Watson (1977) and Rupert Emerson (1960), similarly tend to be historical accounts of national movements and their struggle for full sovereign independence for a national community–based state. These studies deal implicitly with a major behavioral manifestation of nationalism, that is, the effort to achieve the goals of independence and dignity for the national community. But only rarely do they look at nationalism as a behavioral determinant after these goals have been achieved. Emerson, for example, after writing perhaps the most useful account of nationalism in From Empire to Nation (1960), argued that once a nation achieved independence, nationalism would lose its relevance in the postcolonial world. The effect of more recent historical developments on nationalism has also been considered. Christopher Dandeker (1998) argues that the globalization of social life and national identity, made increasingly possible by the end of the Cold War, has had an impact on nationalism. By globalism, he means “a process of international economic integration promoted by technological improvements in and reduced costs of transportation of goods, and in the processing, storage, and transmission of information” (p. 5). Globalization, he argues, can diminish national identities and help give rise to transnational organizations such as the European Union. But it can also give rise to and increase national identities, as witnessed by the swell of national identity in Catalonia, Scotland, and Wales. According to Dandeker, economic considerations brought about by globalization have a great impact on the question of whether or not national identities fade or increase in intensity. Even so, he argues that beliefs about economic consequences,

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Nationalism and Politics

more than the raw fact of those consequences, are the central factor. Hence, the factor he focuses on is at most an intervening variable, or a catalyst that can affect the direction of evolving national identities, in a chaotic international system. Another, more ambiguous set of issues tackled in the literature is associated with a straightforward statement in William Pfaff’s The Wrath of Nations (1993: 41): “Nationalism is connected with the absence as well as the existence of nations.” Why does it arise in some times and some places with or without an associated piece of geography? Many studies show the fragility and precariousness of national identities. Others examine efforts to acquire a territorial state when nationalism is strong enough to motivate such action. In his final work on nationalism, Ernest Gellner (1997), for example, argues that nationalism is “neither universal nor necessary.” He maintains a developmental-historical orientation, arguing that “homogeneity of culture is the political bond, that mastery of . . . a given high culture . . . is the precondition of political, economic and social citizenship” (p. 29) and that this could only occur after the transition from agrarian to modern industrial society. When common cultures and territorial states coincide historically, nationalism occurs and is benign and liberal as in France, Portugal, Spain, and England. When there is a mismatch, as in ethnically diverse Eastern Europe, nationalism in one culture can provoke violence and ethnic cleansing to achieve a state-culture match. That violence, Gellner argues, is unavoidable. But in the cases of central Europe— that is, Germany and Italy—nationalistically driven violence was a choice, explained by socioeconomic conditions and cultural predilections toward “a machismo ethic of self-help” (p. 61). Needless to say, this is an oversimplification that would draw objection by Catholics in Northern Ireland, those who suffered under Franco’s rule in Spain and Salazar’s in Portugal, the Basques in Spain and France, and Vaclav Havel, among others, and it stems from the fact that Gellner is searching for historical patterns rather than an explanation of nationalist behavior. Implicit in Gellner’s work is the assumption that nationalism is, if not inevitable, exceedingly likely when a homogeneous “high culture” exists. Rogers Brubaker, in contrast, is much more tentative about when, where, and in what form nationalism occurs in Nationalism Reframed (1996). Brubaker begins with an appeal for a conceptualization of nations, nationness, nationalism, and nationhood in a nonreified manner. Nations are reified in practice but should not be reified in theory. Nationhood, he argues, is “a political and cultural form institutionalized within and among states” (p. 16). Institutionalized nationhood can take on many forms. Dominique Schanpper (1998) implicitly agrees and cites examples—the parliamentary system in Great Britain, democracy in the United States, and the republics of France—all of which are institutionalized manifestations of English,

Introduction

11

American, and French national identity. Brubaker argues, and correctly so, that nationalism and nationhood as institutionalized state practice are separate analytical matters and implicitly argues that the matching of the two are not anywhere near as simple and predictable as Gellner would argue. In contrast to the majority of the developmental-historical approaches to nationalism, Brubaker (1996) notes that “nationness,” or cohesive national identity, should be looked at not only from the developmental perspective as something that evolves over time but also as “an event that suddenly crystallizes . . . as a contingent, conjuncturally fluctuating, and precarious frame of vision and basis for individual and collective action, rather than as a relatively stable product of deep developmental trends in economy, polity, or culture” (p. 19). Brubaker’s subsequent treatment of the Soviet nationalities policy and the post-Soviet states shows the importance of the analytical distinctions he makes. Taking a panoramic view of the developmental-historical approach to nationalism, one can see that it provides a treasure trove of information on where and under what circumstances nationalism arose. However, the works discussed above do not develop the concept of nationalism to the point that it can be used as an independent variable linked to dependent variables, that is, nationalistic behavior. The impact of nationalism on domestic policy and foreign policy predispositions is largely ignored. Brubaker offers important insights into the reification problem in the nationalism literature and the importance of examining the institutionalization of nationhood. His work is limited to studies of the former Soviet Union and a few additional cases. In this book, we take a related analytical track in Chapter 5, wherein we examine the power differential in states whose people are strong nationalists. A third characteristic of many works on nationalism is a pervasive ambivalence on the question of the biological and/or psychological basis of nationalism. 4 Again, Hayes’s classic work exemplifies this ambivalence, and it has persisted since. He recognized—and deplored—the extraordinary force of nationalism as a behavioral determinant. On those occasions it appeared capable of subsuming most if not all of the other behavioral determinants. In seeking to understand this phenomenon, Hayes was willing explicitly to consider the proposition that nationalism, like “tribalism” before it, was instinctively based. Yet in his definition and in the development of his argument the element of instinct had no place. Several noted scholars (see, e.g., Van den Berghe, 1994; Reynolds, Falger, and Vine, 1987; and Shaw and Wong, 1989) are among today’s explorers of this theme. They are explicit advocates of the contention that a key to understanding nationalism is to be found in the genetic programming of prehistoric humans. They accept the thesis that people are genetically programmed to defend and advance the interests of their primary

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Nationalism and Politics

identity communities. Prehistorically that community was likely to have been an extended family or clan. But as human populations became more concentrated, the primary identity communities became increasingly large and complex. Nevertheless, the programming that dictated a major dimension of human behavior—that is, that focused on defending and advancing the interests of the identity community—proved to be adaptable to much larger identity communities. In the era of mass politics, it proved to be adaptable to the national community, and R. P. Shaw and Y. Wong believe the behavioral patterns that associate with this programming are clearly manifest in and central to nationalistic behavior and provide the “genetic seeds of warfare.” The suspicion of Hayes and others that there is an instinctive quality to nationalistic behavior is easily reconciled to this sociobiological thesis. The notion, drawn from Clifford Geertz, of the “primordial” roots of nationalism is less easily reconciled. In usage it tends to convey a vague sense of primitive origins and a quality of dark, barbaric persistence in modern nationalistic behavior. The title of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983) suggests a parallelism with the sociobiological position, and in the development of his argument Anderson does express wonder at the power of nationalistic attachments. But that sense of wonder is more related to the philosophical barrenness of nationalism as an ideology than it is to an observation that the intensity of attachments to a small community in which all members were well acquainted could be replicated in huge communities, one of them with a billion members, in which the community could only be imagined. Sociobiological arguments are controversial and untested. Nevertheless, they are attractive to some scholars because they appear to account for continuities in human behaviors, such as ethnocentrism, that have always existed, albeit in a variety of forms. Kellas (1991) maintains that the argument should be taken seriously as a necessary condition for nationalist behavior “even if the ‘sufficient conditions’ for such behaviour derive from political, social and economic circumstances” (p. 11). Regardless of the validity of aspects of the sociobiological argument, they so far tell us little about the political behavior patterns associated with nationalism; neither do they approach the question of what forms of social organization can be transformed into nationalist groups. Moreover, treating nationalism as something primordial, barbaric, or evil is both value-laden and contrary to the advancement of social science. Nationalism is a phenomenon that produces particular patterns of political behavior that need to be understood in terms of cause and in terms of a systematic, theoretically based presentation of patterns of behavior. True, nationalism can produce horrifying degrees of violence, but so can other political phenomena.

Introduction

13

Other major works in the field accept the notion of the inherent human tendency to form groups, assumptions directly parallel to the sociobiological argument but less rooted in the biological, evolutionary causes of the need to form groups. Many of these studies draw from anthropology, sociology, and psychology. A principal argument in their analyses of nationalism is that belonging to a group and making demands and sacrifices for that group are an intrinsic part of human activity. The roots of individual attachment to groups (i.e., social identity), the transmission of that attachment and the maintenance of the group through myths, socialization, and discourse, and the issue of group behavior, ethnicity, nationalism, and attachment to a territorial state are all components of nationalism addressed in this literature. At heart, either implicitly or explicitly, is the issue of identity. While many of these works still ultimately fail to address the issue of nationalist political behavior—the fourth problem shared by the works on nationalism—many do discuss ethnic political behavior patterns. Nevertheless, we are still left without a theoretically based explanation of systematic patterns of nationalistic behavior. One of the foremost scholars in this genre is Anthony Smith. In his many writings on nationalism, Smith examines ethnic groupings, or “ethnies,” as the building blocks of nationalism. For Smith, nationalism is “an ideological movement, for the attainment and maintenance of self-government and independence on behalf of a group, some of whose members conceive it to constitute an actual or potential ‘nation’ like others” (1983: 171). Smith identifies two basic kinds of ethnic groups in terms of their political characteristics in a volume chapter entitled “The Origins of Nations” (1994). Lateral groups are “aristocratic ethnies” that can survive only if they incorporate other portions of the population. This is done through strong bureaucracies able to reach out to the farthest regions of the territory. Thus, the state is central to the continuation of this kind of ethnopolitical group. The other form is the “vertical ethnie,” which is only indirectly affected by the state. Instead the group is maintained through the transmission of myths and symbols in the form of religious rites. The transformation of such a group into a politically conscious and active group is therefore difficult given the meager role served by the political apparatus in maintaining the group. This type often requires the emergence of a secular intelligentsia that will transform religious allegiance into nationalism. Smith regards ethnicity as “an independent element of nationalism” (1983: xxii) but does not reject the importance of other factors. In fact, he argues that the need to belong does not explain why at certain times the nation replaces other groups as the most important one (1983: 35). Here he shares the views of Gellner and Anderson that broader political trends and structural changes are important in explaining when nationalism is possible

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Nationalism and Politics

or likely. Nevertheless, his conceptualization of the nation, that of “a large, politicized ethnic group defined by common culture and alleged descent” (p. 176), is a sociological one. At the same time, Smith misses the centrally important point that nationalism permits compound and quite different group identities to exist in a nation state. He argues that “both racism and nationalism refer back, ultimately, to the same basic unit, the ethnic group and its traditional correlate, ethnocentrism” (1979: 90). Ethnicity and nationalism are expected to be equivalent, although there is room in Smith’s argument for national identity to be developed, to emerge among people who previously had only parochial identities, and he acknowledges that some states are successfully multiethnic. However, the notion that people of different ethnicities could identify with the same nation, and do so as nationalists, receives very little attention in Smith’s writings. Yet the ability of people to prioritize and balance different identities produces important behavioral patterns in nation states wherein most people have compound identities but give the nation first and primary loyalty (see discussion below). Most nation states are, in fact, composed of citizens with compound and sometimes noncomplementary identities. In terms of nationalist behavior, Smith’s main interest appears to revolve around efforts to form or forge a nation state. His discussion includes several proposals: that people, when engaged in efforts to obtain national independence, will work toward equality among conationals; incorporate extraterritorial conationals; stress cultural uniqueness; strive for economic autonomy; and attempt to maintain or expand national power and status in the global system. Miroslav Hroch (1996), in contrast, is interested chiefly in the impact of the political forces promoting nationalism on preexisting state structures and the result of the impact. He, too, asks why parochial attachments can be transformed into an “ethnic group as a nation-to-be” (p. 66). Hroch points to a number of factors, including a social and political crisis of the old order, the growth of discontent in important portions of the population, and a decline in traditional values, particularly religion. National movements emerge through three phases. First, an elite intelligentsia becomes aware of the broader community and also proud of it, although not necessarily aware of it in national terms. Second, political activists emerge who share the notion of the broader community but are able and willing to agitate the masses toward national consciousness. Third, a mass movement forms, and the social and political structures of a nation are possible. Hroch notes that the forces propelling a society toward nationalism do not occur in a neutral context but in the presence of an existing form of political organization and power. He argues that there are four possible types of national movements, depending upon the timing and power of the

Introduction

15

phases and the existing political structures. Thus, his major interest lies in the development of a typology of movements rather than the behavioral patterns associated with these movements. Further insight into the nature of group formation and political identities can be found in the articles written by Walker Connor over several decades, now published in a single volume, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (1994). Connor equates ethnic groups with nations and loyalty to the group as nationalism. Nationalism should not be confused with loyalty to the state. The nation is “a self-differentiating ethnic group. A prerequisite of nationhood is a popularly held awareness or belief that one’s own group is unique in a most vital sense. In the absence of such a popularly held conviction, there is only an ethnic group” (p. 42). Nevertheless, there is ambivalence in his discussion of ethnic groups and nations. Are they always one and the same? Connor implies not when he argues that a nation is subjectively perceived, that it is the self-identification of people with the group (p. 4). At the same time, he suggests that the ethnic nation “may well constitute the outer limits of [political] identity” (p. 56). The existence of a nation is ultimately entirely dependent upon peoples’ belief that they belong to a nation, as there is no set of tangible characteristics (such as language, culture, or economic life) essential to the nation’s survival and continuity (p. 73). Not surprisingly, given this discussion Connor sees few nation states in the world and is a purist in terms of identities permissible in a nation state. Nation states are, for Connor, extremely homogeneous in terms of identities. Examples include Iceland and Norway. The conceptualization of a nation state offered in this book resembles yet is different from Connor’s: in our view, nation states are possible when populations are heterogeneous, as long as the nation as a group receives primary loyalty of the citizenry. Connor also identifies a number of quasi– and non–nation states. Multinational states are most common and can be subdivided into unihomeland, multinational states (where immigration provides ethnic diversity); multihomeland, multinational states (where several homelands are merged into one state, as in Czechoslovakia and Nigeria); nonhomeland, multinational states (populations the result of migration); immigrant states (nonhomeland states with highly varied populations as in the United States); and mestizo states (Latin American states wherein the population consists of blended European-Amerindian ancestry). As is easily noted, there is a great deal of overlap among his types of multination states. For example, the United States shares characteristics of the mestizo state in that an indigenous population was conquered and made subject to European dominance. Likewise, many Latin American states are more similar to the United States in immigration patterns than to one another. The

16

Nationalism and Politics

development of a classification of non–nation states requires a careful examination of blends of alternative complementary and competing political identities. Such a scheme is presented at the end of this chapter. A final noteworthy characteristic of Walker Connor’s scholarship on ethnonationalism is his consistent call for conceptual clarity, particularly regarding differences between the nation and the state, nationalism and patriotism. His view of identity formations and change is a dynamic one: they ebb and flow over time and are not unidirectional. But again, when it comes to patterns of political behavior, Connor sticks to the very general. He describes nationalism as a subconscious and highly emotional bond that can produce great inhumanity. The literature discussed above and a number of additional works do say something about behavior, but it is not broadly or systematically addressed. Many scholars note, for example, that nationalism produced a propensity for great personal sacrifices for the nation (Gellner, 1997). Stephen Van Evera (1997), who agrees that scholars have said little about the effects of nationalism on behavior, looks at the relationship between nationalism and war and makes a number of points with which we agree and will examine in depth in the chapters that follow. Nationalism, he argues, can produce war when statehood is desired, when it is determined that a national diaspora needs to be territorially incorporated with the larger community, when perceptions of other ethnic groups is hegemonic, and when other groups are perceived through particular images. Given the limitations of his article’s length, he is prohibited from examining the causal factors in detail, such as what images of the other produce which patterns of behavior. Also limited by the article format, Assaad Azzi (1998: 74) argues that there are three psychological sources of ethnic and nationalism violence: competitive group interests, perceptions of injustice in a group’s status, and efforts to achieve a positive sense of group identity. This is an explanation of some psychological sources of conflict, but types of conflict are not a subject of our study. In Chapter 4 we examine these psychological processes and others and link them to a more precise set of behavioral predispositions, including different forms of violence and alliance formation. The works discussed above, and many others in the rich literature on nationalism, have been major contributions to the growing understanding of this important phenomenon. They are, however, essentially descriptive. What follows is an introduction to the conceptualization of nationalism developed in this book, drawing from works that precede it and adding to that overall body of literature by explaining the causes of nationalism and providing a systematic portrayal of the political behavior those patterns produce, that is, a theory of nationalism.

Introduction

17

Nation States and Nationalist Behavior Earlier in this chapter a nation was defined as a state in which the citizens of a country identify with the territorial unit as a political unit more strongly than any other politically relevant identity group. The nation is given primary loyalty. When the nation is threatened, or opportunities appear to enhance the nation’s goals, attachment to the nation and nationalism becomes more important as a motivating force than attachment to any other politically relevant identity group. All other identities and their demands drop to the side when nationalism becomes salient. Thus, our view of the nation state is broader than that of Walker Connor (1994), yet it is somewhat restrictive, as a few examples will make clear. If the community embodied within a state is not granted primary loyalty by the citizenry, that state is not a nation state. An example used in later chapters is Nigeria: for most people, Nigeria is at best secondary to ethnic group in terms of loyalty. If a state rests on a community base that consists of a number of identity communities, some possibly overlapping but none all-embracing, that state is a non–nation state. As will be seen, the Soviet Union was such a state, where Soviet identity as an all-embracing identity failed to emerge. If members of a community in a state grant a primary intensity and loyalty to a larger community that aspires to gaining its own state organization, that state is a non–nation state. An example would be Islam as a transnational identity community. At the same time, non–nation states may well have a large and politically active nationalist sector. These are people who are not representative of the citizens in a non–nation state, however. An example of this would be the nationalist political elites of India. Whether a particular polity is likely to be characterized by nationalistic behavior can be gleaned from an examination of the territorial community on which a state organization rests. In other words, is there a willingness on the part of the people to grant their community a primary loyalty? Is it the focus of a first-intensity identity attachment? Is it regarded by the members of the community as the foundation upon which a sovereign government granted full legitimacy rests? If these criteria are met, the polity is a nation state and can be expected to behave nationalistically. The differences in behavior among nation states and non–nation states will be differences of degree, not of kind, and these differences will correlate with variations in identity intensities. Thus, there will be a tendency in nation states as well as non–nation states toward a simplified view of another state perceived to be threatening. Both polities will tend to view the threatener stereotypically, but the stereotypical image of the threatener that characterizes the public view in a nation state will be far more sharply simplified and more rigidly adhered to than that characterizing the public

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Nationalism and Politics

view in a non–nation state. The policy responses of the two polities will be very different, reflecting the differences in worldview. Those making policy in the nation state and the nationalistic public as well are likely to see a threatener as ineluctably aggressive and decisionally monolithic. They will see a narrow range of options for dealing with the threatener and will be inclined to adopt policies such as those calling for total victory over the threatener. The view of the threatener held by the public and the officialdom of the non–nation state is likely to be more complex and should allow for a consideration of a broader range of options. The behavioral predispositions of nation states and those of non–nation states thus are likely to result in sharply differing strategies. The willingness to sacrifice, sensitivity to threats and opportunities, propensity to stereotype, and the other characteristics of nationalists listed above can produce and direct tremendous violence, possibly even genocide, against other countries. The people of non–nation states are less likely to act with such violence against other countries but, for reasons to be explained in Chapter 4, are not immune to committing such acts against groups within their own countries. In sharp contrast to the category of nation states with their behavioral parallelism, the non–nation state is an umbrella category that embraces polities that are predisposed toward a broad range of behaviors, only some of which can be described as nationalistic. A classification scheme is introduced below, highlighting the distinctive patterns of identity and behavior that nation states and several types of non–nation states are predisposed to follow. This classification scheme rests upon a number of variables. The focus remains on the territorial community, and states are classified as nation states or non–nation states in terms of the patterns of identity attachments. The bulk of this book involves the study of behavior of nationalists and nation states, the first type of state presented below. Although nonnationalist identity-related behaviors are equally important, Chapter 7 is devoted to an examination of several of the non-nation states to provide a contrasting picture. Nationalism itself is so complex and demanding of a complex analytical framework that it will take this entire book to do justice to the study of nationalism. The political psychology of identities and the range of behaviors associated with threats and opportunities to those identities also have application to non–nation states, as will be seen in later chapters. A pure nation state has one common identity coterminous with the territorial state. As Connor (1994: 77) notes, there are few of these. His list includes Iceland, Japan, Norway, and post–World War II Poland. Even states considered to be excellent cases for the study of nationalism, such as Germany, are not pure nation states. Many, if not most, nation states are states in which people have more than one politically relevant identity. As will be seen in Chapter 2, racial, ethnic, and religious identities can

Introduction

19

cohabit with national identity, but identity with the nation is most important for the average citizen. The historical development of nation states often involves the early establishment of a core community, usually ethnic or sectarian, that is the focus of a first-intensity identity by the people. The community has a capability base sufficient to achieve and to defend independent statehood and has a sufficient resource base to provide its citizenry a viable standard of living. However, in many nation states the territorial community also embraces one or several other communities that are the focus of a primary- or secondary-intensity identity attachment and that may advocate a status of significant autonomy. But these communities lack the capability base that would allow them to make a credible bid for separation from the territorial community. The core community advocates the full integration of these lesser communities in the national community, which then would coincide with the territorial community. In the process, a national identity evolves that is an amalgamation of the identities of component portions of the population. We call these nation states “compoundidentity nation states” in that various combinations of racial, ethnic, and religious identities are incorporated into, subsumed by, and/or accommodated by the national community as a whole. Many states with compound-identity communities are nation states as defined here, such as the United States, Mexico, China, and Germany. Others can be considered a nation state–in–progress, moving toward a common identity associated with the core community. In the long term that core identity evolves into a very different and unique third identity, the complex origins of which are often mythologized. For example, an American’s political identity is today far different from that of the Anglo-Saxon core community that founded and ruled the country in its developmental era. Pockets of unassimilated minorities may exist, but they cannot strive for independence. Chapter 3 provides detailed illustrations of the evolution of common third identities in a number of compound-identity nation states. When the minorities of a state lack the capability to make good any claim for separation, the state can be treated as a nation state. In such a situation, minorities are likely to look for an accommodationist strategy and to avoid any serious manifestations of particularist nationalistic behavior. A modification of the majority community nationalistic behavior in response to minority demands would then be more akin to the U.S. government’s response to the demands of ethnic pressure groups, demands that do not include a call for separation or independence. China, where the Han people are the majority community, is an example of such a situation; to a lesser degree so is France. Several illustrations of compound-identity nation states are presented in Chapter 3. In summary, nation states with compound identities have a nationalistic elite and mass predisposition for political participation. The common

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Nationalism and Politics

belief that the community is viable as a state applies to the compoundidentity community of the state. Minority communities and identity groups do not consider themselves to be viable as a state and are encouraged to join the national community identity group. Although this type of state may have a unique history, the presence of minority groups indicates that culture, language, and history are shared with others outside of the territorial state. Indeed, forging a unique identity is crucial in the process of becoming a nation state. Finally, identity groups are not necessarily complementary in that one’s identity with one’s minority referent group may not complement one’s identity with the larger national community.

Non–Nation States Core-Community Non–Nation States There are many cases of states with dominant core communities that are not in fact nation states, although some, like Russia, may be moving in that direction. In these cases, the core community is unable to achieve complete integration of minorities into the core community because of the strength of resistance within minority communities that persist in the view that they have or can gain sufficient capability to assert some degree of independence or autonomy. Additional resistance may appear from sections of its own citizenry that persist in viewing the minorities in highly undesirable, stereotypical terms. When this situation exists, core-community leaders and the public will be predisposed to nationalistic behavior with regard to the core community. Hence, a nationalistic elite will be present. Therefore, although such a state has characteristics of a non–nation state, there will be manifestations within it of nationalistic behavior among members of the core community speaking for the state. Members of the core community are likely to think of their state as a nation state, and in behavioral terms there will be a close similarity to that of nation states. But the behavior of members of the minority communities who continue to resist integration will follow patterns that differ sharply from core-community nationalism. Particularist nationalistic behavior is likely to characterize such minority communities, especially among members of minority communities that seek independence. The political leaders of the state thus will be confronted with the task of reconciling corecommunity, nationalistic objectives with the particularist nationalistic objectives of assertive minorities. That reconciliation may require accepting limited autonomy for the minority within tightly controlled boundaries, or, if the minority is large enough, backward-flowing assimilation, in

Introduction

21

which the core community adopts cultural features of the minority. Even in situations in which coercion is the primary feature of governmental control, this reconciliation process is likely to result in a modification of the nationalistic behavior of the core community. The policy results can include permitting education in the minority’s language and state-approved protection of land and cultural claims by a minority. Multiethnic and Multisectarian States States in this category have at least two ethnic groups, and the first-intensity identity communities these groups embrace lack the capability to achieve and maintain independent nation statehood. Unlike the ethnic communities of the immigrant nation states, no ethnic group has the capability of becoming the core group. The communities of multiethnic and multisectarian states are likely to be more geographically concentrated and are not subject to assimilation with one another, even though they lack the capability to insist on their right to separation and to sovereign independence. In its ideal-typical form, this state explicitly reflects the territorial groups’ ethnic identities and must do so to survive as a state. In this sense it is distinct from the core-community non–nation states discussed above, wherein assimilation to the core is the explicit goal of the state. The ideal-typical multiethnic and multisectarian states do not have a nationalistic elite advocating a single national identity. Multiethnic and multisectarian states are discussed in depth in Chapter 7 with a number of illustrations. Multinational States The multinational state differs from core-community and multiethnic cases in two central dimensions. First, the multinational state consists of two or more communities that perceive themselves to have sufficient capability to gain and defend independent statehood in most circumstances. In the corecommunity situation, one community has this capability. In the multiethnic state, no single ethnic group is perceived to be viable as an independent state. Second, in the multinational state, the members of the various national communities think of themselves as members of a single community that is both national and territorial. The problem is that this does not coincide with the territorial boundaries of the legal state within which they reside. Their identity with that state is low in intensity. As we have noted, a characteristic feature of core-community nationalism is the inclination of citizens of the core to view the core community, the national community, and the territorial community of the state as a single community and the terminal community. Like minority communities in the core-community

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Nationalism and Politics

case, the component national communities in the multinational state will not see their community and the territorial community as a single community. The case of the Soviet Union illustrates these two patterns of nationalistic behavior in non–nation states: core-community (i.e., Russian) nationalism and nationalism of non-Russians living in Russia. The potential for disintegration is a constant problem for multinational states, logically so given the perception of national groups within the state of a good potential to form a viable independent state. The state apparatus and leadership must devise techniques of rewards and punishments to dissuade these national groups from attempting to achieve independence. Consequently, international and domestic politics have much less basis for differentiation in this type of state than in a nation or core-community state. The case studies presented in Chapter 7 illustrate this point. Pan-movements and Diasporas Two final identity profiles should be mentioned, although they are not discussed in detail in this book: pan-movements and diasporas. The panmovement pattern is associated with a national community that is divided among two or more states. The territorial community, or a major component of the territorial community, of each of the states can be thought of as constituting part of a larger territorial community that does meet Emerson’s criteria for a terminal community. One major variant of the pattern occurs in situations in which a serious movement exists for the unification of two or more states with concentrations of a single national community. Should this movement lead to a broader unity in the form of an enlarged state, the territorial community would likely become the terminal community for what would be a new nation state. Historically, two such movements, the pan-Germanic and panItalian movements, were able to draw on a sufficiently large section of the population that had an identity attachment of the requisite intensity to be successful in creating an enlarged nation state. Other movements, such as pan-Slavism, pan-Turanism, and pan-Iranism, failed to mobilize identity at the requisite intensity to produce an enlarged state. In the contemporary world, two pan-movements, pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism, have attracted sufficient support and have the potential to succeed in at least some of their aspirations. These are very different movements, however. PanArabism, like most pan-movements, constitutes an effort to unite elements of a single ethnic community to serve as the national community base for a much enlarged nation state. Pan-Islamism, in one major manifestation, is an effort to unite a universal community of believers in Islam to serve as the national community base for a vastly enlarged nation state. That community would be multiethnic, multiracial, and multisectarian. Both states

Introduction

23

would be characterized by nationalism, that is, their publics would be strongly predisposed toward nationalistic behavior. But the Islamic nation state almost certainly would be polarized on community-identity grounds. Both poles would behave nationalistically, but the community interests they would be attempting to serve frequently would be contradictory. The enlarged Arab nation state would reflect contradictory community interests as well, but the polarization would be less pronounced. Diasporas comprise members of minority communities who have emigrated to one or several host states for commercial or political reasons but who continue to grant a first-intensity loyalty to the parent community. In addition, they wish to share a common life with other members of their community and are thus somewhat resistant to full integration within the host territorial community. The major variant of this category consists of communities whose forebearers emigrated largely because they perceived an opportunity to engage in profitable trade in regions in which the indigenous population was disinclined to do so or failed to see the opportunity. Included among others in this category are the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, Arabs from the Levant in West Africa, members of various ethnic groups from the Indian subcontinent in East Africa and South Africa as well as Southeast Asia, Greeks and Armenians in the Middle East and Western Hemisphere immigrant states, Ibos in west-central Africa, and Jews in Europe, the Middle East, the United States, and other Western Hemisphere immigrant states. Quite commonly, members of these communities are inclined to make the implicit judgment that the culture of much of the indigenous population is inferior to their own. When this is the case, they may view those so judged in terms of the contemptuous stereotype outlined above. Members of the majority, in turn, resenting what they see as high levels of achievement within the minority community, will be inclined to view that community in terms of stereotypes that manifest, for example, in antiSemitism and similar views. The consequence of such polarity is clearly highly detrimental to the prospects for integration. The situation can be seriously exacerbated if the parent community with which a minority identifies intensely is the community of a nation state. This will be particularly true if that state is perceived as a threat to the security of the host state. Members of the minority community who may identify with both the parent community state and the host state predictably will engage in a cognitive balance process and will see a situation in which the interests of the two communities can be reconciled. Members of the majority likely would judge such an interpretation as suggesting disloyalty on the part of the minority community. This process occurred in the Arab Middle East with respect to the Jewish community and led to the mass migration of that community to Israel. The pattern could easily be re-

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Nationalism and Politics

peated in the Soviet successor states with large ethnic Russian populations, or in Southeast Asia if the image of China were to become one of extreme hostility and aggressiveness. Another major variant of this category is that of the political exile. But in this case judgments of cultural inferiority or superiority are less likely to be made. Furthermore, having fled a homeland for political reasons, exiles are likely to maintain a consuming interest in developments in that homeland and will be predisposed to behave nationalistically with a focus on that homeland. When hope begins to fade for the restoration of a regime more to their liking, however, members of political-exile communities may begin to identify with increasing intensity with the territorial community of the host state. Indeed, exile communities in the Western Hemisphere immigrant states, where barriers to integration are weak, tend to have difficulty maintaining an intense loyalty to the homeland for their children and hence in resisting the appeal of integration. Diaspora communities are something of an anomaly for the student of nationalistic behavior. Members of the communities may well come to identify with comparable intensity with the community underlay of two states: the parent community and the territorial community of the host state. This dual loyalty, especially when the interests of the two states are somewhat contradictory, should result in behavior that reflects a cognitive effort to effect a reconciliation of these conflicting interests. The resultant behavior will differ sharply from the truly nationalistic behavior of members of the two national communities who have no strongly competing identity attachments.

Conclusion In this study of nationalism, we begin in Chapter 2 with a fuller description of identity units and a checklist—a measurement scheme—for assessing the degree to which a country has a nationalistic populace. The indicators include the presence or absence of a nationalistic change-oriented elite; the degree of mass participation in the statewide political system; the defensibility or viability of the identity community as a state; the uniqueness of the political identity community in terms of language, history, and culture; and the complementarity of identity groups. The ideal-typical nation state would have all of these characteristics, and this in turn affects the behavioral patterns to be expected of a nation state’s populace. The other types of identity units discussed have different combinations of these characteristics and thus have different behavioral patterns. Chapter 3 is more descriptive, discussing the evolution of nationalism and nation statehood in three countries: the United States, Egypt, and

Introduction

25

China. These cases, as well as others examined in less detail, provide an opportunity to explore the dynamic nature of nationalism’s development. The three focus countries are typical of most nation states in that their citizens have many politically relevant identities, but over time their identification with the territorial nation state has become common and primary. In Chapter 4 we describe and explain nationalistic behavior from the standpoint of the psychological foundations of political identities and the perceptual patterns found in nation states. The chapter includes a review of social identity and image theories and uses those theories to explain why nationalism is such a strong motivating force in people’s behavior, how it influences behavior, the power of the emotional attachment to groups, and the interaction between attachments to a group one identifies strongly with and the perceptions—that is, images—one has of others. Together, selfperceptions and perceptions of others produce the patterns of nationalistic behavior described briefly throughout the book. We will argue that critical differences of nation states and non–nation states are likely to be seen in important policy areas, including an enhanced likelihood that the nation state as compared with the non–nation state will engage in aggressive behavior. In Chapter 5 we examine nationalist political values and the degree to which those values affect the power of the nation state and the decisional latitude of its leaders. Chapter 5 moves us from the micro examination of political psychology to the macro factors of society-wide values associated with nationalism and the link between those values and state capabilities. Here we explore the differences in power and capability between nation states and non–nation states. The central argument is that because of nationalist values nation states can use more of their power resources compared to non–nation states and that the decision latitude of elites in each differs as well. Chapter 6 contains a detailed case study of foreign policy conflict among three nation states, specifically, the conflict between the United States, Mexico, and Colombia arising from international drug-control policies. The central analytical focus is on the power of nationalism as a driving force in directing each country’s policies and the power of images in determining bargaining stances and the use of leverage. In these cases one can see the impact of perceptual and state-capability factors on the behavior of nationalists. In Chapter 7 we offer a closer examination of non–nation states and look at their identity and behavioral patterns through several case studies. The cases focus on both domestic and foreign policy patterns in multiethnic and multinational states. They include examples and explanations of such states’ disintegration (the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia), difficulties in state-building (Russia, Nigeria), the potential for extraordinary violence

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Nationalism and Politics

(Bosnia, Lebanon), and characteristics of foreign policymaking in these states, wherein their identity patterns provide unique problems in exercising power and resisting interference from other actors. Chapter 8 is the concluding chapter wherein we look at conflict-resolution strategies. It is important to note that this book is more theoretical than empirical. Many precise, methodologically sophisticated studies could be done; for those who are interested, we will suggest some empirical tests of the theoretical ideas presented here. Thus we rely on a large collection of case studies to illustrate our theoretical propositions. Although each case could easily take up a book or more for just treatment, together they serve as interesting and provocative examples of nationalistic and nonnationalistic behavior.

Notes 1. Emerson’s use of the phrase terminal loyalty is somewhat confusing. The quotation demonstrates his meaning that nationalists will place the nation above all other communities; there is no reason, therefore, to define the nation as a community for which loyalty is terminal rather than primary. The use of the word terminal gives the impression that loyalty is all or nothing, when in fact it is variable, sometimes salient, other times dormant. Hence, we will hereafter use the phrases primary identity and primary loyalty rather than terminal to depict nationalists’ sentiment for the nation. 2. Hayes’s five types are humanitarian, Jacobin, traditional, liberal, and integral. They were meant to be viewed as representations of five stages in the progression toward mass politics. 3. It should be noted that our description of the second and third patterns is slightly different from the more common juxtaposition of the “modernist” versus “primordialist” camps. In the more common version, what we call the “developmental-historical approach” is considered the “modernist” camp, which associates nationalism with post–French Revolution trends in technology, economics, and communications. The primordialist, in contrast, argues that nationalism predates democracy, hence the hope that it will eventually fade. We agree in general with this version but add that there is another, underlying distinction in these camps having to do with the origins of nationalism. The modernist, or developmentalhistorical, camp sees the origins in structural and institutional factors, such as economic and technological evolution. The primordialist sees the origin as more deeply rooted in human nature, if not specifically psychology, although later analyses are more explicitly psychological. Our decision was to discuss the literature in terms of causal-factor similarities rather than historical differences. For a clear statement of the more typical historically based distinction, see Gellner (1997) or Dandeker (1998). 4. Our classification scheme resembles Young’s (1976) categories of cultural diversity (pp. 95–97). Young’s scheme is not directly related to behavioral patterns, however, and is descriptive rather than explanatory. We examine state-society relations in terms of ethnic versus national identities rather than numbers of cultural groups, as well as identity patterns when state boundaries do not correspond to identity groups.

2 Nation States

An important task in our initial analysis is the demystification of nationalism. The concept is often reified, but the real-world phenomenon of nationalism includes those perceptual and behavioral patterns that are closely and exclusively associated with real or “imagined” nation states. An objective of this book is to identify those patterns that are most closely associated with nation states and that are not likely to be observed in association with non–nation states. How can we assess whether or not a country is a nation state and the degree to which nationalism is characteristic of its people? In this chapter, the characteristics of nation states are discussed in detail, and in the process we develop a checklist of those characteristics. The checklist is essentially a complex set of indicators of the degree to which nationalism is a likely characteristic of a country. The checklist is applicable to any country, and illustrations are provided. It is useful in making possible a qualitative evaluation of whether or not a state is a nation state.

Four Types of Communities We have already suggested that the historical relationship of European ethnicity and nationalism has led to some serious distortions in the literature concerning nationalism. The terms ethnic nationalism and linguistic nationalism are common in that literature and suggest far too special a relationship between ethnicity and nationalism. In the nation state equation, the composition of the identity community that is a nation must be a primarily analytic focus in order to progress in describing and understanding nationalistic behavior. That national community will always be a compound, an identity mix, and the goal of qualitative and quantitative analysis of that 27

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Nationalism and Politics

compound is central for the study of nationalism. Hence, there is some utility in identifying the types of identity groupings of which the compound is likely to be composed. Several such identity groups appear in the literature on nationalism and ethnicity. Crawford Young (1976: 47–65), for example, regards them as “types of cultural differentiation.” Here they are examined in terms of identity dynamics. Four identity groups that have been politically important and that may compose underlying identities within a nation state are ethnic, religious, territorial, and racial communities; a fifth, compound-national communities, is also discussed. Ethnic Communities Ethnic groups are not necessarily synonymous with national communities. Although national communities can be, and usually are, associated with multiple cultural, religious, racial, and linguistic characteristics, ethnic identity is based upon an assumption of unique and common culture and history (Young, 1976: 47–49; DeVos, 1995; Kecmanovic, 1996: 31). Joseph Rothschild (1981: 9) defines ethnic groups as “collective groups whose membership is largely determined by real or putative ancestral inherited ties, and who perceive these ties as systematically affecting their place and fate in the political and socioeconomic structures of their state and society.” Anthony Smith’s (1981: 66) view is similar: “We may define the . . . ethnic community as a social group whose members share a sense of common origins, claim a common and distinctive history and destiny, possess one or more distinctive characteristics, and feel a sense of collective uniqueness and solidarity.” Ethnic groups are exclusive and include only people with certain inherent characteristics, whereas nations are inclusive and encompass people with various inherent characteristics but a common political identity (Kellas, 1991). Ethnicity can play a central role in the formation of national identity communities, as the European experience demonstrates. As the trend away from parochial identities, such as the feudal estate and the town, gained force among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europeans, there was an apparently easy transfer of a primary-identity focus to much larger communities composed of populations that were relatively culturally homogeneous. Not coincidentally, this trend was associated with movement away from political acquiescence and toward a predisposition to participate actively in the political life of the emerging communities. In Europe, the latter trend produced an era of mass politics. The former trend produced European states that were based on ethnicity. Nationalistic behavior in Europe came to be a manifestation of mass politics and a concern with demands for the independence, safety, welfare, dignity, and prestige of ethnically based national communities. Similar patterns would emerge in

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parts of Asia as the trend toward mass politics took hold. However, it was the European experience that provided the inferential base on which most of the nationalist literature rests. Religious Communities Common religious identity has also long been recognized as a source of political unity that can override other identity differences (Young, 1976: 51–60). This is most evident in the era before the rise of the modern nation state. Common religion permitted group survival despite loss of national independence in ancient Israel, and loss of common religion contributed to the disintegration of Greek identity under Roman domination in Hellas. Religious identity has historically been both a rival and an ally of nationalism (Baron, 1960; Kohn, 1944). The importance of religious identity as a pure identity group continues in the modern era. The relationship between religious and national identity remains, as Eric Hobsbawm notes, “extremely opaque” (1990: 71). Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, for example, reserved some of his most scathing rhetoric for denunciations of nationalism. But Khomeini’s hostility was less directed at nationalism than it was at the secularism that so often accompanies European nationalism. Khomeini was also lamenting what he saw as the acculturation of much of the Iranian and Islamic intelligentsia and its absorption into a cosmopolitan European culture. Fairly frequently in his sermons and statements, Khomeini referred to the Islamic “nation” as the focus of his community identity. The primary focus of his community identity was the believers in Islam, the umma. Yet the behavior that associated with such an intense identity with the Islamic community paralleled closely that of secular ethnic nationalists. Khomeini’s umma was multiethnic, multiracial, and multisectarian, and yet the intensity of his and his closest followers’ identity with that group was at a first-intensity level. When Khomeini was alive, the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran viewed itself as the precursor of a great and ultimately universal state that rested on the umma. But despite these universal aspirations, a concern with the security, safety, welfare, and prestige of the Iranian part of the umma became a central behavioral manifestation of the Iranian polity. This is not an isolated example. The conflicts in Northern Ireland, Lebanon, and post–Cold War Yugoslavia are commonly those of would-be national communities that have a religious-sectarian identity component. In these cases the adversaries share many common cultural and linguistic characteristics. Yet evidence of the intensity of attachment to their sectarian national communities is very clear, as is the depth of their aspirations for independent nation statehood. Clearly religious communities can serve

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as the primary community base for nation statehood and can produce parallel nationalistic manifestations. Territorial Communities Hans Kohn (1944: 15) has noted that the “most important outward factor in the formation of nationalities is a common territory, or rather, the state. Political frontiers tend to establish nationalities.” However, the European focus of the literature on nationalism has often led to an underestimation of the phenomenon of territorially based national communities. That is particularly surprising, since the United States is an obvious example. Indeed, the populations of most states in the Western Hemisphere are composed of immigrants with no ethnic, racial, or religious group having the numbers, concentration, and capability to aspire to independent nation statehood. Yet nationalistic behavior is characteristic of most of these peoples. Communities develop within artificial boundaries—sometimes straight latitudinal lines. These communities tend to be multiethnic, multireligious, and multiracial yet can become the focus of a primary-intensity identity attachment. Many states in Asia and Africa rest on territorial communities that are multiethnic, multireligious, and sometimes multiracial. These ethnic and religious communities sometimes do have the number, concentration, and capability to aspire to independent nation statehood, but more frequently their capability bases are marginal for achieving and maintaining independent statehood. In such cases, the prospects for the emergence of nation states depend on the development of a first-intensity identity attachment to the territorial community. Racial Communities Race, the fourth type of community base, is less frequently seen as the primary defining characteristic of a people. However, references to racial uniqueness pervade nationalistic utterances in many nation states (A. Smith, 1979). Whatever the ongoing debates regarding the physiology of race, politically race is often determined by the identification of groups with distinctive characteristics that are used to determine a status hierarchy (Fredrickson, 1999). Race, in short, is in the eye of the beholder—yet it is a powerful identity. One of the strongest manifestations of race as the determining characteristic of a nation emerged in Hitler’s Germany. In his thousand-year projection for world domination, Hitler looked to a loosely defined Aryan race as the core community. A broader base than Germans alone could provide would have been necessary for a universal imperial state, and Hitler

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saw the Aryan race as the candidate community with the most potential. But Hitler’s maneuverings in this direction made clear a point around which there is broad agreement: race must be perceptually rather than biologically defined. Lacking any scientific biological basis for determining what the Aryan race was, Hitler and his lieutenants struggled to discover some distinguishing features that could give legitimacy to the notion of Aryanness. The history of U.S.-Japan relations is also replete with interesting ideas regarding race. The Japanese were not considered nonwhite when early interactions with America occurred in the mid-nineteenth century, because it was thought that the Japanese, more than other Asians, could be civilized. Yukiko Koshiro (1999: 9) notes Theodore Roosevelt’s appreciation of the Japanese “because they were ‘repeating the experience of our Teutonic ancestors.’” He regarded the Chinese as “weak and passive,” whereas the Japanese were given “the same rank as ‘Englishman or Irishman, Frenchman or German, Italian, Scandinavian, Slav or Magyar’” (p. 9). Japan’s leader, meanwhile, agreed that they were both equal to white Westerners and superior to other “races” in Asia, such as Koreans and Taiwanese, who were most useful for heavy physical work (p. 12). As the modern white-power movement in the United States indicates, the appeal of a racial component for an identity community can be powerful. The probability is high that race will become increasingly pervasive as an identity component in an era in which conflict is so frequently defined in identity terms. Compound National Communities Citizens of most nation states can identify with several of the communities discussed above, that is, they have multiple politically relevant identities. Japan arguably is the state with the most homogeneous national community base. It does have two small and distinctive minorities (the Ainu and the Burakumin) as well as immigrant populations, but most Japanese (the great majority, in fact) are members of a community that is at once ethnic, religious, territorial, and, self-defined, racial. Japan’s national-identity community is hence a compound of all four pure community types. This situation is optimally complementary from the point of view of communityidentity stability. Few other nations are so fortunate. Israel is likely to achieve a comparably homogeneous compound with regard to its Jewish population. However, its Arab minority is so large and so resistant to any appeal of integration as to preclude identity stability for Israel given its current identity mix. The national community underlay of the United States typifies that of the immigrant-based nation state wherein identities are both different and

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often noncomplementary. For most Americans there is a community—a territorial community—that is deserving of a first-intensity identity attachment. But that community incorporates many smaller identity communities—ethnic, religious, and racial—that are not harmonious. This disharmony reduces the identity stability in the American nation state, but it does not prevent America from being a nation state. Many European nation states have similar multiple politically relevant identities and also now have a broader transnational identity: Europe of the European Union. This has presented similar opportunities for identity instability, or drift (Duara, 1996). A central question for the student of nationalism, therefore, is how strongly predisposed a people is to constitute a national community base for a nation state. As the case of Japan suggests, the existence of a community compound that is optimally complementary is a major favorable predispositional factor. The strong American nationalism emanating from a community base that is heterogeneous and conflictual suggests the existence of other predispositional factors. Multiethnic, multireligious, multiracial countries can be nation states because people are psychologically capable of balancing identities in conflict by refusing to see the conflict, compartmentalizing (and thereby psychologically separating) conflicting loyalties, or redefining loyalty demands (for example, for some, being a good American is equivalent to being a “good Christian”) (Guetzkow, 1955; Kecmanovic, 1996). Even in countries such as the United States, wherein people have multiple politically relevant identities, the nation, once the focus of primary loyalty, is “imagined” as unique. As Walker Connor (1994: 94) put it in discussing two other compound-identity nation states, there is an “unstated common assumption of a Chinese (or German) nation . . . that there existed in some hazy prerecorded era a Chinese (or German) Adam and Eve, and that the couple’s progeny has evolved in essentially unadulterated form down to the present,” regardless of the factual accuracy of such notions. We turn now to a checklist of factors that together suggest how strong the predispositional base is for the formation of a nation state and the likelihood that nationalistic behavior will characterize popular behavior in the state.1

Checklist of Indicators Suggesting the Formation of Nation States Nationalistic Change-Oriented Elites A change-oriented elite is a crucial element in a society’s predisposition for nationalism (Hayes, 1931; Kohn, 1944; Young, 1976; A. Smith, 1983).

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However, the characteristics and role of the change-oriented elite should be differentiated historically and geographically. The earliest representatives of this elite, those who emerged in Europe and among the immigrant settlers in the Western Hemisphere, were advocates of liberal political values, but this, too, is not a necessary condition of a change-oriented elite. Any set of political values that includes the change from ascriptive values, the shift in identity mentioned above, and an abstract commitment to ideals of mass political participation and equality, advocated by a persuasive elite, would serve the same purpose. The Cold War had a tremendous impact on the role and characteristics of this elite in Europe, as did colonialism and subsequent anti-imperialism in the Third World. The European setting (centuries before the Cold War) was one in which religious leaders were associated with the traditional system and thus largely opposed to change. They had provided a universalist foundation to a largely parochial, community-based system. Even reformists like Martin Luther merely advocated supremacy of the state over church, not nationalism (Shafer, 1972: 45). Early advocates of change (in sharp contrast to Muslims two centuries later) thus were unlikely to look to communities of believers as a natural base from which they could achieve the kind of fundamental change they advocated. In Europe, the identification of religion with nationalism can be seen first in the Puritan revolt against Catholic absolutism. It coincided with the rise of a middle class and the writings of John Locke (Kohn, 1955). The political leaders of the large territorial states of Europe in the pre–Cold War era recognized the advantages of alliances with changeoriented elites (Seton-Watson, 1977). These leaders had a strong vested interest in diminishing the role of parochial elites and were willing to encourage the rapid change process—up to a point. A strong inclination toward the growth of a sense of community developed among politically active state citizens who were turning away from old parochial attachments and were searching for a setting with some possibility of upward mobility. In addition, a sense of ethnicity was already somewhat pervasive in Europe, and in those situations where individuals of common ethnicity could serve as a core support base for the change process, the ethnic community became a natural focus of identity. The setting produced a community compound that tended to be at once territorial and ethnic. This suggests that the role of a change-oriented elite was a critical catalyst in the appearance of the nation state, nationalism, and nationalistic behavior (Hutchinson and Smith, 1994). It does not suggest that there is some natural affinity for nationalism among a change-oriented section of the intelligentsia. To the contrary, in the early years of the change process that intelligentsia was strongly attracted to liberal values such as freedom for the individual, equality, and tolerance (Kohn, 1944; Seton-Watson,

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1977). There seems to have been little awareness that a profound identity alteration, an alteration with unprecedentedly strong collectivist manifestations, was a central aspect of the change process. Confronted with un deniable evidence of a rapidly expanding mass attraction to a national identity and hence nationalistic behavior, the liberal intelligentsia accommodated. The doctrine of national self-determination seemed to provide a vehicle for a reconciliation of individual and collectivist values. The national community, like the individual, was entitled to freedom, equality, and a setting within which collective self-realization could be achieved. However, there were ultimately many manifestations in nineteenth-century Europe of an attraction to nationalistic behavior in conjunction with a belief that true freedom and self-realization could be achieved only through unquestioning membership in a national collective. Episodes such as the Dreyfus trial made clear to the liberal intelligentsia the tyrannical potential of nationalism. The role of the liberal intelligentsia in encouraging a change process that they saw as producing highly desirable ends was important in the early stages of change. But there was another and much larger section of the change-oriented elite that tended to view change instrumentally. This largely industrial and mercantile element saw the parochialism and rigidity of the traditional system as inimical to its self-interest. Liberation from such institutions as the guild system and the feudal estate became an essential prerequisite for expanding their economic horizons. The nation state was often utilitarian for the elite in these early years, and, except for those areas in which a competitive advantage made free trade highly desirable, what was called “economic nationalism” could be very helpful. However, if the development of the nation state had been a progressive phenomenon, the nation state system, once ensconced, carried many of the features of a new traditionalism. As the movement toward mass politics continued, the deep attachment of the populations to their nations became a profoundly conservative force. Now it was the conservative elites who viewed nationalism as harmonious with their philosophies and their interests. It was a powerful asset. Nationalistic symbols could be used to attract broad public support for a status quo that both the progressive, attentive public and a progressive economic elite found stifling. For example, fairly early in the development of capitalism, the nation state policy of mercantilism became an impediment to the creation of a more universal economic system that could best serve the interests of commercial progressives. Once again, in the view of the change-oriented elites, the most intense-identity community attachments stood opposed to the creation of a new order, this time one in which universal values prevailed. By “universal values” we mean political values applied to broad communities of people, values such as those in liberal democracy (and its economic theory, capital-

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ism), socialism, and communism. These are all doctrines and ideals that are deemed universally applicable, not merely applicable to those people of one’s own nation. No great psychopolitical movement with a force comparable to that of nationalism appeared or seemed likely to appear in this new change process. Apparently, the trend toward universalism would not be accompanied by a trend toward an intense identity with new and larger identity groups with their own manifestations of in-group/out-group behavior. In some cases, the change-oriented elite itself became and easily remained highly nationalistic. This situation is exemplified in Israel. There, a persisting threat to national survival is widely perceived, including by a change-oriented elite that overwhelmingly is caught up in support of nationalistic goals such as independence, dignity, and grandeur. Trends in a universalistic direction are unlikely to attract strong support from this elite base as long as a sense of long-term insecurity prevails. It would be easy to underestimate the force of nationalistic behavior in an era in which a dominant long-term trend is in the direction of universalism, as it is in the European Union in the 1990s. As Europe moves ever more deeply in the direction of broader unity, questions that are addressed are likely to be increasingly technical and to have little salience for nationalism. However, the intensity of nationalistic attachments to old national communities is likely to remain high for the foreseeable future. Thus, when a question is addressed that has salience for nationalistic sensibilities, there is likely to be a sudden and even shocking nationalistic surge that could easily result in a basic change in policy direction. Changeoriented elites, comfortable with an apparent trend away from nationalism, are then likely to be confronted with the necessity of conforming to nationalistic demands or of risking a serious loss of influence. However, once the crisis has passed, the decisional role of these elites is likely to be restored. Over time, an erosion in the intensity of nationalistic attachments could well occur. But no one should underestimate the persisting strength of such attachments. The Cold War, decolonization, and anti-imperialism produced new roles and characteristics for the change-oriented elite but have not diminished the importance of this element in producing a nationalistic predisposition. There are currently two types of situations that are particularly significant in maintaining a vanguard position for change-oriented elites in support of nationalism. The first is a situation in which identity aspirations of national communities were denied by the exigencies of fighting the Cold War. The Soviet Union in effect froze a post–World War II status quo in which many of the nationalist struggles in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union itself were unresolved. With the collapse of Soviet control, the option to achieve dormant identity aspirations was restored to many Eastern European peoples. Strong national movements determined to take

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advantage of the option to achieve identity aspirations appeared suddenly, and change-oriented elites appeared in the vanguard of such movements. But from the beginning, the attraction of universalistic trends to these elites was also apparent. The second situation embraces much of the Third World. Here, too, nationalistic trends were frozen by the exigencies of the Cold War and, in some cases, by the interaction between the emerging Cold War and disintegration of colonial control. Many of the governing elites in Third World countries were viewed by their own citizenry as having been more attentive to the needs of the great powers, either colonial power or the United States, than to the identity aspirations of the citizenry. Colonial powers identified and used indigenous elites as their local political agents. Those Third World states that were regarded as strategically critical by the great powers during the Cold War were likely to have come to be governed by individuals whose nationalist legitimacy was in question. In these cases, the change-oriented intelligentsia was likely to be found in the vanguard of the radical opposition and to be playing a catalytic role in the development of independence movements and postindependence nationalism (Shils, 1960; Benda, 1962; Kautsky, 1962). The change-oriented elite in some parts of the Third World looked to a broader national unity rather than to the liberation of national communities. Illustrations can be found in both the Arab and African regions (see, e.g., Legum, 1965; DuBois, 1970; Haim, 1976; Farah, 1987; Tibi, 1990; Khalid, 1991). A commonly held view among the change-oriented elites in Arab states is that the breakup of the Arab world into a number of smaller states was a basic imperial control strategy. Thus, with the ending of conflict among the imperial powers, the option for a broader Arab unity suddenly appeared to be available. However, since the United States was viewed as the primary opponent of Arab nationalism and since the United States emerged from the Cold War with relatively enhanced power, there was a good deal of skepticism among Arabs that they would be permitted to explore the option of greater Arab unity (Kazziha, 1994). In the African continent, Cold War competition between the United States and Soviet Union and their respective allies, resistance to decolonization in some cases by European colonial powers (e.g., Portugal in Angola and Mozambique), and the existence of a white-settler elite in other cases (Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, South Africa, and Kenya) produced a similar but more confusing pattern. Cold War competition produced rulers with questionable nationalist legitimacy in some instances (Liberia), while resistance to decolonization and/or racial equality coupled with fears of leftist national liberation movements did so in other instances (Rhodesia and the Portuguese colonies). In other cases, such as Mozambique, Ghana, and Tanzania, African leaders with strong nationalist credentials did achieve independence and control of their political systems.

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As in the Arab cases, Africa’s change-oriented elites also explained the Balkanization of the continent as a negative consequence of imperialism and periodically called for pan-African unity, a common African identity, and the actualization of an “African personality” as the source for the solution to Africa’s problems (Blaney, 1992: 218). But African identity has always been deeply complicated. As Hugh Seton-Watson (1977: 339) explains, “The early African nationalists knew who was their enemy: the colonial government of European foreigners. What was not clear was the unit for which they were demanding loyalty.” In comparison to the Arab case, the African continent is far more diverse in language, religion, cultural tradition, and ethnic ties. Consequently, the appeal of pan-Africanism dwindled long before the end of the Cold War. The inclusion of a change-oriented elite in a checklist of factors that predispose a people toward strongly nationalistic behavior is based on the assumption that the change-oriented elite serves a major opinion-formulating function. Thus, when that elite plays a vanguard role in nationalistic assertiveness, a people’s predisposition toward nationalistic behavior will be much enhanced. Conversely, when that elite is more inclined in the direction of universal values and in fact tends to see nationalistic behavior as inimical to the achievement of these values, a people’s predisposition toward nationalistic behavior will be reduced. The change-oriented elite is likely to include major elements of academic and journalistic communities and thus is likely to play a major opinion-formulating role. It also includes progressive economic elites who identify and favor accommodating economic development to major world economic trends. Both elite groups are in the forefront of the movement toward European Union. Mass Predisposition for Political Participation The conclusion is increasingly accepted that the appearance of the nation state coincided with the development of mass political participation (Kohn, 1955; Shafer, 1972; Seton-Watson, 1977; A. Smith, 1983; Hobsbawm, 1990). Stated differently, nationalism is a product of the early mass-politics era. Nationalism, it follows, was a natural consequence of the process of change that gradually transformed what is commonly referred to as the “traditional system.” There were two critical manifestations of political change in that process. One was the shift from ascriptive values to placing a value in achievement outside the traditional ascriptive system (Gellner, 1983). That shift incorporated a developing predisposition toward active participation in the political process. It marked the beginning of the end to acquiescence in traditional authoritative decisionmaking. The second was the shift in identity from parochial communities such as the extended family, the clan, the village, and the feudal estate to much larger communities (Emerson, 1960; Silvert, 1963; Hobsbawm, 1990). These larger communi-

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ties were ethnic, religious, racial, or territorial or some combination of the four. Since the change process began and gained strength in Europe, the patterns that appeared there tended to be thought of as natural. The increased readiness to participate actively in the political process is likely to proceed in geometric progression, and the new participants will see themselves as members of a community of like-minded individuals, an in-group that is granted loyalty at a first-intensity level. The leaders of a national movement at this point will be able to draw on a base of support that gives them the ability to withstand most internal challenges. However, the development of a national community base that embraces much of the population will serve both to limit and to expand the decisional latitude of national leaders. A concern for the independence, dignity, welfare, and prestige of the nation state is likely to pervade the national community. State leaders therefore will be granted considerable freedom to pursue these goals. They may, in fact, be able to mobilize support for enhancing the grandeur of the nation state and for engaging in external aggression in pursuit of that purpose. But they will have great difficulty adopting policies that appear to diminish state sovereignty or to accept a solution to an interstate conflict that appears to be damaging to state prestige. Leaders who are inclined to pursue universal values, it follows, are likely to have difficulty resisting opponents who make the case that the policy is antinational. The presence of a mass base identifying intensely with the national community thus becomes a major factor predisposing the polity toward strongly nationalistic behavior. Somalia provides a useful example. Applying the checklist to Somalia, we can suggest that a predispositional base for nationalistic identity did exist for a time after independence. A change-oriented elite emerged and united newly independent colonial territories held by Britain and Italy. That change-oriented elite, both before and after the 1969 coup by Major General Mohammed Siad Barre, focused on the national community as its first-intensity attachment. Siad Barre sought to erode the political structure based on a genealogical clan system and replace it with a socialist state structure. But over time, Siad Barre became increasingly repressive, and that repression followed clan patterns, with his own clan receiving preferences. The mass public’s attachment to clan-based political and social organization continued, and a movement toward identity with a Somali national community never fully emerged. A growth in readiness to participate has occurred but is manifest primarily in terms of intra- and interclan behavior. The lack of concern for the welfare of the Somali nation was dramatically apparent in 1992, when members of clans looked with indifference on the killing and starvation of huge sections of the Somali population. Indeed, there were few manifestations in that period of nationalist behavior of any variety in Somalia.

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Another mass political phenomenon that diverges from a straight-line movement from a parochial to a national community identity focus can be seen in a number of Islamic societies (see Arjomand, 1984). The early pattern in this area was progression toward a national community that was a compound ethnic-religious community. Tension was apparent early on between secularists (whose identity with the ethnic community was at firstlevel intensity but whose identity with the community of believers was at middle or lower intensity) and the deeply religious (whose identity with both the ethnic community and the community of believers was at a firstlevel intensity). Early trends predicted an accommodation of the two groups. However, in part because of external Cold War interventions that ousted or weakened secular nationalist leaders, in particular liberal nationalist leaders, the accommodation trend was reversed. Now, two increasingly hostile identity communities composed of the two compounds crystallized, and a sharply polarized society emerged (R. W. Cottam, 1993). The behavior of both communities could be characterized as nationalistic. However, strikingly different policies emerged, reflecting different weightings for elements of the two community compounds, and the outcome was dangerously conflictual. Since nationalism and mass politics are intimately related, this factor is a sine qua non for nationalism. If it is absent, the polity is prenationalist. To be sure, the trend toward mass politics is approaching completion everywhere. But as the examples here indicate, the composition of the communities with which the newly participant mass identifies is becoming increasingly diverse. Behavioral manifestations fall easily into the ingroup/out-group general patterns, but increasingly they diverge from specifically nationalistic manifestations of those patterns. Defensibility/Viability Does an identity community perceive itself to have the potential for generating a capability base sufficient to establish and defend independent statehood? Will the state organization once established be able to draw on the economic resources necessary to provide the citizenry with an acceptable standard of living? If the average community member answers the first question in the affirmative, the community can serve as the base for the state organization of a nation state. If the answer is negative, the same cannot occur, even if members grant their community loyalty at a primary level of intensity. Community behavior will have the characteristics that fall into the general pattern of in-group/out-group behavior. But that behavior will differ to a significant degree from what we will be cataloging as nationalist behavior. The Assyrian community of Iraq and Iran is a good illustration. The community lacks the population and the resource base to think seriously of

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being able to operate as an independent state in the Middle East. Loyalty to the community appears to have been at the first-intensity level at the start of the national era in the region. But since they cannot seriously consider the option of forming an independent state, they make the necessary accommodations. Many emigrate; others look to careers that require full integration in the social and political life of Iraq and Iran, and they tend to develop a strong identity with the territorial communities of those two states. The assimilation patterns in fact are similar to those in such immigrant states as the United States. The difference is that they maintain for a longer period of time an intense attraction to the old identity community. When modal members of a community believe they have the capability to form and defend an independent state but believe the economic situation in the state might not allow for an acceptable standard of living, there will be a strong reluctance to move toward full independence. If available, the option of negotiating a relationship with an existing state government that includes substantial autonomy is likely to be explored. Should this occur, a trend toward an increasingly intense identity with the territorial community may well develop. Quebec offers a good illustration of such a situation. Attachment with the French Canadian community is at the first-intensity level for many Quebecers. But they also see two deleterious effects stemming from independence: First, it would cut off a major section of the community that lives outside of boundaries of Quebec from the new nation state; and second, it could reduce economic opportunities to submarginal levels. An agreement that would grant cultural autonomy to all French Canadians and political autonomy to Quebec might well be an acceptable formula for most French Canadians; however, the English Canadians constitute a core group for a Canadian national community that is the community underlay for the Canadian state government. Canada, in other words, is a nation state manifesting nationalistic behavioral patterns but with a large minority that grants a primary loyalty to a different community. The inability of French Canadians to relate positively to Canadian nationalist patterns can be expected to be a source of tension for some time to come. The development of an increasingly intense attachment to the Canadian territorial community would likely bring the behavior of the two communities into greater balance, but the process would be at best a slow one. A high percentage of nationalist conflict in the post–Cold War era is likely to occur in areas in which the ability to establish and defend a nation state that is economically viable is marginal. A glance at the upper Mesopotamian region can be instructive. In this region there are four peoples with capability bases sufficient to allow them to think that the option is available to establish and defend an independent nation state. They are Arabs, Turks, Azerbaijanis, and Iranians. Of the four peoples, the case was

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least ambivalent for the Turks. Turkish nationalism had been fully recognized since the days of Ataturk and Turkish military prowess, and Turkish determination to establish and defend a fully independent Turkish nation state was generally accepted. There was little likelihood of any serious external intervention here. A second people, the Azerbaijanis, have had a long and close relationship with a third, the Iranians (Kazemi, 1988). Indeed, the case can be made that the Iranian national community is an anomaly in the Eastern Hemisphere in that it consists of two core communities, both adherents of Shiite Islam, but one speaking Azeri Turkish and the other Persian. The two peoples have lived a common life for several centuries, have intermarried, and share a history full of tragedy and triumphs. The attraction of Ayatollah Khomeini and the broader umma are comparable in each. However, many Azerbaijanis felt, especially in the twentieth century, that they have suffered relative economic and political deprivation (Menashri, 1988: 216). Tensions exist, and with the appearance of an independent Azerbaijan upon the breakup of the Soviet Union, the possibility of a pan-Azerbaijan movement has to be considered (Entessar, 1993). Should such a development occur, violent opposition from Iran and civil war within Azerbaijan would be a possibility. The Arabs represent a far less optimistic case for independent nation statehood. They came into national political awareness at an inauspicious point in time. European imperial rivalry made the achievement of a broad Arab national unity most unlikely. Instead, the Arabs were divided into European-administered mandates and developed somewhat distinctive identities upon these territorial community bases. After World War II and with the onset of the Cold War, these divisions were frozen in accordance with the exigencies of the Soviet-U.S. conflict. With the passing of the Cold War, Saddam Hussein of Iraq saw the opportunity to restore unity to the Arab peoples of the region. His efforts to do so attracted great enthusiasm among Arab nationalists. But among the United States and its European allies, there was little understanding of this perspective. They tended to describe Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait as simple aggression by one nation state against another. The proposition was simply not entertained that this was part of a unification movement designed to achieve a large and powerful Arab nation state where none had existed. American and European opposition to Arab nationalist aspirations, which they refused consciously to admit existed, was de facto but very real (El-Tawil, 1994). The price for persistence in a policy of denying or actively opposing Arab nationalist aspirations would include significant external intervention and a continued high potential for conflict in the area. A fourth people in the upper Mesopotamian region, the Kurds, could be regarded as a fully marginal case for establishing independent nation

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statehood. Numbering around 20 million in population and living in the circle of mountains embracing the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, they had a potential capability base equal to or greater than that of most established nation states (Entessar, 1992). Their territory was rich in oil and other raw materials and fully capable of providing a base for a viable economy. The problem for the Kurds was that they had gone through the change process from traditionalism at a substantially later date than had their closest neighbors. When Turkey and Iran were caught up in national movements, the Kurds overwhelmingly remained divided into parochial communities. Progressive Kurdish national elites appeared but were incapable of attracting a mass support base. The result was that at the close of World War II the territory within which the Kurds lived was incorporated into five states—Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the Soviet Union—none of which was interested in seeing the emergence of a strong Kurdish movement (M. Dunn, 1995). But the Kurds were in a very different position from that of the Assyrians, who understood they could not establish and defend an independent state in the region. The situation differed as well from that of the regional Turkomen minority, which, numbering less than a million, could not seriously aspire to independent nation statehood or to unity with a far distant Turkomen republic. The Kurds could believe that with a very favorable international environment they could move toward not only autonomy but genuine independence. They had sponsors in the past. The British, the Soviets, and the Americans had all offered the Kurds the tantalizing prospect of support for achieving their aspirations. In each case the Kurdish hopes and expectations were ultimately betrayed. Yet the Kurds could believe that they had a capability base sufficient for achieving their aspirations if they could be successful in attracting allies whose own interests coincided with theirs. Hence, in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, an Iraqi Kurdish movement cooperated with Iran and an Iranian Kurdish movement cooperated with Iraq (Entessar, 1992: 127–144). The Kurds remained tactically flexible. Iran’s defeat in that war ended for a time the prospects for independence in a section of the Kurdish region. Then came Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the massive international assault on Iraq. Suddenly, the Kurds had their best prospect in years for establishing an independent state within a section of Kurdistan. That prospect appeared because of an American tactical move designed to protect Iraqi Kurds, who had rebelled against Saddam Hussein, from being annihilated by the Iraqi Republican Guard. Under U.S. protection a rump Kurdish state was established, and the Kurds began to gamble that the U.S. government would not once again, as it had in 1975, betray the Kurdish movement. The domestic political price an American administration would pay for such an act might well be too high. But the existence of a functionally independent

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Kurdish state with its own government would be viewed as threatening especially to Turkey, which was faced with a substantial rebellion in the Kurdish section of Turkey. Supplying and defending the Kurds required Turkish cooperation. The American dilemma was serious, but Kurdish prospects for gaining a genuine foothold in the form of an independent rump state were fair to good. The situation in the upper Mesopotamian region illustrates the widely accepted point that conflict in the post–Cold War era is likely to be nationalist in focus. It illustrates as well the critical nature of the variable of a sufficient capability base for establishing, defending, and achieving viability for nation states. Uniqueness The fourth umbrella factor in the predispositional checklist for nation statehood is uniqueness. The assumption is that people who see themselves as having a unique and distinctive language, who believe that they have a shared culture that is unique to them and is sharply distinctive, and who believe they have lived a common life in the past and expect to live a common life in the future will be predisposed toward establishing and defending an independent nation state (Anderson, 1983; A. Smith, 1986; Kellas, 1991; Kecmanovic, 1996). The fact that there are functioning nation states that are multilingual and multicultural and lacking common histories indicates that a necessary but not sufficient factor in this list is that of expectations of living a common life as a people in the future. Nevertheless, a sense of striking uniqueness, including a long and distinctive history, is surely helpful for developing and maintaining a strong sense of a particular identity. Linguistic uniqueness. The importance of this predispositional factor is apparent in the broad usage of the term linguistic nationalism, particularly in a multinational state such as India. This reflects a natural tendency to identify with those who share one’s own language (Emerson, 1960; Young, 1976; Hobsbawm, 1990). The tendency is strong to take great pride in a language that is the repository of great literary traditions. It is apparent as well in the resurrection of ancient languages, such as Hebrew, and in the common practice of purging one’s language of foreign words and phrases. Pride in language also stands opposed to centrifugal tendencies that threaten to split a people into several subnational groups. The extraordinary role of Arabic is an excellent case in point. Efforts by parochial elites to establish what is referred to as “state nationalism” in various Arab states have had some major successes. But such parochial tendencies are countered by the enormous pride in and affection for the Arabic language, the language of the Quran.

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Where there is a very large number of languages and major dialects, as in Nigeria, Indonesia, and India, linguistic diversity is a major obstacle to the development of a single identity (Young, 1976). The need for a single language of reference is apparent in all such cases. Having to turn to the language of an imperial power as a lingua franca for a large and diverse territorial community bespeaks of the importance of this factor. Where there is no clear core ethnic community within a territorial community, the effort to make any regional language the national language of the country is certain to generate deep hostility. Consequently, in explicit efforts to forge a common national identity, some regimes have created a hybrid common language, such as Serbo-Croatian in the former Yugoslavia and Kiswahili in Kenya. Where peoples representing many sharply differing communities share a common language, there can be some identity impact, although as the disintegration of Yugoslavia shows, this alone is not sufficient to create a nation. Spanish in Hispanic America does appear to correlate with a rather low-intensity identity, however. This is true of Francophone Africa, France, and what is referred to as the “English-speaking world.” Cultural uniqueness. If a people believes it has a highly distinctive culture, one that is easily recognized by others for its unique qualities, that belief constitutes a significant predispositional factor for national identity. This is primarily a matter of perception. If, for example, the American people, a conglomerate of immigrant, multiracial, multiethnic, and multireligious groups, perceive a highly distinctive and unique American culture in which they take pride and within which they find comfort, they can be given high marks for this predispositional factor. An outside observer visiting different ethnic and racial neighborhoods of a U.S. city might conclude there is an unbridgeable cultural diversity in the United States. Another observer, visiting pre–civil war Sarajevo, might conclude that cultural as well as linguistic commonalities among Croats, Serbs, and Muslim Slavs were sufficient to produce a predispositional base for a common national community identity. But interviews would be likely to demonstrate that the Americans perceived an umbrella American culture sufficiently distinctive to accommodate the diversity (Waters, 1990), whereas Sarajevans did not. The existence of cultural achievements in areas such as literature, music, and the arts that are universally recognized as outstanding will be a source of cultural pride and will add to the strength of this predispositional factor. Historical uniqueness. A people with a long history that includes great triumphs and tragedies can be given high marks in this predispositional fac-

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tor. Here again the factor is very much based on perception. Highly romantic and fanciful historic tales, even outright historical mythology, are frequently accepted and serve to strengthen attractive historic images. Emerson (1960) has argued that tragedy was more important than triumph in generating identity intensity, a point underlined by the modern-day impact of the Holocaust on Jewish nationalism. Operationalizing this factor is difficult and would have to resolve questions such as how one should accommodate events such as a people’s failed efforts to secede from a large multinational state (as with the Ibos in Nigeria) or great triumphs by a state that has a community with which the people of another state strongly identify. For example, in 1973, when Egypt had some unexpected military successes against Israel, Arabicspeaking peoples throughout the Middle East and North Africa responded with exhilaration. Could such a response be viewed as strengthening the nationalistic predisposition of Iraq or Jordan? Our conclusion is that the best measure of the strength of this predispositional factor can be gleaned by interviews that indicate the intensity and direction of affective responses to memories of critical historical episodes. This can be seen in the example of Mexico (see Chapter 6). A particularly important source for evaluating the factor of history as a predispositional factor would be expectations that a people would continue living a common life in the future. Thus, if Nigerians, whose historical memory includes strongly negative memories of strife among the various peoples, nevertheless evince an expectation that the Nigerian union is likely to endure, a plus can be given to history as a factor predisposing Nigeria toward nationalism. The expectations of longevity would suggest the development of an attachment to a Nigerian territorial community that could in some distant future achieve an intensity level sufficient to be described as nationalistic. Identity Community Complementarity The final and possibly most important component of the predispositional checklist is that of identity community complementarity. When complementarity is high, the sum of community identities will be a reinforcing compound and the members of the compound will likely see a single homogeneous national community. When complementarity is low, mutual antagonisms are likely to be present and the members of the community compound will have difficulty seeing the compound as a national community. Compound-identity nation states are those in which identity communities are generally complementary. More specifically, the nation state represents a third common identity that is shared by those with underlying diverse identities. The national community is nonethnic in content (Foon,

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1986: 7), that is, it is not associated with a single ethnic group among many. In addition, in a compound-identity nation state, national identity takes priority over other identities if there is a clash between them. We have already suggested that the national-community underlay of Japan is a highly complementary compound of the four pure types of communities we identified: ethnic, religious, racial, and territorial. The Japanese people, of course, would not think of their national community as a compound but rather as a homogeneous whole (DeVos and Wagasuma, 1995). In contrast, the immigrant states of the Western Hemisphere tend to be multiethnic, multireligious, and multiracial. Yet in large part national communities have evolved in these states that are based on a developing territorial community. Over time that society tends to gain a sense of cultural uniqueness that stands above the diversity, and that society begins to think of itself as a unique and distinctive people. Surprisingly quickly, the people living within the state boundaries see themselves as a community and grant that community a first-identity attachment. Identities are not uniformly complementary but enough so to generally allow nationalism. Moreover, those groups for which identity complementarity hardly exists are typically too weak to move toward independence or secession. When the option for secession does present itself to Western Hemisphere states, this rapid progression toward nationalism based on a territorial community is less likely to appear. A developing intense attachment of Andean Indians to an ethnic-racial Indian community could lead to the perception of an option to secede that could result in the disintegration of the evolving nation states of Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. But the indigenous communities are still politically and economically weak and a secession option is distant. By and large, Western Hemisphere nationalism develops within the context of heterogeneous territorial communities that meet the necessary criteria of nationhood. In the Eastern Hemisphere, a great many national communities— whether ethnic- or sectarian-based—have the requisite population and geographic concentration to be able to think in terms of secession from a large multinational state. If the international environment appears favorable for exploring such an option, leaders are likely to appear who will advocate secession and in some instances a broader unification. Where that situation exists, an attachment at a first-level intensity to a heterogeneous territorial community is unlikely to develop. State survival will depend on the development and execution of a successful integration strategy. In Chapter 8 we consider a range of such strategies. The appearance of Islamic political resurgence is seriously complicating the complementarity of identity communities among the approximately 1 billion Muslims. The Islamic world is multiethnic, multiracial, and multisectarian, and the national communities that have developed in the past

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century in that world are predominantly ethnic or sectarian in base. However, a central thrust of Islamic political resurgence is in the direction of an intense identity with the umma, the broad community of believers (Dekmejian, 1985). In this vision, the umma would be the community basis for such a state, and the citizenry would grant the umma a primary and terminal loyalty. The state in this vision would meet our definition of a nation state and could be expected to manifest all of the major behavioral patterns associated with nationalism. The impact of the appearance of this manifestation of Islamic political resurgence on identity complementarity is well illustrated by the case of Iran. The core base of its national community had consisted of two major groups: Farsi-speaking Shiites and Turkic-speaking Shiites; together they constituted a substantial majority of the Iranian population. In the early 1950s, under the leadership of the great nationalist Mohammad Mossadeq, the core base was easily mobilized in support of the Iranian nation state, and a basic harmony, albeit often uneasy, existed among secularists and advocates of an expanded political role for members of the clergy. Mossadeq’s charisma served the purpose of broadening the popular base of attraction to the national community. A generation later, Iran had its second charismatic leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, who, like Mossadeq, was able to mobilize intense support from a core base. But the two core-base support groups differed sharply. Both granted a primary-intensity loyalty to the Iranian national community, but the Khomeini core granted its primary and terminal loyalty to the broader Islamic umma (R. W. Cottam, 1988: 164–169). Secular Iranian nationalists who had predominated in the Mossadeq movement had granted their terminal loyalty to the Iranian national community and did not identify intensely with the umma. In fact, they deeply resented Khomeini’s willingness to make major sacrifices of Iranian resources for that community. They resented even more deeply the preeminence of the role of the clergy in governance and in defining the prevailing cultural norms for society (R. W. Cottam, 1990). Thus, even though both groups felt an intense attachment to the Iranian nation, the deep division in identity regarding the umma destroyed the identity complementarity that had predominated in the Mossadeq era. In its place was a polarization into two hostile identity communities. This tendency toward polarization of secular and religious nationalists can be seen through the Islamic world.

Application of the Checklist: Illustrations The purpose of this checklist is to suggest an inclusive catalog of indicators that are of critical relevance for predicting the appearance and persistence

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of nationalism in a polity. Placing the factors together in checklist form should provide analysts the basis for constructing a picture of the predispositional base of a polity to behave nationalistically. However, applying such a checklist requires an intimate knowledge of a particular polity and an operationalizing strategy for each of the factors. Thus far, there have been several excellent case studies of nationalism but little effort at operationalizing indicators of a nationalistic predisposition. In order to illustrate the potential utility of an identity checklist, we advance below a list of seven state clusters ranked in descending order according to the strength of their nationalistic predispositional bases. The purpose is to argue that a validated picture of such clusterings, or of individual peoples, could have a predictive quality and could improve considerably the quality of conflict situational analysis. The patterns are summarized in Table 2.1. Table 2.1 presents a summary picture of the indicators of degrees of nationalism discussed in this chapter and their use in the seven clusters. The symbol “++” represents an indicator strongly favorable for nationalism, “+” moderately favorable, “x” neither favorable nor unfavorable (either because positive and negatives balance out or because the factor does not exist in this cluster), “-” moderately unfavorable, and “= =” strongly unfavorable for nationalism. The ratings are general and do not include the

Table 2.1

Checklist Application

Eastern Europe

Western Hem.

Western Europe

Islamic States

Multiethnic Asian

Multiethnic African

Change-oriented elite ++ Mass participation ++

++ ++

+ ++

-++

++ ++

+ +

X --

Viability Defense Economy

++ ++

++ ++

++ ++

++ ++

++ ++

+ +

-

Uniqueness: History Culture Language

++ ++ ++

+ + +

+ + X

++ ++ ++

-

X --

----

Identity composition Religion Race Ethnic

++ ++ ++

+ + +

+ X X

+ + +

-X --

-X --

-X --

East Asia

KEY:

++ = strongly favorable for nationalism + = moderately favorable X = neither favorable nor unfavorable - = moderately unfavorable - - = strongly unfavorable

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exceptional and atypical cases mentioned in the lengthy presentations of each cluster. Cluster One: East Asia Included in this cluster are Japan, China, and Korea, which are strongly positive in nationalistic predisposition for each of our indicators (Harrison, 1978). This includes the factor of change-oriented elites even though all three countries are changing rapidly in economic growth and industrialization, a movement that historically often predicts a shift away from national to more universal values among the change-oriented elite. The pace of change in these three polities suggests an explanation for the persisting concern of those elites with nationalistic assertiveness: they manifest a clear impression that these states have yet to receive adequate recognition of the eminence of their position in world affairs. The argument that China should be rated strongly positive in the indicators of uniqueness despite the size of its minorities and the strength of regional attachments could be criticized (Parris, 1997). However, historically the patterns associated with the development of nationalism indicate that as an attraction to nationalism moves into the mass public, there is likely to be an associated homogenization process that can consume regional differences and generate an intense attachment to the broad territorial community. If there is a strong, usually ethnic, core group that embraces nationalism with enthusiasm, the centripetal force can be observed even within minorities that constitute significant identity communities in their own right. Nevertheless, identity complementarity in China is significantly less positive than it is in Japan and Korea. The very enormity of the size of the population may result in regional identity groups that in a freer system might opt for independence. Thus, identity complementarity for China is positive rather than strongly positive (see Dittmer and Kim, 1993; Unger, 1996). Cluster Two: Eastern Europe This cluster includes Europeans who were denied the right of national selfexpression by the Soviet Union. This list incorporates European members of the Soviet Union, including Russians and other Eastern Europeans whose national status was frozen by the Cold War. The members of this cluster are strongly positive with regard to the change-oriented elite (cases described in J. F. Brown, 1991). Like their East Asian counterparts, change-oriented elites in Eastern Europe often take the lead in asserting claims of dignity and equality of treatment for their nation. With regard to the factors of defensibility and viability, Eastern Europeans are differentiated. States such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland,

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and Hungary could be judged strongly positive despite their ongoing political and economic instabilities. In terms of size, resources, population density, economic potential, and identity factors, these states are viable, although the nature of their future governments is an open question. Others, especially some of the Yugoslavian successor states, are of questionable viability and are vulnerable in terms of defensibility. We include in this cluster only those states with a strong positive rating for viability and defensibility. Poland should have a strong positive rating for both uniqueness and identity complementarity. Most of the other states are positive rather than strongly positive. This is true for two reasons, one of which applies to most of the states of the area; the other applies to the successor states of the Soviet Union. The states in this cluster typically have a core ethnic community that gives primary definition to the nation. They also have one of several minorities that have intense-identity foci (Seton-Watson, 1977; Bugajski, 1993; Brubaker, 1996). In the case of Czechoslovakia, those identities were powerful enough to produce a dissolution of the country into two new republics. Hungarians are important minorities in Ukraine and Slovakia, Germans in Poland, and Russians in Ukraine, to mention only a few. If the minority communities do not perceive secession as an option, a centripetal trend is likely to develop leading toward a long-term integration of the minority into the territorial national community. In the short term, linguistic and cultural differences will serve to mitigate the strength of the predisposition to behave nationalistically. If the minority identifies with the core national community of another state, a centripetal trend may not develop. Ukraine is a case in point. It has 110 distinct ethnic groups, but only the Russian ethnic group—22 percent of the population—is large enough to pose an obstacle to integration. It is also a population with an identity attachment to the core community of another state. The impact of this population on Ukrainian national identity remains to be seen and is an interesting illustration of identity formation and change. Ukrainians considered themselves a disadvantaged ethnic minority in the Soviet Union. Now they are the ethnic majority and Russians the minority. But the majority of ethnic Russians supported Ukrainian independence, largely for economic reasons (Lakiza-Sachuk and Melnyczuk, 1996). Since then, Russians have made demands reflecting their ethnic identity, such as efforts to have Russian declared a state language. Cluster Three: Immigrant States in the Western Hemisphere This cluster is composed of many of the states in the Western Hemisphere with ethnically mixed populations that were colonized by European powers

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and rebelled against their colonial masters. Canada, British Guyana, Belize, and most of the Caribbean nations are excluded from this category. Although the specifics of settlement, conquest, revolution, and political and economic evolution vary greatly from country to country, these states did have several important generations of change-oriented elites crucial for the development of national identities. The first generation was the revolutionary generation, in the United States during the last half of the eighteenth century and in Latin America during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The Western Hemisphere’s change-oriented elite also shared an attraction to liberal political ideas developed in England and France. Regardless of similarities and differences in ideological principles between the revolutionaries and the colonial powers they rebelled against, this change-oriented elite, by seeking independence, initiated the process of the development of national identities in the hemisphere. Moreover, the process involved the development of specific and new national identities. These were not movements of indigenous people overthrowing the imperial power; these were immigrants divorcing themselves from their ethnic kin and establishing separate states. The development of distinct national identities among the elite took longer in the Latin American cases than in the United States. Latin America suffered economic decline and political chaos for about thirty years after independence. Revolutionaries espoused political ideals of equality and individual freedom. But the postindependence criollos who governed, controlled the wealth, and had wanted control of the New World replicated the colonial social structure, lived like their European counterparts, and disdained their own land. In addition, the old colonial administrative divisions gradually broke up and were replaced by a number of new states. The necessity of creating territorially defined states slowed the development of national identities. In some cases, such as Ecuador, the existence of a true national identity is still questionable (Martz, 1990: 381). During the early twentieth century some fundamental differences emerged among states in this cluster that today produce variations in the extent to which the change-oriented elite is a positive or negative factor in the predisposition to nationalism. In the United States during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was a movement of the changeoriented elite in the direction of more universal values. Nationalism became and remained an ambivalent force for these elites, and it was increasingly associated with conservatism. In Latin America, the association between a change-oriented elite and nationalism became much more complex. Extreme social and political upheavals during the 1930s vastly expanded the number of power contenders and the array of political parties and other vehicles of their demands. In cases in which the middle class and new bourgeoisie emerged as the

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politically dominant force, the pattern followed by the change-oriented elite resembled that in the United States toward less national and more universal values. Those cases include Venezuela, Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, and perhaps Colombia. As in the United States, in some of these countries nationalism became a tool of conservative forces such as the military and the traditional oligarchy. This factor ranges from a weak positive to a negative in terms of generating a nationalistic predisposition in the United States and in this set of Latin American states. In other Latin American countries, the events of the 1930s set the stage for increasing disintegration of the state. In Brazil and Argentina, change-oriented elites and politicians who sought to lead the new participants in the political arena were strong nationalistic populists and were not associated with broader universalistic values. In other countries, including Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, and Paraguay, military dictatorships clearly altered the direction of change any existing change-oriented elite would or could take. In these countries, challenge to the existing political system was strongly repressed. At the same time, military regimes in Paraguay and Guatemala, in particular, tended to be highly nationalistic. Nationalistic predisposition affected by the change-oriented elite in both groups of Latin American countries, especially the latter, was also strongly influenced by the Cold War. Latin American countries were considered to be strategically important to the United States throughout the Cold War. As a consequence, they underwent the Third World experience described above. Governments that were seen as collaborators of the United States to the detriment of citizens lost all nationalist legitimacy and were challenged by a change-oriented intelligentsia that led radical movements and advocated nationalism as a corrective for the negative influence of American imperialism. This trend was particularly evident in the military dictatorships that were U.S. allies during the Cold War and had suppressed the change-oriented elite during that time. Finally, it should be mentioned that in at least one case—Peru—the military itself was for some time during the Cold War part of the change-oriented elite and was strongly nationalistic. This should not be considered surprising due to the fact that in Latin America the military is a regular political actor. In sum, given these historical differences, the change-oriented elite factor should be considered negative or weakly positive in the United States and weakly positive to strongly positive elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere cluster. Mass politics also characterizes all of the states in this category, and the mass public is easily mobilized by a strong nationalistic appeal. The timing of the politicization of the mass public has, of course, varied from country to country. The three uniqueness factors are graded weakly positive, reflecting the gradual development of increasingly distinctive cultures embraced by entire populations in these immigrant societies. In each case

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the history of their common life as a distinctive community is rather abbreviated but does include memories of triumphs and tragedies. The factor of identity complementarity is neither positive nor negative. The ethnic, sectarian, and especially the racial mix that characterizes these immigrant societies historically presented obstacles to a developing sense of being one people. Cluster Four: Western Europe Applying the checklist to Western Europe suggests an identity profile that in most areas is as favorable to nationalistic behavior as that of the East Asian cluster. This is particularly true of the three uniqueness factors, which are strongly positive. The Western European cluster is in a middle position of our seven clusters primarily because of the factor of the change-oriented elite. Support among this element for a move toward serious political integration of the European states is exceptionally strong (Baun, 1996). Indeed, it is the driving force toward European unity. Moreover, the idea of nationalism was deeply discredited among the elite as a consequence of the two world wars, for which nationalism was blamed (Bull, 1993). A common European identity is clearly promoted by this elite and has emerged in symbols (a European flag, money, institutions), a panEuropean media, and in language and rhetoric (Parman, 1993). Therefore, this factor is negative with respect to developing a predisposition for nationalistic behavior. This is not to say that nationalism is dead in Western Europe, however. Europe has been characterized by mass politics for a long time. This provides a basis for the mobilization of the European mass public in support of nationalistic politics, especially considering the strong sense of linguistic, cultural, and historical distinctiveness. The three uniqueness factors and the factors of viability and defensibility are strongly positive. Countries clearly vary in the extent to which these factors have produced a resistance to European integration, identity with Britain being on the most resistant end of the scale. With regard to identity complementarity, there are persisting tensions among ethnic, sectarian, and regional communities in Europe (such as those in Northern Ireland or Spanish Basque country), but only rarely at a level likely to constitute a serious centrifugal force. Overall, the heterogeneity is sufficiently serious to characterize this factor in Western Europe as positive, but not strongly positive. Cluster Five: Islamic States The case could be made that in the contemporary world the most intense nationalistic behavior is occurring among Islamic movements. Yet we place

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the Islamic states fifth in our list of seven clusters of states in terms of predisposition for nationalistic behavior. This low ranking is not a reflection of a movement of the change-oriented elite toward more universal value. The change-oriented elite is furnishing the leadership for the move toward nationalism in the Islamic areas, and this is rated as a strongly positive factor. Furthermore, in most Islamic areas the trend toward mass politics is well advanced, and evidence indicates that mass support for nationalism is easily mobilized in Islamic areas. The factor of mass political involvement should also be rated as strongly positive. In addition, the area deserves a strongly positive rating with regard to defensibility and viability. Where, then, are we to find the negative factors? The primary negative factor in the identity profile of peoples in the Islamic world is that of identity complementarity. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a critical case in point. Those Iranians who provide the core support base for the regime view the umma, the community of believers in Islam, as the focus of a primary-intensity identity attachment and as the terminal community focus of identity. In other words, they view the umma as the community-base underlay for an Islamic state that one day should be the state government for much of the Islamic world. Those Iranians who oppose or reluctantly acquiesce in the regime of the republic emphatically reject the umma as their terminal community-identity focus. So emphatic is this rejection that they tend to deny any identity commonality with regime supporters even though both they and the regime supporters grant the Iranian national community a first-intensity identity attachment. In other words, they grant the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran no legitimacy. The situation is one of extreme polarization on identity grounds. Islamic movements elsewhere also tend to look to the umma as a primary-intensity and terminal community-identity attachment. Secular nationalists, in contrast, manifest the same kind of tendencies toward polarization that are evident in Iran. Their primary-intensity and terminal community-identity attachments vary but most frequently focus on ethnic communities. The change-oriented elites are to be found in the leadership of the polar manifestations of nationalistic attachments. Effectively, therefore, the territorial community of states in the Islamic world is divided into hostile communities, each predisposed toward nationalistic behavior but each associated with a different and competing nationalism. Therefore, the factor of identity complementarity is strongly negative. The three uniqueness factors are affected by the polarization phenomenon as well. Secular nationalists in Iran, for example, will look to Persia with deep affection even though they may speak Azeri Turkish in their homes. In this case, the linguistic factor is a positive. Similarly, the view that there is a distinctive and unique Iranian culture is sufficiently pervasive

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to judge that factor also as positive. Iranian history, well recorded for three thousand years and blending into mythology beyond that, deserves a strongly positive assessment. Umma nationalists in Iran, proud through they may be of these distinctively Iranian factors, identify intensely with a community that is multilingual and multicultural, with great historical diversity. To be sure, they share with non-Iranian umma nationalists an appreciation of Arabic, the language of the Quran, general manifestations of an Islamic culture, and an absorption in the history of Islam and can be graded positively in all three areas. But secular Iranian nationalists by now share few of these attachments with umma nationalists. Overall, in Islamic areas, especially where the polarization phenomenon is advanced, the uniqueness factors in balance are somewhat negative. Cluster Six: Multiethnic Asian States Without a Core Ethnic Community There is overlap between the fifth and sixth clusters, particularly with regard to Pakistan, where the Islamic polarization phenomenon already is significant. Nevertheless, with India as a case in point, this should be explored as a separate cluster by anyone seeking to anticipate the likelihood of highly nationalistic behavior as a source of conflict in this new era of world history. The power potential of these states is substantial, and they are likely to play an increasingly important role in international politics. Generally, their identity profile, inferred from an application of the checklist, does not predispose these states to strongly nationalistic behavior. Indeed, the primary question is why the obvious centrifugal potential has not been realized in this cluster. There are some easy preliminary answers. The existence of a large state bureaucracy, including the military, whose members have a strong vested interest in the perpetuation of the multiethnic state, is perhaps most important. Similarly, industrial and commercial elements have strong economic interests in maintaining a large market. However, several ethnic communities in the states in this cluster are capable of defending their community, and of providing economic viability, should it be organized as an independent state. They have, in other words, the option to separate from the multiethnic state and thus far have effectively chosen not to do so. The proposition certainly should be entertained in states such as India, where an identity attachment to the territorial Indian community of middle-level intensity has developed. Whereas the appearance of such an identity to the large Indian community could explain the failure of separatist movements to produce disintegration, it need not suggest a strong predisposition to nationalistic behavior based on the territorial community.

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During the struggle for Indian independence, there was a manifest role for the change-oriented elite that had the outward appearance of a nationalism that embraced the territorial community and was not driven by the common interests of the various ethnic communities. Efforts to establish Hindi as a common national language clearly had the support of important segments of the change-oriented elite. Following independence, however, activities that seemed to indicate a persisting and strong role for producing an Indian national identity capable of attracting first-intensity attachment apparently could not be sustained. Much greater excitement seemed to focus on activities leading to a sustained sense of separate identity on the part of ethnic communities. Therefore, the role of the change-oriented elite should be given a weak positive in terms of advancing a predisposition to an all-Indian nationalist behavior. The growth in mass politics occurred inexorably, but episodes in which the newly active mass has been mobilized to support a territorial community–based nationalism are infrequent and usually in response to major external challenges. Evaluation of the three uniqueness factors is straightforward. Territorial community–based nationalists understood the critical importance of a single distinctive language for the cohesiveness of their nation. But the response to their efforts makes clear a strong, often highly emotional resistance to the idea of an established language (Sarbadhikari, 1991). It is seen as a threat within ethnic communities to the primacy of the language that gives substantial definition to the distinctiveness of the ethnic community. Thus, the factor of a unique and distinctive language is a negative in terms of a predisposition for nationalistic behavior associated with the territorial community. This cluster also evinces resistance to efforts that could lead to the erosion of the cultural distinctiveness of ethnic communities that together constitute the all-embracing territorial community. There appears to be a persisting belief that the territorial community is a cultural conglomerate. Unlike the immigrant communities of the Western Hemisphere, there are no strong indications of the development of a distinctive culture in the territorial community. This factor is also a negative. A better balance of positive and negative exists with regard to a common historical past and, most important, the expectation of living a common life in the future. The act of gaining independence from a colonial power and then meeting a series of often serious external challenges may have helped balance older memories of conflict among ethnic communities. There have been perceptions of favoritism toward other ethnic communities in the period of independence, but the union has survived, its continuation is valued, and there is a sense that it will continue to survive in the near future.

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The same process of growing expectations of persisting union seems to have reduced identity complementarity from a strong negative to simply negative. Considering this tendency, however, is the growing appeal of sectarian communities as foci of an intense identity attachment. As the process of growth in a predisposition to participate actively in the political process of the state has gained strength, there has been a tendency to turn to religiopolitical leaders. The secular appeal of the political elite of older generations was apparently more effective for mobilizing public support in periods when only a veneer of the population was predisposed to participate actively in politics. Now, with mass politics increasingly characterizing Asian societies, leaders who couch their appeal in terms of an identity with a community of believers are proving to be the more effective mobilizers of a newly aware and activist mass. The very moral certainty of their appeal works against the kind of reconciliation process that could produce complementarity among polarizing identity communities. Cluster Seven: Multiethnic African States Without a Core Ethnic Community Three of our clusters of states contain territorial communities in which the state organization rests upon multiethnic and multisectarian societies. In evaluating the predisposition of the peoples of these clusters to behave in strongly nationalistic patterns, the critical variable is the intensity with which people identify with their territorial community. In Western Hemisphere states, this was estimated to be at the primary level, contributing to a strong predisposition to behave nationalistically. Among the Asian states, it was estimated to be at the middle-intensity level, sufficient to work against the disintegration of the multiethnic states but insufficient to generate a strong predisposition to behave nationalistically. Logically, one should expect that African states would stand between these two clusters. But it is not as easy to make an empirical case for that conclusion. The logic of the case is easily made. It rests on the conclusions that none of the ethnic communities in sub-Saharan Africa have the capability potential to gain and defend independent statehood and to produce economic viability. Thus, even though they frequently are the focus of identity at a primary level of intensity, they cannot entertain seriously the option of independent nation statehood. Denied the option of independence, their members accommodate to the necessity of citizenship within a larger, multiethnic state. Over time they are likely to begin to identify with the territorial community upon which that state rests. Whether that identity achieves a primary intensity level remains to be seen. Certainly, the process of identifying with the territorial communities of states that were essentially the creation of the

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imperial power has been slow. Why is this so? Applying the checklist to the African case may offer useful tentative explanations. To begin with, the role of the change-oriented elite in the independence movements in Africa was far less nationally defining than was the case in other colonized regions in the twentieth century. There were major figures such as Kwame Nkruma and Julius Nyerere, who spoke for national territorial communities, but also for Africa and pan-African identity. Ethnic identities were strong enough to overpower the call to such continent-wide identities and were very strong competition for territorial state identity as well. Much of the explanation for the idiosyncratic qualities of the African case may be found in the extraordinary speed of the process of politicization and mobilization in Africa. In the Western Hemisphere, in which the postcolonial elite also lacked territorially distinct identities, generations of time succeeded political independence and mass politicization. But in Africa, within the space of a single generation, ascriptive-based, normative systems were being overturned, and individuals were refusing to acquiesce passively in the states of authoritarian traditional leaders. Coincidentally, a strong trend developed of looking beyond parochial identities, such as the extended family and the village, to larger group identities. Given the speed of the change process, the natural focus for new identity attachments was the ethnic community and not the community that coincided with the population embraced by borders arbitrarily drawn by imperial authorities. The shift of identity from extended family to ethnic community was revolutionary in its implications. Africa was becoming a mass-politics continent, and the ethnic community had become the base within which popular mobilization would occur. A further shift of identity to a heterogeneous territorial community was simply unlikely in the near and middle future. That shift could be expected to occur in the longer run as a new normative system, adapted to a politically assertive public that was heterogeneous in identity attachments, gained legitimacy. Here, as in the other clusters of heterogeneous states, the vested-interest factor surely would play a major centripetal role. State political leaders, the governmental and military bureaucracies, and industrial and commercial interests that looked to the broad territorial community as the economic base would serve the process of identity transformation. However, many of the African states that have gained independence since World War II may lack the capability base to meet the defensibility/viability requirement in the checklist. If this proves to be the case, new institutional arrangements, such as regional amalgamations, which add even more to the heterogeneity factor, might be called for. The three uniqueness factors underline the strongly negative predisposition of African states to behave nationalistically. Extraordinary lin-

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guistic and cultural diversity plus historical memories of group conflicts stand as major obstacles to the generation of territorial community–based state nationalism. Moreover, the linguistic diversity helps explain why a shift to ethnic rather than village and family identity is itself revolutionary. Groups that now receive primary ethnic identity, such as the Ibo and Yoruba in Nigeria, themselves have multiple linguistic divisions. Adding to the lack of identity complementarity is the growing strength of Islamic political resurgence and the rapid spread of Islam in the continent. Sectarian conflict is intensifying, as is the polarization process noted above between secular-minded and religious Muslims.

Conclusion A central objective of this book is to provide a basis for relating nationalism to interstate and intrastate conflict. In this era, any situational analysis of a serious conflict is likely to have a nationalistic dimension. We presented the seven clusters of states in declining order with respect to their nationalistic predispositions to suggest that the nationalistic dimension of the conflict is likely to vary sharply across geographical areas. In doing so, however, we do not mean to suggest the inevitability of nationalism-based conflict in areas, such as East Asia, that have strong nationalistic predispositions. But we would argue that there is a greater likelihood of such conflict in such an area. This chapter has been a technical undertaking, setting forth indicators of nation states and the potential for nationalistic behavior. In Chapter 4 we turn to the political psychology of nationalism and patterns of nationalistic behavior. We consider the impact of social identity and cognition on perceptions of in-groups and out-groups. The patterns that emerge in psychological studies are then examined in the context of political groups. Nationalism, it is argued, is a very natural form of political identity, and it produces patterns of behavior toward other groups that parallel those found by psychologists in their studies. A model is presented depicting the images commonly held of other groups in politics, and those images are linked to patterns of behavior.

Note 1. A preliminary presentation of the checklist was published in Richard Cottam, “Nationalism in the Middle East: A Behavioral Approach,” in Said Amir Arjomand (ed.), From Nationalism to Revolutionary Islam (London: Macmillan, 1984).

3 Compound-Identity Nation States: Egypt, the United States, and China

In this chapter we take a closer look at compound-identity nation states. The goal is to describe the complexities of compound identities with some reference to the impact of compound identities on political behavior. The compound-identity community could be an amalgamation of two to four of the “pure” identity communities: racial, ethnic, religious, or territorial. This occurs when two or more of the identity-community types are largely complementary. These states are nation states, and in general their populations are nationalistic. But the generation of nationalism is a complicated process because people in these countries identify with more than one politically relevant group, groups other than the nation, even though the nation is most important. Among all nation states, the vast majority have populations with compound identities, and more may be developing the shared compound national identity needed to become nation states. These countries have grown to be nation states, they were not born nation states. Nation states with compound-identity populations develop a third, common identity that is to one degree or another an amalgamation of important identity-group characteristics in the society as a whole. Even so, secondary identities can in subtle ways affect the politics of compound-identity nation states.

Characteristics of Compound-Identity Nation States The history of the United States is representative of the evolution of a state with multiple politically relevant identities that eventually became a nation state. In this evolution, the territorially defined national community became the focus of first-intensity attachment. In the case of the United States, one group of immigrants, the Anglo-Saxon Protestants, gave early 61

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definition to the cultural manifestations of the American national community (Gordon, 1978; Lind, 1995). The Anglo Saxons thus provided a referent for waves of immigrants from a diversity of ethnic cultures of what constituted an emerging American national culture. But the Anglo-Saxons lacked the geographic concentration, the cohesion, and the intensity of community identification to advance a claim that they constituted a national community that had the right to establish a governmental organization that was entitled to independent statehood. Instead they followed an implicit strategy that resulted in the integration of many immigrant groups into an American national community. The culture of that community, in turn, resembled decreasingly that of the Anglo-Saxon core community and achieved a distinctiveness reflecting an ever-changing cultural amalgam. This process was repeated throughout the Western Hemisphere and resulted in the appearance of a number of distinctive national communities and associated nation states. In Latin America, the Spanish and Portuguese colonizers were unable to impose and maintain Iberian culture. The Indian populations from Mexico down through much of the Andes were large, complex, and sophisticated. The result, despite Spanish authoritarian rule, was a blending of the cultures and races. Added to that process was the blending of African cultural characteristics in countries with large African slave populations. Some Latin American countries, such as Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, did not have large Indian populations. In these cases, immigrants from Germany, Syria, Japan, Great Britain, and Italy were blended with the Spanish or Portuguese communities. The overall result is the existence of the compound-identity phenomenon in much of Latin America, although its characteristics vary from country to country. Thus, the role of the early colonizing community in the integrating process was critical, but the nation states that emerged were not based on identity with that original core community. Instead, a third, common identity emerged from the cultural amalgam. This requires some form of mobility for the individual members of different groups. It also requires a reasonable prospect for reconciliation of identities for those groups whose identities are not always complementary to their identification with the nation, such as descendents of African slaves in the Western Hemisphere. This process is crucial but also difficult and, in many cases, ongoing. It also often must take place in the absence of a commitment to equal opportunity for all groups within a society. Obtaining channels for mobility may be a hard-fought political battle for the least powerful groups. It is often met with coercion by the dominant groups, coercion that can make assimilation more attractive and less costly than efforts to form autonomous groups. This is particularly the case when a politically dominant community sees other groups as inferior. These perceptions have occurred in many compound-identity nation states and have been the source of internal

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political conflict as well as an obstacle to the development of a commonly shared third identity. These perceptual characteristics must be overcome for the development of a stable nation state to occur. Thus, the territorial community of the compound-identity nation state attracts the most intense loyalty of the modal citizen—but not for all. Attachments to other groups, such as minority ethnic groups, can be primary for a portion of the citizenry, and often they are powerful enough to affect the country’s domestic and international policies. Like pure nation states, compound-identity nation states tend to have a nationalistic elite that considers the state a nation state and insists upon the assimilation of all groups. The pattern of stereotyping, identification of external threats and opportunities, and responses to them are like that of a pure nation state. Typically, when the nation state experiences an external threat, subgroups grant primary loyalty to the nation state rather than their ancestral country. Examples from American immigrant reactions in World Wars I and II illustrate this point. Suspicions about the loyalties of German Americans in World War I and Japanese Americans in World War II were dramatically misplaced, as those ethnic groups (as well as other, newer arrivals) clearly supported the United States in both wars. This support, moreover, came in the face of very serious deprivations of civil liberties for these ethnic groups during wartime. It is not during threats to the compound-identity nation states that they experience an effect from the multiplicity of politically relevant identities in society. Foreign policy is affected by pressure from ethnic groups when the stakes to the nation are lower and when the policy position favoring an ethnic or racial group’s ancestral country can be articulated as complementary to the interests and/or values of the nation state (Shain, 1994–1995). Similarly, the domestic political agendas of these nation states often contain demands for rights and equality by groups that grant the core community primary loyalty but who still suffer discrimination. Many of the Western Hemisphere’s compound-identity nation states, including the United States, share this characteristic. Civil rights movements in the form of equal treatment and rights of citizenship for immigrant and native minority groups have been ongoing in North and South America. The success of such movements is crucial for the evolution of the national identity. Some groups resist assimilation into the core community and are powerful enough to make effective demands for limited autonomy. In many of these nation states, limited demands for autonomy for those minority groups resistant to assimilation can be accommodated with little cost to the dominant group (Gurr, 1993: 139), providing for peaceful avenues for conflict resolution. Latin America again provides examples. Despite the profound blending of indigenous and colonial cultures and races, some Indian communities in

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Latin America have not assimilated, remained extremely isolated, and were exploited and/or neglected by the government and broader national community. Conflicts occur over Indian claims to land as well as the preservation and use of language and cultural customs in Indian communities. Indians and governments alike generally recognize the coercive power of the state and the Indians’ weakness, and there are few indigenous independence movements. But governments often choose to at least recognize and sometimes accommodate Indian demands for cultural preservation and territory, if not autonomy. Some Latin American countries, most notably Mexico, have used Indian culture and history as a symbol in forging national identity for the population. Often the broader national community purposefully integrates aspects of Indian culture into its own, simultaneously treating Indians as an ethnic minority. Brazil’s 1988 constitution, for example, recognizes ethnic rights and the autonomy of Indian social structures and communities. The Indians have had to battle strong resistance from sectors of the population that considered Indians barbaric museum relics or manifestations of an international conspiracy to dissect the Amazon from Brazil (Van Cott, 1996). These indigenous people in Latin America are represented by a wide variety of organizations, and they share a pan-Indian identity that is a primary identity for many members. The problem for individual citizens in compound-identity nation states is that identities must be balanced in terms of their importance and in terms of the trade-offs necessary to maintain each identity. The extended family, clan, or some other parochial community would be of central political relevance in the pre–mass politics era and may continue to be politically relevant well into the mass-politics era. But more commonly in that era, the most politically relevant communities will be ethnic, sectarian, racial, and national. People are often faced with political situations in which those identities are in conflict. Even though identities vary in importance to the individual, people are unlikely to simply sacrifice one for another. Instead, they attempt to find a way to preserve all-important identities. The sum of communities with which an individual identifies and their identity intensity levels can be thought of as constituting the individual’s politically relevant identity-community compound. Noncomplementarity of identity communities can be a source of disruptive conflict patterns in nation states. Conflict is a result of the difficulty in reconciling a first-intensity and universal attachment to a territorial community, which by definition is then classifiable as a national community, with a diversity of identity attachments held at various intensity levels. Identity-related conflicts have occurred in a number of Latin American countries, involving, in some cases, extraordinary brutality. One such case is Guatemala, where between one-half and two-thirds of the 10.5 million citizens are Mayas, the other half Latinized Ladinos. The two

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differ in language and custom but not in appearance, since most Ladinos have Indian ancestry. The question of whether one is ladino or Indian revolves around language (with Ladinos speaking Spanish) and various cultural traits. The Mayas of Guatemala, however, are composed of twentythree subgroups and languages, meaning that Spanish is used as a common language (Warren, 1993). Since the Spanish conquest of the Mayan peoples in the sixteenth century, the central direction of change has been toward the assimilation of the Mayas into Spanish culture. There was no parallel to the Mexican synthesis of the cultures and the two identities. One was ladino or one was Indian. The two identities were not complementary. But it is not clear that being ladino meant one was Guatemalan, whereas being Mayan meant one was not. The Mayas adapted to pressures on their culture but did not lose it (LaBaron, 1993). They remained at the bottom of the social and economic ladder in Guatemala. The first stage of the modern mobilization of the Mayas began in 1944 with the establishment of a reform-minded government. The first period ended with the 1954 coup, but by the late 1970s the indigenous people were politically and socially mobilized (Davies, 1988: 20). At this point they were participating in political-party activities, were running for office, and had established an Indian-led labor organization, the Committee of Peasant Unity. This took place in the context of broader social and political discontent in Guatemala that included sectors of the ladino population. The period also witnessed the emergence of left-wing guerrilla groups intent on overthrowing the government. The military government’s response was a scorched-earth assault on all opposition, including the Mayan communities in rural areas that were suspected of supporting the guerrillas. The consequences for the Mayas of this so-called dirty war were disastrous, approaching a “demographic, social and cultural ‘holocaust’” (Davies, 1988: 21). Some 50,000–150,000 people were killed, depending on when one starts the count; 150,000 more went into exile in Mexico, and a half-million became internal refugees. Most of these people were Mayan. If they fled the army’s assaults by going into the mountainous highlands or Mexico, they faced hunger and misery. When they tried to return, they were imprisoned in pollos de desarrollo (poles of development) internment camps for Indians, where they were to be indoctrinated in anticommunism and where their way of life was to be systematically destroyed. The campaign was not simply directed at the Mayas but was an ideologically based internal security campaign that combined with ongoing racism to devastate the indigenous population. Now that the war is over, the Mayan communities have again mobilized. What is surprising, and of central importance, is that their mobiliza-

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tion appears to be toward winning a new definition of the national community and what it means to be Guatemalan. During the early 1990s, the many Ladinos began to accept and prize aspects of Mayan culture, the teaching of Mayan languages in schools, and the participation of Mayan political organizations in the political system (LaBaron, 1993: 275). That in and of itself did not mean that the ladino community was interested in the creation of a new, commonly shared third identity incorporating elements of Mayan culture. But by 1996 there were signs that this, too, may be changing: the Accord on the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples and constitutional changes agreed to by the government will, if put into effect, turn Guatemala into a multiethnic, multicultural, and multilinguistic society. It appears, then, that Guatemala has a chance to reconcile competing indigenous versus ladino identities so that they may still be different— but both will be Guatemalan. And although Mayan nationalism is a potential political force, it is unlikely that the Mayas, divided as they are and knowing full well the extent to which the military will go to preserve the status quo, would think that they can break away and form a Mayan nation. Given the crushing blow to Mayan communities experienced during the 1980s, the Mayas’ willingness to work for and accept the constitutional provisions and the Accord on the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples is an even stronger indicator that the ultimate goal is a third identity. Guatemala thus remains a non–nation state and will become one only by redefining national community to be more inclusive. Religious-community attachments are also of particular interest at this stage in the political developmental process in that mass politics is becoming a characteristic feature. Typically, attachments to a religious community in a nation state will be highly differential. Those members of the national community who also identify with primary intensity with a religious community incline frequently to the view that conformity to a religiously sanctified code of behavior is a national duty. Behavior that fails to conform is viewed as both blasphemous and nationalistically unacceptable, as it reflects serious acculturation. Those members of the national community who identify with the religious community at a third- or fourth-intensity level are more inclined to view religion in doctrinal terms and to resent—often with very great intensity—any moral diktat from religious leaders. Expectations that individuals who share a first-intensity attachment to the national community and share an attachment to the religious community, albeit at very different intensity levels, would come to see a reality in which reconciliation of differences would be possible are commonly not realized. Instead, a sharp polarization of the two groups often develops, with each viewing the other with great distaste. We have taken note of this polarization phenomenon within the Islamic world, where the forces of politically resurgent Islam are the focus

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of both very positive and very negative affective responses. But there is a parallel with the Christian right in the United States, the Jewish right in Israel, and Hindu nationalists in India. The tendency in all these cases is toward polarization, with an affective response sufficiently serious to produce hatred at a level capable in the extreme of producing genocidal responses. The experience of Iran following the Iranian Revolution in 1979 was an example of extreme polarization with religious identifiers in absolute control. Secularists numbering in the millions fled the country, and the hostility felt by both communities reached dangerous levels. However, within a year most observers believed the core support element for the Islamic regime had shrunk to a point at which it constituted at most a substantial minority. A clear majority of the population chose accommodation with or acquiescence in the religious regime. But whereas the size of the support base for the regime is a matter of speculation, manifestations of a move in the direction of Iranian nationalism even within the regime are easily documented. Content analyses of articles appearing in what has become a fairly free press, interviews with governmental and religious leaders, and government radio broadcasts point to a balancing process in which the Iranian core community is an increasingly important part of the equation. The case of Iran, albeit only one case, offers evidence to support the proposition that extreme polarization of overlapping identity groups is difficult to sustain in the long run.

Illustrations of Compound Communities in Nation States Below, three examples of compound-identity nation states are explored in detail. Egypt Egypt, probably alone in the Arabic-speaking world, meets the criteria of a nation state. The Egyptian territorial community appears to be the focus of a primary-intensity identity attachment for the overwhelming majority of Egyptians, including the large Coptic Christian minority. However, attachments to other identity communities vary widely among Egyptians. What follows is a propositional picture of the identity compound for three groups of Egyptian Muslims, each of whom can be considered a modal representative of a particular identity pattern. The three grant the Egyptian territorial community a first-intensity attachment. But they differ sharply in the intensity of their attachments to their religious community and to the pan-Arab national community. The picture suggests some sharp differences in worldview, in judgments of Egyptian political personalities, and in foreign policy preferences.

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The first group, Egyptian nationalists, identifies at a primary-intensity level with the Egyptian territorial community. Nationalists identify also with the community of Arabic speakers but at a substantially lower, tertiary level of intensity (Talhami, 1992). The range of identity with the umma, the community of believers in Islam, is broad. But the group includes many secularists who believe religion should be confined to the mosques and whose identity with the umma tends to be at a minimal, fourth level of intensity—a pattern comparable with that of many Christians with respect to the community of believers in Christianity. Egyptian nationalists are far less inclined than the other two groups to see a world defined in terms of a persisting struggle with imperialism, now perceived more in the neocolonial form. Although still resentful of their colonial past, they are far more concerned with positioning Egypt well within the global economic system. Resentment persists with what is seen as Israeli arrogance and the injustice of its treatment of Palestinians, but here, too, there is an acceptance of the need to develop an acceptable modus vivendi. Egyptian nationalists were easily convinced by the argument that Egypt had made far more than its fair share of sacrifices for the Palestinian cause. They supported Anwar Sadat’s peace initiatives and the Camp David Agreement but deplored their isolation from the Arab and, to some extent, the Islamic world (Hinnebusch, 1985). They find in these regards President Husni Mubarak’s stance more compatible. His association with the peace process is accepted without enthusiasm—an attitude that prevails as well with regard to Yasser Arafat. Saddam Hussein’s aggression against Kuwait was condemned, and Egypt’s participation in the international action against Iraq was generally accepted, although there was little enthusiasm for and some open resentment of the domination of that action by the United States. They are particularly resentful of a U.S.-led nuclear nonproliferation policy that in their view acquiesces in Israel’s clandestine program of arming itself with nuclear weapons and yet insists that Egypt make no effort to construct a deterrent force. Egyptian nationalists generally deplore the appearance and growth of politically resurgent Islam into possibly the major dynamic force of the Middle East at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Thus they are part of the polarization process that characterizes this era. Their lack of support for the development of democracy in Egypt to the point of allowing the Muslim Brotherhood, which speaks for most Egyptian Islamists, to participate in the electoral process is indicative of their concern for the possibility of Egypt’s becoming an Islamic republic. Overwhelmingly they oppose suicide bombings by Palestinian Islamic activists and the intransigence of Islamic opposition to the Arab-Israeli peace process. The second group, the self-proclaimed Nasserists, shares with the Egyptian nationalists a primary-intensity attachment to the Egyptian territorial

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community. However, their identity with the community of Arabic speakers is also a primary-intensity attachment. This group inclines toward secularism and tends to view Islam more in religious-community than politicalcommunity terms. The worldview of the Nasserists is instructed by persisting anti-imperialism (Rejwan, 1974). The dominant feature of that view is of the United States as hegemonic in its intentions and as operating in a manner largely indistinguishable from the imperial era. Hegemonic control is exercised primarily in the form of indirect rule in which the imperial master operates through a subservient and cooperative indigenous elite. Most Arab political leaders are seen in this perspective, particularly those of the oil-producing states in the Arabian Peninsula. Israel is regarded as an American surrogate, although one that is able to exercise considerable influence on U.S. policy because of the presence of a powerful Zionist lobby and an activist Jewish population. The Nasserist reconciliation of an intense identity with Egypt and the Arabic-speaking community takes the form of advocating Egyptian leadership in a pan-Arab movement, which is what they believe Gamal Abdel Nasser tried to do. Sadat’s willingness to make a separate peace with Israel, align with imperial America, and thereby abandon the central panArab battleground, Palestine, is regarded as an act of treason. Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, although the latter was seen as an American client, was nevertheless unpopular among Nasserists, possibly because of resentment at Saddam’s implicit challenge to Egyptian leadership of a panArab movement. However, Nasserists were deeply uncomfortable with their government’s willingness to acquiesce in U.S. orchestration of the Gulf conflict and evinced no real enthusiasm for a peace process viewed as primarily an American operation. Yasser Arafat, despite his brief enthusiasm for the Iraqi challenge to American hegemony, came to be thought of as another in a long succession of Arab leaders who accept a client relationship with the United States and, indirectly, Israel. Though clearly uncomfortable with the politically resurgent Islamic movement, Nasserists became de facto allies of that movement with regard to inaugurating the democratic process in Egypt and the opposition to perceived U.S. hegemonism in the Middle East. Accepting the conclusion that the Islamic movement, in the form of Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, was a source of major bargaining strength for leaders who share Nasserist foreign policy preferences, the Nasserists supported the right of these organizations to resist, as they saw it, foreign occupation by the means available to them. The third group, the Islamists, shares with the nationalists and the Nasserists a primary-intensity attachment to the Egyptian territorial community. They share with the Nasserists a first-intensity attachment to the community of Arabs. But in addition, they incline toward a first-intensity

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attachment to the umma, the community of believers in Islam. Their identity-community compound therefore differs sharply from the first two groups, especially from that of the nationalists. We would therefore expect to see an outcome from the psychological balancing of these three identity groups that would differ sharply from the outcome of a parallel balancing process of the nationalists and the Nasserists. But we would expect as well that the resemblances with the Nasserists would be striking. In fact, the worldview of the Islamists, in general, is fairly close to that of the Nasserists. The Islamists also see a persisting imperial pattern dictated in large part by U.S. hegemonism. Like Khomeini in Iran, they see a dichotomous division of the world into the oppressors and the oppressed. Also like Khomeini (but unlike the Nasserists) they see the “answer in Islam.” Politically resurgent Islam, in their vision, would offer freedom and a decent living standard to the oppressed regardless of their religious community. But ultimately it would offer membership in the good society as described in the Quran. That ultimate community would be universal. At a less abstract and more mundane level, however, the Islamist worldview was largely indistinguishable from that of the Nasserists. They saw the leaders of most states in the Middle East as essentially clients of the United States and its surrogate, the “usurper” state of Israel. However, at this level they did differ from the Nasserists in the centrality they placed in Islamic liberation struggles, such as in Afghanistan and in the Sudan, but the Islamic Republic of Iran induced a different level of concern. The Iranian Revolution was welcomed unequivocally at first, as was the drift in a theocratic direction. But the Iran-Iraq War was a problem. It involved a war that was billed by the Iraqis in Arab nationalist terms against an Islamic republic that had thrown off the mantle of U.S. hegemonism. Initial partiality for the Islamic Republic of Iran eroded. The expressed rationale was that the excesses of the Iranian movement, including especially the public executions, was un-Islamic and more likely to occur in Shiite Iran than in Sunni Egypt. The balancing outcome was an inclination to avoid commitment in this case. The response to the Gulf War was less equivocal. The invasion of one Arab state by another was declared unacceptable. But as the U.S. orchestration of an international coalition developed, sympathy for the pan-Arab declarations of Saddam Hussein gained momentum (Auda, 1991). Egyptian Islamic leaders joined forces with Islamic leaders from other Arab states and from non-Arab states to make a major diplomatic effort to provide an alternative to Operation Desert Storm. No important move was made, however, to prevent the Egyptian government from following the American orchestrated lead. The Islamist assessment of Sadat’s diplomacy, culminating in the Camp David Agreement, paralleled closely that of the Nasserists (Talhami,

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1992). Sadat was guilty of treasonous behavior against Egypt, the Arab nation, and the umma. Establishing diplomatic relations with Israel was viewed as a calamitous affront to all elements of the territorial community. The peace process was simply a continuation of this treason and destroyed any claim to legitimacy by the capitulationist element of the Arab side— President Mubarak, King Hussein of Jordan, and Yasser Arafat. Popular resistance to this treason could only be applauded. The Coptic community evinces the policy preferences, the worldview, and attitudes toward political leaders outlined for the Egyptian nationalists. But individual Copts interviewed identified far more explicitly with pre-Islamic Egyptian history than was true generally among Muslim Egyptian nationalists. The proposition that occurs is that the Copts share with the Egyptian nationalists a first-intensity attachment to Egypt, which, then, is the terminal community. But their identity with the Arabic-speaking community appears weaker and classifiable at a fourth level of intensity. Their identity with the Copt sect, in contrast, is first-intensity. The Egyptian case is exceptional for a polity classifiable as a nation state. Although the citizenry generally identifies at a first-intensity level with territorial community, that community in fact incorporates four distinct identity-community compounds. In certain areas of policy, including especially foreign policy, this identity disparity is manifest in a diversity of policy preferences. We have proposed above that a distinct set of policy-preference patterns can be identified and associated with each of the identity-community compounds. The task of the political leadership is to advance and defend policy recommendations that would produce optimal reconciliation of the interests of the four communities (racial, ethnic, religious, territorial). This need to reconcile different community interests is endemic in non–nation states. But it becomes in many respects even more difficult in a nation state because of the propensity noted to polarize into highly contentious coalitions and to easily and sincerely depict national political leaders as having committed acts of treason. The United States The United States is a classic example of a multiethnic, multireligious, and multiracial nation state in which the evolutionary process toward nation statehood followed the compound-identity integration path. That path led to the creation of a distinctive and unique American culture, and that in turn has been critical to the formation and persistence of the American national community. However, even though the territorial community of the United States can be classified as the terminal and national community for the population at large, there remain a large number of communities—ethnic, religious, and racial—with which individuals identify with an inten-

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sity sufficient to affect significantly their worldview and their foreign policy preferences. These communities can be thought of as essentially noncomplementary with the national community, and the identification with them can be a source of conflict within the national community—conflict that has the potential episodically to be highly disruptive. The following section presents an analytic scheme for suggesting which nonnational group identity attachments are most likely to pose serious reconciliation problems, especially for U.S. foreign policy. The assumption is that the patterns of conflict will vary directly with the difficulty in achieving the cultural assimilation of the community or, in other words, the difficulty in following the dominant-community integrationist path. That difficulty will be a product either of a minority community’s resistance to assimilation or of core-community reluctance to accept the full integration of a particular community into the national community. The degree of willingness on the part of the national community to accept and acquiesce in the assimilation of individual members of a particular community can be viewed best in terms of the “social distance,” that is, the “preferred degree of closeness in interpersonal contact and relationships with members of another group” (Duckitt, 1994: 8), separating the two communities and the stereotyping it produced. Reluctance to assimilate correlates with the distance from the national community in terms of culture, religion, race, and modal level of achievement perceived. Thus, receptivity was greatest for Northwestern European immigrants who were culturally close to the Anglo-Saxon core group, predominantly Protestant or, eventually, Roman Catholic, white (as race was perceived in the nineteenth century), and “hardworking,” or described by some other code term suggesting approval of the modal level of achievement aspired to. Assimilation of this population into the core community was rapid and was accompanied by a decline in identity intensity with ancestral ethnic communities (Waters, 1990). The consequence was a rapid decline in Northwestern European ethnic identities as determinants of worldview or situational view, of policy preferences, and of how American political leaders were judged. German Americans apparently did associate in out-of-proportion numbers with the isolationist America First movement that opposed Franklin Roosevelt’s interventionism in the European conflict. But the anti-interventionist rhetoric did not reflect any serious mainstream support for Adolf Hitler or his grand vision of a thousand-year Aryan era. The German American Bund was a marginal phenomenon. Nevertheless, German American discomfort with and reluctance to have the United States participate in World War I in particular, but also World War II, may well have been reflective of a persisting but decreasingly intense identification with German ethnicity and the ancestral German national community (Fuchs, 1984). The attraction to an isolationist policy preference was a natural outcome of the

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effort to reconcile a first-intensity attachment to the American national community and a third- or fourth-intensity attachment to the German ethnic community as the possibility of a U.S. declaration of war against Germany developed. The distance factor was a far greater obstacle for massive numbers of Roman Catholic Irish immigrants during the mid-1800s and the Eastern and Southern European immigrants into the United States. In the eyes of the Anglo-Saxon core community, these people were culturally exotic, frequently members of unfamiliar Orthodox Christian sects, racially different, underachieving, and inferior (Waters, 1990). In the case of Roman Catholic Irish, and Eastern and Southern European immigrant communities, however, the distance factors, including that of relative underachievement, proved to be no more than a temporary obstacle to a strong integrationist tendency. Whatever the early strength of the tendency to view these communities in inferior stereotypical terms, the tendency was not sustainable beyond the first generation. Their performance disconfirmed the stereotype, and no vested interest existed with a commitment to preserving a persisting unskilled labor force drawn from these immigrant groups. Opportunities for mobility were available, although mobility channels certainly varied for different ethnic groups and were not easily found. Roman Catholic Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century, for example, found access to avenues of economic opportunity blocked for a number of reasons including prejudice, lack of skills, concentration in large urban areas, and inability to move out of those urban areas and into the rural areas due to lack of financial resources. However, their large concentration in urban areas made it possible, by virtue of numerical dominance, to influence the Democratic Party and control city government machines (Fuchs, 1990; Cochran, 1995–1996). The notion that the United States was and is a great melting pot accepting of cultural pluralism was just an abstraction. In terms of language, culture, and politics it was assumed that immigrants would divest themselves of their foreignness. The eventual assimilation of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe as well as Ireland was, if anything, more a product of acceptance than active promotion of creating a uniquely American culture that is a composite of its citizens’ ancestries (Cochran, 1995–1996; HusebyDavis, 1994). It was also a product of the immigrant groups’ adaptation to an existing system and their ability to transform that system from within once access was acquired. Thus, the blending did occur, as Mary Waters’s (1990) study shows. There, when asked to describe family characteristics that derived from ethnic background, respondents simply assumed that what their families did reflected their ethnicity. One Irish American, for example, remembered a particularly Irish family meal as including sauerkraut. The twentieth-century shift of immigration to the United States—

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in the direction of non-European communities—complicated established integration patterns. This was true especially for racially distinctive communities. Non-European immigrant communities that were perceived as being white, in fact, closely followed the pattern of the Eastern and Southern European communities. Arabs, for example, especially those who were Christian, evinced little cultural resistance to assimilation from within the community, although they clearly perceive a cultural bias against Arab Americans in the United States (Suleiman, 1994: 52) and the American stereotype of Arabs is not a positive one (Stockton, 1994). For groups considered white, ethnicity in America is, as Waters (1990) puts it, a choice. Many Americans now have multiple ethnic ancestries. They choose which to identify with, and that identity is virtually costless, for today they pay no social price for doing so. Indeed, ethnicity provides an opportunity to be unique in a country that values individualism, but it is easily cast aside when the country demands an American identity—the melting-pot side of the equation. This pattern is most clearly manifest in politics, in which case, according to Waters, “most people understood their American identity in terms of patriotism and nationality” (p. 55). When asked to imagine a conflict between their ethnic and American identities, the most common scenario offered to Waters was a political situation (for example, sympathy for the Irish Republican Army among those of Irish Catholic ethnicity). Nevertheless, “most people stressed that their identity as Americans was primary and that they could not imagine a time when it could be in opposition to another identification” (p. 56). In the United States, non-European immigrant communities, including those brought against their will as slaves, that were perceived as racially distinctive experienced core-community stereotyping. Assumptions of racial superiority abounded in the Caucasian world. The perceived social distance between these groups and the dominant white community reflects these stereotypes. The stereotyping and inequality were matched with lack of channels for mobility. Hence, for those groups conflict between their identity with a racial community and their identity with America is likely. One such community is the Asian American community, which was discriminated against and stereotyped throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. Today, however, that community experiences much less discrimination, although a study of recent East Asian immigrants indicates that it is still being felt. Interviewers discovered a growing tendency among East Asians, who previously had manifested a significant attachment to an East Asian ethnic community, to shift their identity attachment to a broad East Asian racial community (New York Times, May 30, 1996). Interviewees indicated that this racial-identity movement was associated with resistance to their integration into the American national com-

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munity. There was nothing in the reported interviews to suggest, however, that particular foreign policy preferences were associated with membership in this emerging group. The phenomenon suggests, instead, that an identity shift toward an East Asian racial community operated more as an identity way station that would be abandoned as core-community resistance to East Asian integration declined. Of particular importance in the changing view toward Asian Americans is the perception that the Asian achievement level was well within the national community’s approval parameters. Achievement levels of Asian Americans are, in fact (in the aggregate), quite close to that of non-Latino whites. In 1992, for example, in terms of percentage of high school graduates (81.8 percent and 84.1 percent respectively), unemployment (6.3 percent compared to 6.1 percent), and percentage living in poverty (12.2 percent compared to 9.6 percent), the distance is very small, much smaller compared to blacks. In terms of median family income, Asian Americans surpass the non-Latino white community ($42,245 compared to $33,335) (McClain and Stewart, 1995: 30). Accordingly, there is less of an inclination to adopt a stereotypical view of the newer Asian immigrant community and a general drop in the stereotype regarding Asian Americans, although it certainly was powerful for many years in American history (Lind, 1995). This should be associated with an increased ease of integration. However, there are some early indications that the modal achievement level of East Asians is pushing toward the point of disapproved overachievement. Out-of-proportion representation of East Asians in the student body of prestigious universities, for example, is taken note of widely (e.g., Fuchs, 1990: 317). The trend is sufficiently strong to generate tendencies to view East Asians in stereotypically superior terms, and this in turn should inhibit integration. We return to this point below in a discussion of the anti-Semitic stereotype. The second minority community category is the so-called Hispanic population, the majority of whom immigrated from or are descendants of people who immigrated from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Mexico. The drive behind the immigration of this population into the United States has been largely economic, and the population is underachieving in terms of socioeconomic status. The distance factors of race, culture, and religion would appear to constitute less of an impediment (compared to East Asians) to Hispanics’ following the core-community integrationist path. Considerable intermixing has occurred, thereby reducing the level of distinctiveness of the population; long-term acculturation has reduced cultural distinction; and most of the population is Christian. Yet the prospects for rapid movement along the integrationist path are reduced by the general perception of low achievement levels among this community. The associated disapproval is sufficiently serious to produce an inferior stereotype. In policy-

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preference terms, especially for those inclined to stereotype, this translates into a determination to prevent additional illegal immigration from these groups, identify and expel illegal immigrants in the United States, reduce legal immigration, and reduce benefits to legal immigrants not yet naturalized. Vested interests anxious to maintain a supply of docile, low-paid workers oppose these policy preferences. The pattern of responses within the Hispanic community itself has followed that in other immigrant groups. Although there has never been a pan-Hispanic civil rights movement in the United States, there have been important movements in different groups within the broader Hispanic population. A highly politicized activist elite appeared with insistent demands that the constitutional rights of the oppressed immigrant community be recognized (Fuchs, 1990; McClain and Stewart, 1995: 47). Their activities accelerate and intensify another parallel phenomenon—a rapid expansion of the percentage of the immigrant population that insists on full political participation. Mass politics thus comes to characterize the immigrant community and, with it, the political clout of a major interest group. There is growing pressure from the Hispanic community for influence in the formulation and substance of U.S. policies toward Latin America (Lowenthal, 1992: 76). Hispanics have not, however, taken leadership in campaigns to change American foreign policy, particularly that associated with imperialism, such as the U.S. intervention in Central America throughout the 1980s. In part, this is because the Hispanic community is not politically monolithic. Cuban Americans generally remain active in attempting to influence U.S. policy toward Cuba. Since that group contains very strong opponents to the Cuban government under Fidel Castro, the imperial experience in U.S.-Cuba relations is not only not problematic for them but something they encourage in hopes that the United States will ultimately be able to drive Castro from power. At first glance, one would expect the reverse to be true for Hispanics of Mexican origin. Given the near-imperial experience of this community and some persisting identity with ancestral homelands, one would expect an association with Mexican and Central American anti-Yankee attitudes. The Mexican American community, particularly that in the U.S. Southwest, did not organize large and effective lobbying groups to change policy or to support Mexico in its opposition to U.S. policy. This is understandable when put into the context of Mexican Americans’ experience in U.S. history and their relationship with Mexico itself. Efforts by Mexican Americans to overcome discrimination and to attain some measure of political power in the United States required an emphasis on their American characteristics and loyalty to the United States and a conscious distinction of their group from Mexicans and loyalty to the Mexican states (Fuchs, 1990). Thus, the relationship between Mexican Americans and Mexicans of Mexico has

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been weak and riddled with mutual stereotypes of inferiority (Shain, 1994–1995; 1999–2000). Put in social-identity terms (see Chapter 4 for a detailed discussion), identification with Mexico is at best ambivalent in that it offers little in terms of a positive self-image. Although Mexican Americans may see the dominant core community as discriminatory, this does not lead to automatic identification with the related foreign policy issues involving Mexico. Nevertheless, as is common with compound-identity nation states, opponents of the Mexican government, most notably Cuauhtémoc Cardenas, have actively sought to court Mexican Americans; this, in turn, prompted the Mexican government to do the same. There is some contact between Mexico and Mexican Americans—less than one might expect—but it is growing (Shain, 1999–2000). If it increases, the long contiguous border would leave Mexican Americans vulnerable to charges of disloyalty to the United States if they actively promote Mexican causes that go outside U.S. interests. The case of the third major minority community, the African American community, is most perplexing and disturbing. A century and a half after the Civil War and the end of slavery, stereotypical views of African Americans, although less widespread, persist. The difficulty of achieving African American integration into the American national community reflects another factor that can be a major impediment to the integrationassimilation process: a deeply salient historical memory that makes acceptance of integration into a larger community appear to be terribly risky or repugnant. The memory of genocide is probably the most common of this genre, but the African American memory of slavery must rank among the most horrifying. That memory is sufficiently terrible that were the option of secession even distantly available, the case for accepting it might well be irresistible. At the very least, it should inject an element of ambivalence into the identity profile of African Americans, especially regarding identity with the American territorial/national community. And studies do lend support to this proposition: survey results report that African Americans identify closely with one another in terms of feelings and ideas and in terms of shared destinies (Gurin, Hatchett, and Jackson, 1989: 75–81; Tate, 1993: 25). Thus, there is little doubt concerning one major aspect of African American identity: the modal African American identifies at a first-intensity level with the African American community. This is supported by survey results that find, for example, 93 percent of African American respondents feeling a close attachment to that community (McClain and Stewart, 1995). The African American community has evolved to become a unique cultural community and as such meets the requirements of most definitions of ethnic groups—a point that is of importance mainly in its suggestion of the identity-intensity level involved. We are proposing, therefore, that the

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identity compound of the African American consists of an unambiguous first-intensity attachment to the African American community and an ambivalent first-intensity attachment to the American national community. The psychological balancing process that takes place amounts to a reconciliation of these overlapping identities, with outcomes that can be seen in the prevailing worldview. The parallels of the African American slavery experience with the imperial experience in much of the Third World are only too apparent. Accordingly, there is the reasonable expectation that there would be perceptual resonance among African Americans with the worldview of victims of imperialism generally; in particular, there would be resonance with the worldview of the politically participant population of postcolonial Africa. But such expectations have been realized until recently only within a small element of the attentive elite, particularly in regard to South Africa’s apartheid policies. As with the Native American and Hispanic communities, the African American worldview pattern inclinations seem to be surprisingly inward-looking. Within the highly attentive African American public sector, there is a deep interest in sub-Saharan Africa. When, as in the case of South Africa, there is an easy parallel drawn to the African American experience in the United States, this interest translates into concern for and efforts to influence political outcomes (Shain, 1994–1995: 836). But postindependence sub-Saharan Africa has few such direct parallels with the African American experience, which helps explain the low level of interest in African political affairs among the African American community. Overwhelmingly, the new African states meet the criteria of our multiethnic non–nation state category, and the political process reflects the enormously complicated interactions of these groups. Even a simple comprehension of the political dynamics in these states requires the kind of detailed knowledge that only area experts possess. The growing receptivity within the African American community for the worldview projected by Louis Farrakhan, however, suggests that our expectations may yet be widely realized. Along with the purging of an assumption of superiority of the other—in this case the dominant community and those most closely associated with it—there must be a purging of the other’s assumption of one’s own inferiority, as Fanon (1968) argued. To accomplish this purpose, there must be a struggle entirely comparable to the anti-imperialist struggle in scope and intensity. An identification and alliance with the forces of anti-imperialism worldwide would be a natural feature of this struggle. This case is a manifestation of the ambiguity of African Americans’ identity relationship with the American territorial/ national community. A full integration into the American national community cannot occur as long as there is a functional assumption of inferiority, and that assumption cannot be eradicated without a struggle. But the struggle in which Farrakhan is engaged appears increasingly to other Americans

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as incompatible with loyalty to the American national community (Yinger, 1994). What is called for is a strategy that reconciles the African American insistence on the dignity of acceptance with full equality and an unambiguous commitment to American nationalistic values. The final case to be considered is the integration of the U.S. Jewish community into the American national community. Looking at the distance factors of culture, religion, and race, the obstacles standing in the corecommunity integration path would appear to be surmountable. But the case of Jewish integration cannot be considered only from the perspective of distance. Several other factors make integration less likely. Nevertheless, integration has accelerated in the United States. The first obstacle to Jewish integration is the historical memory factor. The Holocaust, which decimated much of northern European Jewry, was executed by the government of the German nation state, the very community in which Jews had lived most comfortably and with which many Jews had come to identify with a primary intensity. Moreover, the resulting genocide made the many pogroms the Jewish people had suffered pale in comparison. Understandably, therefore, the experience generated a profound pessimism concerning the prospects for Jewish integration even in the most harmonious-appearing of communities. It generated as well a fierce determination from that point on to identify, to stand up to, and to defeat genocidal threats directed against Jewish communities wherever they may be located. There were two other factors, thus far not discussed, that would serve as major obstacles to Jewish integration in the United States along the core-community integration path. The first of these is the factor referred to as “marginal cultures.” In Milton Gordon’s (1978) conceptualization of this factor, a culture classified as strong in the American immigration milieu was one in which members of the ethnic community would establish a number of institutions to serve that community exclusively. These institutions would have the effect, whatever the intention, of keeping alive a strong cross-generational identity with the community and an appreciation of that community’s cultural uniqueness. The range and importance of the institutions involved would serve as indicators of the strength of the cultural cohesion of the community and of the relative susceptibility to assimilation. The types of institutions involved would be religious, educational, social services, health, youth camps, linguistic training, and newspapers and other publications. Community centers would serve to bring community members together for social and cultural events as well as to maintain awareness of political and economic developments relating specifically to the community locally, in the United States, and abroad. Gordon’s assumption was that the existence of ethnically specific institutions of this order was both a reflection of a first-intensity attachment

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to the ethnic community and a means for perpetuating such an attachment. Especially in combination with a tortured historical memory, marginal culture can constitute a major obstacle to integration into the national community. That combination clearly has characterized the Jewish community in the United States. Other communities in the United States that would be classified as marginal cultures by virtue of these institutional indicators would be Greeks and Armenians. The third nondistance-factor obstacle to easy Jewish integration into the American national community and elsewhere is the belief that one is a member of an ethnic community, at least part of which is living in a diaspora, to which one grants a first-intensity loyalty—a loyalty at least the equivalent of the loyalty granted to the United States. There is likely to be a persisting expectation that at some point in the future the community will be reunited and then become the exclusive object of first-intensity identity attachment. Since the American society is overwhelmingly a society of immigrants, the sense of being in a diaspora may be strong for the first and second generations of many ethnic communities. When this is the case, the individual is likely to follow political affairs in the state of origin very closely. Then, should a dispute develop in which the United States and the state of origin are in conflict, the concerned individual will have difficulty reconciling the two identity interests. Quite commonly, the individual reconciles the two identities through a policy preference that will make Americans with different identity profiles uneasy. In the extreme, the individual risks having his/her American patriotism questioned. That challenge may well lead the individual to conclude that there is a degree of hostility toward his/her ethnic community. Both responses will tend to inhibit integration. Jewish communities in the diaspora have persisted since Roman times and have evinced a remarkable resistance to integration and, even more so, to assimilation. There are other communities that have followed a parallel pattern. These include Levantines in West Africa, Indians and Pakistanis in East and South Africa, and the so-called Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. But no other major immigrant community in the United States has followed that pattern. Moreover, in 1948 the independence of the state of Israel was proclaimed. Thus, a community with a culture sufficiently strong to resist integration for two millennia, one that had just endured one of the great crimes of human history and was still living mainly in a diaspora, had established a Jewish nation state that was urging the continuing ingathering of the Jews in the diaspora. The puzzle therefore is why, given this history and given the oftdemonstrated strength of the community culture, did Jewish integration following the compound-identity path in the United States gain the serious momentum it did? Jewish integration was profound by the 1990s and con-

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tinues. This is reflected in intermarriage, a central indicator of integration. Jews are increasingly prone to intermarriage (57 percent marrying nonJews by the mid-1990s [Salins, 1997: 159]) and are not opposed to intermarriage with non-Jews (82.6 percent either favor or do not oppose it [Yinger, 1994: 164]), for example. Part of the answer to this question lies with the pattern of integration in the United States outlined above. The three distance factors of culture, religion, and race had been steadily decreasing in importance as impediments to integration in the United States. By the end of the first half of the twentieth century, there was an easy acceptance of immigrant communities from Eastern and Southern Europe; viewed in terms of these distance factors, the Jewish community was comparable to these communities. But when viewed in terms of the fourth distance factor—the perceived modal achievement level—the Jewish community was in a category by itself. This factor is the critical variable in determining the pattern of the integration of Jews into the national community. Jewish immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries included a large number of very poor people, as did other immigrant communities from Eastern Europe. At that point there was a perception of the community as underachieving relative to the national-community referent. But the perception of underachieving distance was not great enough to generate a sustainable stereotypical image premised on the assumption of inferiority. Then, in a remarkably short period of time, the achievement level perceived moved from modal underachievement to an approved level of achievement and then inched into the disapproved modal overachievement level. Accompanying this perceptual movement was a tendency toward viewing the Jewish community in sharply stereotypical terms, widely recognized as the anti-Semitic stereotype (described in Hunter, 1991: 38). But that stereotypical view is the product of a universal tendency that develops whenever a minority is perceived as achieving at a disapproved high level. Thus, the other diaspora communities mentioned above were perceived by the majority population in a closely parallel stereotypical form. The stereotype is rooted in an assumption of superiority of the highly achieving minority. The perceived overachieving minority is viewed as vulnerable on capability grounds, a perception that can lead to eruptions of suppression such as occurs in pogroms. The outlines of the stereotype are easily drawn: the advantages of the overachieving minority are superior talent and wealth. These two attributes are used to construct clever and often exceedingly complex conspiracies designed to increase both the material wealth of the community and the level of influence it can exercise. Particularly desired instrumental goals are the control of financial institutions, the media, the professions, and universities. Political influence most commonly is simply purchased, for

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example, through generous campaign contributions or very favorable commercial loans. The effort is made through the controlled media to wrap the strategy and tactics in attractive symbols, but the purpose of such a media campaign is dual: to conceal a fundamental unconcern with the welfare of the majority population, and to reduce the possibilities of an outraged majority response. The anti-Semitic stereotype is rooted in assumptions of majority inferiority. When this stereotype is held with depth and intensity, it is highly resistant to falsification. The effort to falsify usually entails behaving in a manner that is sufficiently unexpected as to lead to a reconsideration of some judgments that are central to the stereotype. But the anti-Semitic stereotype is well defended. Publicized acts of generosity to the majority poor, for example, might well be seen as deceptions by a controlled media. The stereotype therefore stands as a major obstacle to the integration of a community so defined. Where it is held with intensity, a long atrophic process is likely to be necessary. The answer to the puzzle of a rapidly developing Jewish integration into the American national community lies with the two factors. The first is a decline in the intensity of threat perceived to the Jewish community in diaspora and in Israel. The second is a narrowing of the distance in the perceived modal achievement category for the Jewish community and the core community. This narrowing of distance is accompanied by the development of a fairly strong atrophic process for the anti-Semitic stereotype. Still, the atrophic process may well be proceeding at a different pace within a range of socioeconomic groups. Such a pattern could be seen earlier in Germany. Integration within the professional class and the intelligentsia was proceeding rapidly. But as became clear under Hitler, antiSemitism continued to characterize lower-middle-class urban and rural Germans. The trend thus appears to be that of an increased willingness on the part of Jews to follow the core-community integration path in the United States. However, even if the perceived threat to the Jewish community in Israel is in decline, that perception of threat persists at a sufficiently high level of intensity to lead to the maintenance of a continuing primaryintensity identity with the Jewish diaspora. As should be expected, this persisting identity affects Jewish worldviews. The psychological balancing process results in a picture and set of policy preferences that reflect the reconciliation of the interests of the two identity communities (Medding, 1983). Thus, the forces of politically resurgent Islam are seen as inclined to terroristic activity, which is a threat to the United States, Israel, and the West generally. Louis Farrakhan’s view, outlined above—that those Islamic forces are engaged in a crusade to liberate the oppressed masses—

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will be judged as proof of his anti-Semitism and his lack of any patriotic feeling for the United States. Followers of Farrakhan, in turn, will judge the Jewish view, and its broad acceptance in the media and government, as an example of the inordinate influence the Jewish community exercises over the media and governmental policy. Both views are natural expressions of very different identity-community compounds. China China also belongs in the category of core-community nation states. It is an extraordinarily complex example, in part because of its history as an empire. As such, it welcomed all incorporated ethnic groups into the cultural community as long as they accepted Confucian philosophy and principles (Townsend, 1996:12). Chinese identity was based upon cultural markers long before states (as defined in the modern era) came into existence, and that culture was that of the Han Chinese. The Han Chinese comprise over 90 percent of the population, with the rest being officially divided into fifty-five minority ethnic groups. As in the case of many states with multiple ethnic groups, the number designated by the state does not coincide with the number perceived in that many self-identified ethnic groups are not recognized as such by the Chinese government. Having such an overwhelmingly common ethnicity did not, however, mean that China would become a pure nation state. In Imperial China, there were tremendous regional and linguistic differences, communal divisions among the Han, and parochial loyalties. Smaller entities were the object of primary loyalty and were an obstacle that nationalist movements had to overcome (Townsend, 1996). Moreover, nationalist movements would run headlong into the traditional Chinese concept of “all under heaven,” wherein any people with the proper Confucian worldview could be part of the Chinese universe. Nations as states require boundaries, which the traditional worldview rejects (Shih, 1993). Nonetheless, with the end of imperial rule, political leaders strove to create a common national identity. Sun Yat-sen, for example, argued that there were five peoples of China and advocated their assimilation into one Chinese race. He wrote: The Chinese people have shown the greatest loyalty to family and clan with the result that in China there have been family-ism and clan-ism but not real nationalism. . . . The unity of the Chinese people has stopped short at the clan and has not extended to the nation. . . . China, since the Ch’in and Han dynasties, has been developing a single state out of a single race, while foreign countries have developed many states from one race and have included many nationalities within one state. . . . The Chinese race totals four hundred million people; for the most part, the Chi-

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Although Sun Yat-sen’s movement eliminated the last imperial government, China did not have a real state until the revolution of 1949. At that point a nation state emerged as a product of concerted political effort to redirect primary loyalty to the revolutionary state, with the Han as a core community. Other ethnic groups could assimilate into that core community, although some, particularly the Tibetans, have refused to do so. Despite the very large majority of the population considered to be Han, its existence as a core community is quite remarkable considering the enormity of the population and extreme diversity of the Han people. As James Watson (1993: 81) puts it, the question is “how was it possible for a country of continental dimensions, inhabited by people who speak mutually unintelligible languages and exhibit an amazing array of ethnic differences, to be molded into a unified culture?” Many structural factors interacted: an imperial center and bureaucracy, a written script that permitted communication by people who spoke different dialects, and ultimately a common enemy—imperialism. But important social factors appeared as well that enhanced common group identity. First, the Han permitted a social system, large and varied though it was (and is), within which social mobility was possible. In other words, one could become Han, and whole populations in China did just that. Second, as mentioned, being Chinese required acceptance of particular Confucian ideas and rituals, but “the genius of the Chinese approach to cultural integration” was a system allowing for “a high degree of variation within an overarching structure of unity” (p. 89). Thus, it is the case that Han diversity, which is really quite extreme, is not considered separate ethnicity, whereas other groups may or may not be considered ethnic groups, and that designation may or may not be accurate. Early after the 1949 revolution, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) created a contradictory policy for dealing with the non-Han ethnic groups, on one hand encouraging integration, on the other promising autonomy to the minorities in exchange for political support (Gladney, 1996; Mackerras, 1994). Over time and as the power of the state grew, that political support was no longer problematic and hence became less important. Moreover, China’s ethnic minorities vary greatly in cohesiveness and potential for particularist nationalism. Not all ethnic groups in China are geographically concentrated; neither do they all speak languages other than Chinese (the Hui and Manchus, for example). Some of the currently designated ethnic minorities had no group identity until so recognized by the state. This is the case, for example, with the Uigur, who had no name for themselves

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(having dropped the term uigur, which meant “heathen,” in the fifteenth century after converting to Islam) and thought of themselves in parochial locality terms. Under the PRC, however, it became apparent that by adopting a common group identity the 6 million Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang would also acquire official recognition by the state and an autonomous region. As Dru Gladney (1996: 301) notes, this “reconceptualization of their ethnohistory struck deep chords in their agreed upon sense of commonality as an autochthonous Central Asian people in opposition to the Han, descended from a historic Turkish empire, in a poetic re-creation of historical imagination.” Other groups, such as the Hakka, Cantonese, Sechuanese, and Hunanese, are all Han—no matter how different they are in dialect or custom—and therefore are not considered minority ethnic groups. This points out the essential psychological characteristic of identity: People are a group when they consider themselves so; and in the case of China, that has produced common identity among very diverse people. Thus, the integration issue in China, while extremely complex, is also very simple in that the Han are self-identified and are very broadly inclusive. The PRC has had policies toward the minorities that moved in accordance with national trends. In 1958 with the Great Leap Forward, the minorities, like the Han, were communalized, resulting in some cases in violence. With the Cultural Revolution, class analysis indicated to the faithful that the minorities “problem” had to be dealt with like other problems— through common revolutionary struggle, meaning that policies sympathetic to minority differences and distinctiveness were opposed as creating a “national schism” (Mackerras, 1994: 152). Everyone should be unified under one common thought package—that is to say, Mao Tse-tung’s ideas— which meant ethnic groups would, in effect, be assimilated and ethnic identity could be ignored. After Mao’s death in 1976, the Cultural Revolution–era policy gradually shifted, and in 1980 important changes occurred. Nationality was reexamined and considered to be separate from class as well as more longlived. It was no longer heresy to consider nationality/ethnicity as a factor in China that needed a separate line in policy. Thus, the constitution of December 4, 1982, provided equality of all ethnic groups and expanded the powers of autonomous counties. Additional concessions to ethnic autonomy came in the Nationality Law of 1984. As is often the case, however, conceding to minority demands for autonomy is a gamble: Minorities may be satisfied and content to be supportive citizens of the broader nation; or they may begin to feel that they could form an independent nation. The gamble was lost in Tibet. Demonstrations by monks demanding independence for Tibet took place beginning in 1987 and continued in 1988 and 1989. The Chinese government’s response was strong and violent. Martial law was imposed (until April 1990), and foreigners were expelled from

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Tibet. China has also dealt with disturbances in Xinjiang, which has been affected since the 1950s by China’s conflict with the Soviet Union, clashes between Han and non-Han minorities, and secessionist impulses among Kirgiz, Uigurs, and Tajik Muslim radicals. Despite the presence of some ethnic groups interested in independence, China remains a nation state. The question of how Chinese identity is changing as the reform process continues is an important one, but the integrity of the nation is not in serious doubt. This is due to many factors, ranging from the presence of a common written language to a strong state. Not least in those factors, however, is the inclusiveness of the Han. In the case of the United States, the Anglo-Saxon community was not strong enough to determine the emergent core community. It did serve as a foundation, however, and over time the blending of ethnic groups, along with other evolutionary factors, produced a uniquely diverse American core community with which the modal citizen identifies. In China, the Han were strong enough to constitute a core community, but that is because of the inclusiveness of Han group identity and because of the many centuries during which it was formed and evolved.

Conclusion The purpose of this chapter was to examine the identity dynamics of nation states with compound identities. These states are true nation states, but the complexities of the identity dynamics of their populations produce potential pressures in foreign and domestic politics. In Chapter 6, we examine a case study of foreign policy conflict in interactions among three nation states.

4 The Political Psychology of Political Identities and Nationalistic Behavior

The psychological foundations of the identity patterns described in Chapter 3, as well as those of nationalistic behavior, will be explored in this chapter. Drawing upon studies from a range of psychological and sociological literature, we will analyze the cognitive and emotional processes that drive human behavior in the political arena. A political psychological model is presented, setting forth a framework for the analysis of the impact of political identities on behavioral patterns. The arguments below regarding the behavior of people in large political units are often extrapolated from experimental studies of small groups. While this analytical leap requires some latitude in terms of validity concerns, the case studies presented help demonstrate that the patterns found in laboratories are repeated on a large scale in political behavior. Psychologists have conducted many experiments dealing with ingroup/out-group behavior. Typically in these experiments, college students are organized into two groups, given an identifying name, and then confronted with staged intergroup conflict. The patterns that emerge are remarkably similar. The members of each group begin to identify with their group and respond as a group to a perceived challenge from the other group. The response commonly will include attributing simplified and hostile motives to the other group. A generally simplified image of the other group will begin to emerge, and the outlines of a stereotype will appear. The tendency develops to view the opposing group as a monolith and to see emerging from the decisional monolith a strategy that is devious, cleverly manipulative, and hostile in intent. The group begins to see its interests and its dignity threatened and begins to develop a counterstrategy to deal with the perceived threat. The conflict that follows is fully in tune with the outline of so-called spiral conflicts in international relations: conflicts that are rooted in serious and mutual misperception. 87

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Cognitive psychologists have argued that people must impose organization on the social environment in order to manage its complexities. This is done through the formation and use of cognitive categories of people or objects. A category, or “image,” is similar to a stereotype in that it provides the perceiver with a body of knowledge about the perceived item. That knowledge is general and applicable only to the prototypical representative of the category. Nevertheless, because precise accuracy is typically unnecessary for decisionmaking and because attempting to evaluate the individual attributes for each thing or person a perceiver encounters would make decisionmaking impossible, categories are the preferred nonconscious cognitive forum for evaluating and deciding how to respond to the environment. The simplification and organization into categories is a necessary part of human information processing. Social categorization, the identification of socially significant groupings, and clustering of information about those groups thereby provide meaning and structure for a complicated world. It is normative in nature and heavily influenced by values and culture (Tajfel and Forgas, 1981: 114) as well as cognitive properties. But it can also cause distortions in information processing in that people accept information that is consistent with the category-based expectations and reject information that is inconsistent. The categories are also extremely difficult to change because people have perceptual blinders to disconfirming evidence. Moreover, to do so often requires questioning basic values, not just an intellectual idea. Social categories and images of others are shared cognitive constructs. Their existence is commonly recognized and accepted, and they are transmitted in society and across generations through learning and the socialization process. The categorization of oneself and others into groups is a psychological process and may not reflect actual interactions between individuals, but they are important to people nevertheless (Tajfel, 1982). This is not to say that social structure outside of the psychological realm is unimportant. Clearly the broader social structure provides many of the groups with which people identify, the values with which they evaluate themselves and others, and the real context of social movements, group conflict, and collective action. What social-identity theorists maintain is that membership in a group is not sufficient to produce group behavior by a collection of individuals. Identification with the group is the central glue that inspires group behavior.1 Once people are classified in a category, their individual characteristics are often ignored; it is assumed that individuals in the group share the same characteristics. The same process occurs in self-perception. A person may therefore assume, for example, because his or her social identification is with Germany and all Germans are pragmatic and industrious, that he or she is also pragmatic and industrious, whether or not that is the case. This

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provides a personal motivation for the tendency people have to accentuate the positive attributes of in-groups. According to social-identity theorists, an individual’s social identity is his or her “knowledge that he belongs to a certain social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel, 1982: 255).2 Social identities serve the necessary cognitive function of organizing the environment for an individual, but they also provide a “system of orientation for self-reference; they create and define the individual’s place in society” (Tajfel and Turner, 1986: 16). An individual’s self-image is intricately tied to his or her social identity, and generally people strive for a positive self-image. Intrinsic to the process of social categorization is social comparison. For identification with a social group to enhance self-esteem, membership in the group would have to complement and satisfy the individual’s values. Self-esteem is also enhanced by perceptions that one’s group is distinct and different from other groups and in important ways better than other groups. This can, but does not necessarily, lead to discrimination, stereotyping, and in-group favoritism (Hogg and Abrams, 1988). Often an in-group is seen as immeasurably better than out-groups. People find members of the in-group more attractive in terms of personal and physical characteristics. They are more helpful toward members of the in-group than the out-group, and they remember more about in-group members. Successes and positive characteristics of members of the ingroup tend to be attributed to internal, long-term characteristics, whereas the reverse is the case in attributing blame for bad behaviors or outcomes (Dovidio and Gaertner, 1993). Differences between the in-group and other groups are exaggerated, and it is assumed that members of out-groups share overgeneralized characteristics. People vary greatly in attitudes toward out-groups. Some are despised, some disliked, some regarded with indifference, and others may even be liked. In other words, the social distance varies. Because people want to evaluate their group positively in comparison with others, conflict can occur over scarce social resources, economic resources, territory, values, ideology, and unmet needs regarding identity, security, status, or power (Fisher, 1990; Stroebe and Insko: 1989). However, social-identity experiments have demonstrated that intergroup discrimination and competition are not solely attributable to conflict of interest and can and do occur in the absence of conflict of interest. Group differentiation in and of itself is “essentially competitive. Fully reciprocal competition between groups requires a situation of mutual comparison and differentiation on a shared value dimension” (Tajfel and Turner, 1986: 17). Michael Hogg and Dominic Abrams (1988) note that in addition to the above-mentioned “individual functions” provided by identification with

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social groups, there are certain broader, society-wide functions served by group identification. One is “social causality,” wherein a group is blamed for society’s problems (i.e., scapegoated) and a negative stereotype of that group is promulgated on a wide scale. A second function is “social justification,” wherein the poor treatment of the group blamed for society’s distressing events is justified. The most extreme example of this would be dehumanization of a scapegoat group. The third function is “social differentiation,” which is ethnocentrism “accentuated under conditions in which intergroup distinctiveness is perceived to be becoming eroded and insecure, or when social conditions are such that low status is perceived to be illegitimate and changeable” (p. 77). The specification of these broader social functions is useful in that they clarify the extent to which social categorization leads not only to patterns of individual behavior but also to specific patterns of group and societal behavior. The combination of individuallevel and group-level behavioral patterns leads to a better understanding of political behavior that may result from these psychological factors.

The Complexity of Social Comparisons To reiterate, social-identity theory asserts four central propositions: (1) people strive to maintain a positive self-image; (2) membership in groups contributes to one’s identity and self-image; (3) people evaluate their own group by comparing it with others; and (4) positive social identity (and thus self-concept) is contingent upon a positive comparison of one’s own with other groups. If one’s own group does not fare well in comparison to other relevant groups, individuals have several alternatives available to them. Before discussing those alternatives, it is important to emphasize two points: First, an assessment that one’s group does not compare well with another sparks people to action when they see their own group in positive terms; second, comparisons must be relevant group comparisons. On an individual level, people often accept inferior status or unfair treatment. On a group level, inferiority can be accepted when one’s own group’s selfimage is negative. Myron Weiner (1978) provides several examples: the Assamese, who believe the Bengalis are more motivated and skillful and thus will always win in competition; and the Karens, who see themselves not as bright or assertive as the Burmans. Such groups will be unable cognitively to identify and recognize alternatives to their inferior situation. If people are satisfied with their group’s status and feel that it is just, conflict with higher-status groups is unlikely to occur (Hogg and Abrams, 1988). The specific nature of the comparison is created in part by the social context. One’s political-group identifications, for example, will become highly salient and influential on behavior when issues settled in the political system

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are under consideration. At other times, political identities are dormant and do not influence behavior. Groups accept inferiority and disadvantage when the comparison group is not seen as similar, that is, it is not a relevant comparison group. Acceptance of inferiority is perplexing but not inexplicable. In such political circumstances the operative cognitive images would be that of the colonial-imperial relationship, discussed later in this chapter. Within this context it is not impossible to maintain a form of positive self-image, even in the presence of a negative evaluation of one’s own group. Several issues regarding such relationships are relevant to the study of nationalism and other patterns of political identity. First, why do subordinate groups not only tolerate but positively evaluate such relationships? Second, what interactive behavioral patterns occur in such a relationship? Third, what aspects of the relationship must change if the subordinate group is to be motivated to change the relationship? There are many reasons for the acceptance by subordinate individuals and groups of their inferior status. One of the central reasons underlying this acceptance is a perception that the relationship is stable, just, and legitimate (Duckitt, 1994). In general, people believe that their world is just. The belief in a just world permits people to think that “there are manageable procedures which are effective in producing the desired end states” (Lerner, 1980: 9; see also Staub, 1989). Injustice, pain, and suffering among others is frequently attributed to the victims’ “own fault,” that is, their behavior brought it on or their personal characteristics entitle them to the pain and suffering, thus making it just. People frequently fail to see themselves as disadvantaged or victims of injustice as well, and even if they do see personal disadvantage, they will not react to it unless they see their entire group as deprived in comparison to others (Lerner, 1980; Jost, 1995: 405). Those who suffer injustice and deprivation and recognize it as such often believe that they deserved it. Jewish shame and self-blame for the Holocaust, for example, is often commented upon, and experimental studies have shown similar patterns of behavior in the laboratory (Lerner, 1980: 124). Studies have also found that the most radical members of student political movements and participants in racial riots are not the most disadvantaged of their groups (Caplan, 1970; Keniston, 1973). Disadvantages relative to other groups are considered legitimate and acceptable when there is no direct comparability between the groups (Tajfel, 1986). On one hand, a positive group image can still be maintained if the comparison with a more-advantaged or superior group is simply not made. On the other, people can be convinced and acceptant of an inherent inferiority, although the social mythology of superiority and inferiority must constantly be maintained and upheld. Moreover, the relationship between dominant and subordinate groups often is not zero-sum, that is, with

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complete exploitation of the subordinate. This helps maintain positive selfconcepts for members of subordinate groups and provides at least the illusion of the option of alternatives. For example, studies have found satisfaction “with procedural systems as long as [people] are provided with an opportunity to participate in the process, even if their participation has no effect over relevant outcomes and even if the outcomes are negative” (p. 403). Studies of bargaining have found that weaker bargainers attempt to ingratiate themselves with the stronger party and that this, in fact, produces behavior by the stronger that improves the low-power bargainer’s outcome (Tjosvold, 1978). An additional pattern found in studies of in-group and out-group favoritism, a pattern not expected by social identity theory, occurs when ingroup members favor the out-group. Many studies in the United States and elsewhere have found this pattern (reviewed in Turner and Brown, 1986). Such groups have low self-esteem, exhibit self-derogation, and are selfhandicapping, that is, they perform at a level below their ability (Sidanius, 1993). Once social comparison is made and found to be unsatisfactory, the alternative strategies are three: First, people can sometimes abandon their group and join the one perceived as superior. This is possible in societies where groups are permeable. Henri Tajfel and John Turner (1979) maintain that this alternative requires an individual belief in social mobility and results in individual rather than collective action. Easy examples are found in the United States, where classes are permeable groups but races, in most cases, are not. The salience of group identity is crucial in the selection of this alternative. When people have a strong emotional investment in a group and they perceive the group as a whole to suffer from some disadvantage, they are less likely to take this alternative. The second approach to relative disadvantage involves “social creativity” strategies, wherein people choose different comparative dimensions (e.g., changing comparison of wealth to comparison of political power), change the comparison group (e.g., members of an immigrant group would compare themselves to other immigrant groups rather than the long-term citizens), or redefine the basis of comparison from negative to positive (e.g., racial minorities placing a positive emphasis on their own cultural heritage and customs). Each of these will enhance the positive assessment of their own group. The third approach to relative disadvantage is social competition (Turner, 1986). This involves questioning the legitimacy of the existing conditions and can lead to the development of severe political conflict, including rebellions and secession movements. In general, “the way in which people strive for or maintain positive social identity will be heavily influenced by their subjective perceptions of the nature of the relations be-

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tween groups, and in particular how stable and legitimate (in sum, how secure) the outcomes of intergroup comparisons are” (Hogg and Abrams, 1988: 54). In the process of engaging in social creativity and competition responses to an unacceptable comparison, the identity of a group becomes necessarily stronger and more distinct. Unfavorable group comparisons are not sufficient to provoke social competition. Group members must also be able to identify achievable alternatives to the existing relationship (Hogg, 1992; Duckitt, 1994). Factors contributing to the identification of alternatives include the perceived illegitimacy and injustice of status differences and perceived instability of the status system (Tajfel, 1986; Turner and Brown, 1986). Both perceptions are necessary. When this occurs, the comparisons are considered “insecure.” The awareness of alternatives enhances group self-image, increases the salience of group membership, and leads to increased mutual ethnocentrism (Turner and Brown, 1986: 108). As will be seen in our discussion of colonial-imperial relationships, certain political trends can change perceptions that a relationship is just and legitimate and that the status quo is unstable.

Group Cohesion and Loyalty Having examined broad patterns of intergroup behavior, it is important to turn attention to intragroup behavior. As mentioned, self-categorization in groups serves many important psychological functions for individuals. Once groups are formed, in-group/out-group distinctions are made and there is a strong drive for differentiation between groups. Differences between groups are emphasized and perceptually augmented. Frequently, this results in ethnocentrism. These patterns can be expected among nationalistic people since, by definition, the nation as a group receives primary and terminal loyalty. Nationalistic people will perceive themselves in a positive light and as quite distinct from other nations or political groups. Also important is the impact of group cohesion and loyalty on the behavior of group members. Again, nationalistic people can be expected to be members of cohesive groups with high levels of group loyalty when nationalism is salient. Cohesive groups or groups with strong loyalty have been studied extensively by psychologists. Several common patterns of behavior have been identified: First, cohesive groups are not more likely to engage in conflict with other groups. However, they are more vigilant regarding and sensitive to insults, frustrations, and aggressive action by out-groups. In addition, intergroup conflict or competition can increase intragroup cohesion, particularly in conditions wherein the threat accentuates group identity (Hogg, 1992: 35). Conflict with others can thus be exacerbated. Second,

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group members evaluate interactions with one another as positive and infer enhanced similarity from those interactions. Third, group members are more cooperative in efforts to achieve goals. Fourth, members are more willing to sacrifice for the group, in part because individual self-definition is strongly contingent upon the survival of the group itself. Fifth, members are unwilling to leave the group, which can lead to strong conformity to group norms. No one wants to risk being ostracized by the group. And sixth, there is a reinforcing effect of loyalty and cohesion in that groups whose members are loyal perform better, producing increased cohesion and loyalty among members.3 Attachment to groups and the categorization of people into in-groups and out-groups is centrally important in understanding nationalism. At first glance, the territorial state would seem to be the ideal setting for politically relevant social-identity attachment. States are attractive as groups with which one can identify because they satisfy needs and they can embody commonly shared values. State institutions can provide and promote the elements needed to create and ensure the survival of a politically based social identity. State institutions can be used to create a common identity, provide roles, generate norms, and ensure the future incorporation of nonmembers as loyal members. Benedict Anderson (1983: 10–11) argues that identity with a nation provides people with a sense of continuity and an answer to unanswerable questions along the same principles that religion serves: The great merit of traditional religious world-views . . . has been their concern with man-in-the-cosmos . . . and the contingency of life. The extraordinary survival [of religions] attests to their imaginative response to the overwhelming burden of human suffering. . . . Why was I born blind? Why is my best friend paralysed? Why is my daughter retarded? The religions attempt to explain. The great weakness of all evolutionary/ progressive styles of thought, not excluding Marxism, is that such questions are answered with impatient silence. . . . With the ebbing of religious belief, the suffering which belief in part composed did not disappear. . . . What then was required was a secular transformation of fatality into continuity, contingency into meaning. . . . Few things were (are) better suited to this end than an idea of nation.

Nations as groups protect life, enhance self-esteem, and through their mythology and symbols explain reality (Druckman, 1994). The nation state is an in-group for nationalists. Other states constitute the universe of outgroups. Intragroup behavior, that is, politics within the nation, generally conforms to the patterns described for a cohesive group: willingness to sacrifice for the group, refusal to leave the group, cooperative task performance, heightened sensitivity to insults, frustrations, aggression by outgroups, and a resulting tendency to exacerbate conflicts. The nation as an identity group is highly salient for nationalist citizens, indicating that the

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intensity of emotional responses to threats or opportunities for the nation will be strong and volatile. This degree of sensitivity is found only where the national community is entirely coincidental with the territorial community, which is the distinguishing feature of a nation state. It follows that specific patterns of interaction with other countries will be affected by strong attachment to the perceiver’s nation. If a nation state were threatened by an imperialist, a country more powerful than the perceiver’s country, it is likely that the response would be angry rejection based upon perceived illegitimacy and injustice of such a threat. Nationalists would seek to alter the social comparison toward equality despite the evident asymmetry in power. The reverse would be true in interactions or conflicts with those perceived to be inferior, such as dependent neocolonials. This type of country is perceived as childlike, inferior in every respect. Nationalists can be expected to strongly resist any change in that relationship. In the non–nation state, the territorial community will be either one component of a larger national community, as, for example, the Jordanian component of an Arab national community, or a compound of two or more communities with very different identity manifestations, as, for example, the Karens and other minorities in Burma. In the latter situation, if actions that could be perceived as threatening to the non–nation state are made, it is unlikely that the different components of the territorial community will feel equally threatened. A threat to the unity of the state that could result in independence for one of the component communities, as in the Burmese example, may be seen by that community as an opportunity. At the very least, the government of the non–nation state must take into account the different responses to be expected from the various component communities and tailor its responses to the imperative of maintaining some unity in the responses within the territorial-community compound. The result is diminished sensitivity to threats from others. This is particularly so when the threat is to the dignity and prestige of the non–nation state. When the perceived threat is to a non–nation state whose territorial community is seen as a component of a larger national community, there is likely to be more sensitivity manifest than when the territorial community is a compound reflecting often conflicting and generally competing loyalties. Indeed, the threat might well be interpreted as directed against the broad national community and be intensely perceived within all its component communities. Desert Storm, ostensibly directed against Iraq, was broadly regarded in every pan-Arab community as really directed against the broad Arab national community. The willingness of cooperating Arab regimes to join the operation was judged by these elements as manifestations of treasonous behavior. But if the contrary is the case and the threat is interpreted as being directed against the government of the non–nation

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state, a government that has opposed a broader national unity, it may be seen by the community as a whole as an opportunity. One could expect at least a retreat in the regime from an intransigent opposition to broader national unity. In either case, both sensitivity to the existence of a threat and the cognitive responses to the threat should differ markedly from that of a nation state. The conclusion may be justified that the non–nation state, lacking an all-embracing national community that is the object of an affectively intense attachment, will be less inclined to view other state action as threatening and unlikely to manifest cognitive response patterns similar to those of a nation state. Non–nation states can be and usually are the focus of intense conflict involving competing identity communities. Such conflicts associate with cognitive and emotional tendencies, some of which are quite comparable to those one expects to see in a nation state.

Social Identity and Political Stereotyping It is natural for people to perceive political groups, whether they be parties, ethnic groups, or states, in terms of in-groups and out-groups. We have used psychological studies of in-group identification to help understand the attractiveness of identity with the nation. Studies of categorization of others into out-groups helps in understanding how people regard other groups and countries in politics. Several political psychological studies maintain that people organize the political environment with cognitive categories, or “images,” of political groups. The concept of an image is parallel to that of in-groups and out-groups. The political universe is organized cognitively, as is the social universe. Countries and other kinds of political actors are classified into a cognitive category, or image, and that image functions much like a stereotype. In international politics, images of different types of states have been identified (see R. W. Cottam, 1977; Herrmann, 1985; M. Cottam, 1986, 1994). The images noted in the literature include the enemy, ally, barbarian, imperialist, colonial client, rogue, and degenerate. Each image is perceived in terms of certain central, politically important attributes—assessments of capability, culture, intentions, threat or opportunity posed, and decisionmaking patterns; that is, are decisions made by a small group or a complex assortment of competing groups? Each of these attributes is assessed in comparison to the perceiver’s country. All but the ally would be considered out-groups. 4 As in the process of classifying people into out-groups, when countries are classified in an image, the perceiver assumes that it has the characteristics associated with the image. The image also contains “response alternatives,” or policy and strategy predispositions, that are essentially recipes for deal-

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ing with a country of that nature. The stereotypes are briefly described below and in greater detail later in this chapter. The image-theory framework, presented in more detail below, was initially designed to model perceptions of other states in international politics. However, these images can appear in perceptions of politically relevant out-groups within a country as well. A central point, however, is that the manifestation of the images will vary depending upon whether or not people are nationalistic. If they are, the territorial state and national community constitute their main political in-group; other states (as well as domestic groups perceived to be disloyal to the nation) are potential outgroups. Therefore, for nationalists, the images will be used in perceptions of other countries when other countries offer either threats or opportunities. Moreover, given the salience of the nation, the images appear in their most intense and extreme or absolute form. For nonnationalists, primary attachment is to groups other than the nation. Groups within the territorial state offering threat or opportunity to the primary group constitute outgroups. Thus, for nonnationalists the images should appear more frequently in perceptions of out-groups within the territorial state while perceptions of other countries will be more variable, and often more complex, than those of nationalists in nation states. Case studies that we present in following chapters illustrate this pattern. The enemy is the stereotype of a people who are equal in comparison to one’s own group (or country) and whose intentions are very harmful. These people are assumed to be rational calculators, with little diversity of opinion or goals within the group as a whole. The ally, in contrast, is assumed to be equal in capability and culture but also very much like one’s own group in values. The ally’s intentions are, of course, good. The ally is associated with conditions that are threatening to the perceiver because that is when an ally is needed. The barbarian stereotype is, as the term suggests, that of a people who are superior in capability but inferior in culture and aggressive in intentions. The stereotype of the imperialist is that of a people who are superior in culture and capability and whose intentions can be either harmful or benevolent. In either case, this is a dominating people, against whom resistance would be very costly. The colonial client is the polar opposite stereotype: the inferior, childlike people who are weak, inefficient, and incapable of making “rational” and “adult” decisions. These are people who must be guided with a firm hand and taught, if possible, the ways of superior folk. The relationship between people who hold these stereotypes of one another can be quite nonconflictual if that relationship is seen as just and legitimate. Whether accepted or not, the cognitive elements of the stereotypes and the emotional patterns associated with it produce particular approaches to conflict. The rogue stereotype is that of a country that is

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inferior in capability and culture but harmful in intentions. This is the “bad seed,” the “irresponsible” child that, it is believed, can and should be punished until it reforms its ways. Finally, there is the stereotype of the degenerate. This is an image of a country that may be powerful and culturally advanced but that is weakwilled, undisciplined, and lacking the will to follow through on expressed goals and plans of action. This stereotype is associated with perceptions of opportunities to achieve desired goals vis-à-vis a people perceived as fitting the stereotype. The images are summarized in Table 4.1. Interactions with those classified in one or another of these stereotypes would vary considerably in terms of the identity-based patterns discussed above. When comparisons are made with groups fitting each of these images, different options would likely be available. Unfavorable comparisons between one’s group and an enemy could conceivably produce social-creativity strategies wherein people choose different comparative dimensions (a Soviet citizen could think that the United States may have a dynamic economy but that his own country provides people with social justice); change the comparison group (Soviets may have felt disadvantaged compared to the United States but not compared to another enemy, China); or change the basis of comparison from negative to positive (Soviet weaponry is not as diverse as U.S. weaponry but is actually much better weaponry to have). Social competition—questioning and challenging the status quo—is also a likely strategy when an opportunity develops. In the case of enemy-group perceptions, such opportunities would be frequently identified given the equality in culture and capability assumed. Similar patterns would appear in interactions with groups perceived as barbarians, with the exception that it would be much less likely that the competition option would be perceived due to the perceived inequality in capability. We argue later that alliances offer such an option.

Table 4.1

Enemy Barbarian Imperialist Colonial Degenerate Rogue Ally

Image Attributes

Capability

Culture

Intentions

Equal Superior Superior Inferior Superior or equal Inferior Equal

Equal Inferior Superior Inferior Weak-willed

Harmful Harmful Harmful Benign Harmful

Inferior Equal

Harmful Good

Threat/ Decisionmakers Opportunity Small elite Small elite A few groups Small elite Confused, differentiated Small elite Many groups

Threat Threat Threat Opportunity Opportunity Threat Threat

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Those who perceive another group through the imperial image may, if possible, engage in social mobility, that is, aspire to join the more advantaged group. Creativity strategies would be entertained when the relationship, in which one’s own group is disadvantaged, is seen as just and legitimate or when no other option is available. Finally, when possible, social competition could occur. These are all illustrated in the colonial legacy in the Third World. Elites would aspire to become like the imperialist, going to school in the West, adopting Western language, values, dress, and the like. Social creativity was also used in subtle resistance to colonial power domination, as in efforts to keep customs, to educate children in terms of traditional values, and blending precolonial religions with those imposed by colonizers. Finally, Third World nationalists risked all in rebelling against colonial masters when international conditions reduced the colonizers’ ability to maintain control of the colonies. Comparisons with those considered to fit the colonial-child stereotype would, by definition, be positive, and people would therefore merely wish to maintain the status quo of their own group’s superiority. However, if there is a decrease in the extent to which the perceiver’s group is positively evaluated relative to the colonial child, it is likely that the perceiver would engage in either social-creativity strategies or, more likely, social competition, that is, the use of forceful measures to reverse the decline. The opportunity for social competition would frequently be identifiable except in situations such as those of Germany and Italy after the world wars, when they had no option to even try to retain control of their colonies. A similar pattern can be expected in comparisons with a group perceived as degenerate. Finally, it is possible to compare one’s group negatively to another group seen through the ally stereotype. In such situations, people would be likely to adopt social-creativity strategies or possibly social-mobility strategies on the individual level. It is highly unlikely that social competition would be used, since that would require a change in the ally image itself. Presumably one would not want to alter the status quo. The above patterns are summarized in Table 4.2. Additional psychological factors are important in amplifying the details of these patterns of behavior as well as their causes. We turn now to the emotions associated with the images and their potential impact on policy preferences.

The Role of Emotion In the post–Cold War era we have been reminded of the fury of political violence when motivated by a desire to achieve nationalistic self-determination.

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Table 4.2

Political Images and Social-Identity Strategies

Group Image

Social-Identity Patterns

Enemy Barbarian Imperial

out-group; creativity, competition when possible out-group; creativity, indirect competition out-group; mobility, creativity, competition when relationship is unstable out-group; maintain status quo out-group: competition out-group; competition, destroy ingroup; mobility, creativity

Colonial Degenerate Rogue Ally

The intensity and brutality of the violence is reminiscent of World War II and illuminates a remarkable peculiarity of the Cold War: despite the hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union, they somehow managed to avoid committing such brutality against each other, although many innocents with the misfortune to become involved in that conflict died. The variation in political violence in the twentieth century marks one of the most important questions that should be addressed in a discussion of the psychology of political identities, namely, why do some conflicts remain cold and intellectualized, such as the Cold War, while others explode into heated violence on the scale of mass genocide? In some respects the Cold War appears to have been one dominated by cognition—we thought each other to death. The ethnic conflicts after the Cold War in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Somalia, and many other places appear to be dominated by emotion—so angry was one group toward another it attempted to eradicate every man, woman, and child of the other group from the face of the earth and then the other group sought revenge. Perhaps understanding the emotions associated with different types of “other,” with different images of others, would help further the understanding of the strategies used in different conflicts and why some conflicts become extremely bloody and others do not. Clearly, simply belonging to a group does not mean people will engage in collective action. Group, or collective, action occurs when awareness of group membership is high, when membership is associated with positive or negative evaluations, and when there is an emotional investment in the group. Anger and hostility at a group’s treatment are also influenced by perceptions of those who caused the group’s condition and the salience of attachment to the disadvantaged group (Guimond and DubéSimard, 1983; Lalonde and Silverman, 1994). Moreover, “the greater the perceived differences between in-group and out-group, the more intense are the negative emotions elicited by the out-group” (Vanman and Miller, 1993: 221). This section explores the role of emotion generally and in association with particular political images and stereotypes.

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One of our central arguments is that some emotions regularly associate with different images and that understanding both the cognitive and emotional elements of out-group classification helps one understand the preferred approach to conflict. The association of emotions with social groups is a result of norm- or value-based assessments of the attributes of the other group and their characteristics, as well as expectations regarding their behavior and past experiences with those groups. A variety of negative emotions is produced by relationships perceived to be harmful or threatening and positive emotions from relationships perceived to be beneficial. It is not sufficient to leave it at that, however, as Richard Lazarus (1991: 11) explains: Though all negative emotions share the property of being a reaction to thwarting, each of these emotions—that is, anger, fear, guilt, shame, and so on—is also a separate and distinct reaction to diverse forms of thwarting; each involves a different person-environment relation and pattern of appraisal. Similarly, happiness, pride, love, and relief, though having in common that they arise from beneficial relationships with the environment, are also quite different from each other in the specifics of the relationship and how it is appraised.

Emotions and subsequent behavioral outcomes are intricately related to goals at stake in a situation. Lazarus (p. 82) argues that there are four emotion families, three of which are associated with goals and their attainability (see also Stein, Trabasso, and Liwag, 1993): those associated with goal relevance and incongruence (including the emotions of frightanxiety, guilt-shame, sadness, envy-jealousy, anger-contempt); those associated with goal relevance and congruence (including happiness-joy, pride, love-affection, relief); borderline emotions (hope, compassion, aesthetic emotions); and nonemotions. Emotions can also be distinguished in terms of focus, that is, whether the person is focusing on events, actions, or objects (Clore et al., 1993). Political goals and the emotions and values attached to them will vary over time given particular political contexts and values (Stein, Trabasso, and Liwag, 1993). Despite this variability, however, it is nonconsciously assumed that out-groups hinder in-group goals, and therefore the outgroup is automatically associated with negative affective reactions. As Susan Fiske and Janet Ruscher (1993: 245) argue, “merely by existing as a member of a group not one’s own, the out-group individual is seen as having different and potentially interfering goals. . . . Given the potential or even minimal interdependence, an out-grouper will be seen as a probable threat to one’s interests.” Emotions also vary in intensity. This increases as events become more real, become closer in proximity, and when they are unexpected (Ortony, Clore, and Collins, 1988: 60). The salience of group membership and

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belonging also increases emotion intensity. People typically feel intense emotions in relations to a group only when something unusual occurs, for example, a threat to the group or an opportunity to achieve something the group desires. Strong group identity produces the potential for hot emotions when that relationship and normal forms of behavior in the context of that relationship are interrupted. The events affecting the group release the underlying potential for powerful emotional responses. The intensity of emotion is also determined by perceptions of other groups. Out-groups are reacted to more negatively and with greater intensity than are in-groups. In general, the more extreme one’s stereotyping, the more extreme affective reactions will be. Conversely, more complex cognitive processes are associated with more moderate reactions (Linville, 1982). Furthermore, when one’s own group does poorly in interactions with the out-group, more social comparison is evoked than when one is beaten by one’s own kind (Fiske and Ruscher, 1993: 253). Emotion and Behavior: A Look at Emotions and Politics The list of negative-affect emotions is long, and any discussion of these emotions begins with anger. Anger is a central emotion clearly relevant for a discussion of political behavior. Anger is a negative emotion wherein blame for undesirable behavior and consequent undesirable events is directed at another person or group (Lazarus, 1991; Clore et al., 1993; Lemerise and Dodge, 1993; see Wyer and Srull, 1993, for debate about the meaning of the term). Anger occurs when goals are thwarted and attention is focused on the source of the obstacle to the accomplishment of the goal (Stein, Trabasso, and Liwag, 1993: 291). Anger can produce the motivation to regain control, remove the obstruction, and, if necessary, attack the source of injury (Frijda, 1986: 89; Izard, 1977: 80; Lazarus, 1991). Whether an individual or a group will act on this impulse depends upon social constraints and norms as well as the particular perception of the characteristics of the offending agent. Anger occurs when an out-group is viewed as responsible for occurrences detrimental to the in-group (Vanman and Miller, 1993: 224), and the out-group will be seen as the root cause of the problem. Related to anger are frustration, resentment, reproach, contempt, and disgust.5 Frustration is directed at an undesirable event that is perceived to be desirable for others, whereas resentment is a response to specifically positive results for others, results that are considered undeserved (Clore et al., 1993: 68). Reproach is felt when another’s actions are considered bad, but the outcome is not relevant for the perceiver. Disgust and contempt when combined with anger, which is often the case, create hatred and hostility and are particularly important in affecting

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political behavior. Disgust involves repulsion caused by some characteristic or action of others. It is an emotion that generalizes from reactions to matters considered dangerous to personal health to reactions to perceived contamination of the social order (Rozin, Haidt, and McCauley, 1993). It can lead to a desire to eliminate or destroy the offending group and is therefore considered a “hot” emotion. However, disgust may not produce as aggressive a reaction as anger because the levels of interest and distress are lower when one is disgusted than when one is angry. Contempt, in contrast, involves feeling superior to another person or group, a sense that their undesirable behavior is the result of inferiority. It can produce a desire to dominate (Frijda, 1986: 88) and can lead to dehumanization of others, which can ultimately lead to extreme violence and even genocide (Izard, 1977). Guilt, shame, sympathy, pity, sadness, envy, and jealousy must be added to the list of negative-affect emotions that are politically relevant. Guilt results from having done something that is morally unacceptable. It produces a desire to atone or make reparation to those one has hurt (Lazarus, 1991: 243). Shame is a result of a failure to live up to an internalized identity. It produces a propensity to hide, to shy away from others who may see one’s inadequacies in meeting standards and to be submissive to them (Frijda, 1986: 89). But Izard (1977: 92) carries the argument further to note that shame also produces a strong need to conform, and if “the individual’s deepest loyalties and emotional ties are to ‘out groups,’ then shame can lead to rebellion. While . . . chronic shame can shatter human integrity, this emotion often stands as a guardian of self-respect.” Sadness is similar to anger in that it occurs when a goal one expects to accomplish is thwarted, but it differs in that there is no belief that the goal could be accomplished if those obstructing it were removed. Sympathy and pity both involve feeling sorry for others, but sympathy is directed toward equals, pity toward those considered inferior. Envy and jealousy are closely related but have important distinctions. Envy consists of desiring that which another has, whereas jealousy involves resentment of another when the other is seen as posing a threat to the availability of affection (Lazarus, 1991: 254). In the case of envy, the unequal comparison between oneself and another is seen as unfair. Feeling envious of others can alleviate feelings of guilt, since one’s own actions, which may have been considered wrong, can be reinterpreted as having been justifiable given the unfair behavior of the other party. The behavioral patterns associated with envy and jealousy are somewhat different. In the case of envy, one is predisposed to take what the other has. In the case of jealousy, particularly when combined with anger, one is predisposed to attack, to seek revenge. Finally, the list of negative-affect emotions must include fear and anxi-

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ety. Fear and anxiety are produced by real or imagined danger, the difference being that whereas fear is associated with a clear and certain threat, anxiety is associated with uncertainty about the threat. The threat or danger may be physical, as in a danger of physical death, or psychological, as in a danger to the prestige of an important in-group. With fear, the behavioral predisposition is to avoid or escape the danger. With anxiety, the uncertainty about the danger produces uncertainty about how to respond, so one sits and worries about what it is one needs to escape (Lazarus, 1991: 238). Positive-affect emotions are also potentially politically relevant, but the list is shorter than for negative-affect emotions. Positive affect has several general effects on decisionmaking and information processing. People are more flexible and creative in problem-solving when affect is positive. They are able to see more similarities and differences in others, resulting in more complex evaluations of other people or objects and broader categories of other people or objects (Isen, 1993: 264; Stroessner and Mackie, 1993: 68). Their decisionmaking is both more efficient and more thorough than that of those not in a positive-affect state (Isen and Means, 1983). Among the important emotions are joy and happiness. As moods they may be constant but as emotions they are distinctly goal-related, that is, they occur as a consequence of goal fulfillment or the expectation thereof. Happiness occurs when expectations are not fulfilled by events (that is, one is pleasantly surprised by events), when a goal has been attained or one is certain that it will be attained, and/or when an aversive condition is eliminated (Stein, Trabasso, and Liwag, 1993: 288). However, joy and happiness have most political relevance in the context of other positive emotions. Pride, for example, is an emotion evoked when a person is able to take credit for achievements relevant to him- or herself or a group with which he or she identifies strongly. Pride involves positive gains for the self-image. Joy, happiness, and pride are not as easily associated with behavioral propensities as are many of the negative emotions. Positive emotions are associated with clearer and more complex problem-solving, and in the extreme emotions like pride are partially responsible for ethnocentrism. These emotions are more interesting for political action once they have been experienced and are threatened. Happiness, joy, and pride in the achievements of a politically relevant group will be expected to continue, and threats to the group threaten these emotions. Love and affection are also positive emotions that may have political relevance. Affection, fondness, and liking are all associated with groups people identify with and with those they consider similar to themselves. As in parental treatment of children, affection can lead to resisting disappointment at the behavior of others as well as continued commitment to them despite disappointment.

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There are several added complexities to this discussion of emotion types, one being that they can occur in combination. Contempt combined with joy, for example, can produce tremendous cruelty. In addition, studies of ethnic-group stereotyping have found both positive and negative emotions attached to perceptions of a single group (Esses, Haddock, and Zanna, 1993: 141). Second, emotion is contagious and can spread quickly through groups of people (Izard, 1977: 106; Staub, 1989: 85). Third, emotions arise through appraisal of others and their actions (Forgas, 1993). The appraisal relies upon preexisting assumptions about those people, assumptions ensconced in images. The behavior that follows is deemed correct and socially acceptable. There is every reason to expect, therefore, that they can also become “institutionalized.” Violence, for example, is often an accepted and expected form of behavior in particular institutional settings, and, as Johnson (1986: 181) notes, “institutional arrangements capitalize on the normal tendency for people to minimize or deny responsibility for their violence; and actively look for ways to mollify their conscience to make their violence, particularly when it is directed against debased groups, a justified and even laudable activity.” Thus, individual emotions not only generate group emotions but can become part of the society’s institutional structure, thereby producing enormous conformity pressures. Thus far we have presented and explored in depth several psychological factors relevant to understanding nationalistic behavior: the importance of belonging to and identifying with groups, categorization of others into out-groups and related images of states in international politics, and emotions associated with other groups. The next task is to pull these factors together in an effort to describe and explain patterns of nationalistic behavior.

Cognitive and Emotional Properties in Nationalistic Behavior Below we combine the political psychological concepts and explanatory factors to examine the behavior patterns typical of nationalists when responding to others classified in one of the images discussed above. The description of the patterns is based upon the cognitive and emotional properties associated with each image as well as the social-identity factors relevant to responses to comparisons with such groups. Therefore, further discussion of the cognitive properties of each image, as well as the fitting of common emotions attached to each image, is necessary. The images are organized according to whether they are associated with perceptions of threats or opportunities connected to central goals. Images mean little outside of the political context evoking them. That political context, like any

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social context, has varying degrees of threat or opportunity to the perceiver’s central concerns. In later chapters, a comparable discussion of patterns for non–nation states will be considered. Perceptions of Threat The diabolical enemy. Most notable among the cognitive responses that associate with an intensely perceived threat—a phenomenon associated with the highest level of affectivity—is the tendency to construct a highly simplified image of the threatener. When the threatened community sees the threatener as relatively equal in capability terms and in cultural terms, the stereotype that comes into play is the diabolical enemy. In its most extreme form the diabolical-enemy image incorporates the following view of the threatener: it is simply and ineluctably aggressive in motivation, monolithic in decisional structure, highly rational in decisionmaking to the point of being able to generate and orchestrate multiple complex conspiracies, and owes its power advantage to a greater will and determination than the threatened public can muster. Closely associated with this stereotypical view is the judgment made of fellow citizens who do not share this simplified and rigidified representation and make the effort to present a competing image. They will be accused of being at best dupes of the enemy and possibly even traitors. This characterization is made not only of those who might have some sympathy for the threatener. It is also made of elements of the citizenry who share an intense attachment to the national community and agree with their fellow nationalists that there is a threat but who are less inclined to simplify reality grossly when confronted with a threat and are able to retain a more complex view of the threatener. Their ability to view the threatener in more complex terms makes possible the identification of a broader range of policy options, some of which might, if adopted, have the potential to stave off a crisis or at least allow for a more complex strategic response. Naturally, those categorized in an enemy image would be considered out-groups, but out-groups of equal status and power. An emphasis on the differences between one’s own group and the enemy would add to a positive self-image. The dominant negative emotions associated with the enemy would include anger, frustration, reproach, envy, jealousy, fear, distrust, and grudging respect. These emotions are associated with a sense of unfairness, attribution of blame to the enemy country for undesirable events, not one’s own, and action predispositions that are both antagonistic and reactant. These would include approaches to conflict, such as competition, efforts to maximize gains, and preventing the enemy from gaining more than one’s own country. The approach to conflict makes sense in light of the cognitive properties of the stereotype. This is a group as pow-

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erful and capable as one’s own group, so there is an even chance of losing if the approach to the conflict is entirely zero-sum. Thus, the diabolical enemy image of the threatener makes a strong, aggressive defense against an ineluctable and ambitious foe the logical option choice. If such a defense should eliminate the threatener altogether, the better the goal of long-term survival would have been served. However, a strategy of containment may be the only recognized alternative in most political contexts. When a threat is perceived with sufficient intensity and the affectivity level is very high, the strategic scope of policy options that will be considered is reduced sharply. This pattern is far less likely to prevail in the non–nation state, in which very different interests and views of competing identity communities must be reconciled. The irony is that the non–nation state leadership may well then be able to consider a much larger range of policy options to deal with the threat, develop a more sophisticated strategy, and be more likely to settle the dispute peacefully. If actual motivations of a state perceived in the diabolical enemy stereotype are mixed and dissensus is considerable, the consequences of coming so precipitously to the stereotypical view could be tragic. Acting on the basis of a diabolical enemy target image may serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The target, seeing itself as having been aggressed against, would quickly come to see its opponent in stereotypical diabolical-enemy terms and would adopt the same tough strategy that had been expected of it. The result would be an unnecessary and disastrous spiral conflict that would be extremely difficult to resolve short of total victory. The diabolical enemy stereotype is virtually nonfalsifiable. It can explain any response, including appeasement, on the part of the enemy. If a conflict with a country perceived as a diabolical enemy escalates to violence, the emotions intensify and hatred and rage replace anger. This leads to some interesting possibilities concerning the maintenance of the enemy image. This is an out-group that is considered equal in power, status, and cultural sophistication. It is quite possible, however, that once hostile interactions occur under conditions that increase intensity, the cognitive properties of the stereotype would change, that is, a cognitive slide would occur to the barbarian image. Once the perceiver’s group begins to experience real losses in conflicts with the enemy, the sense of the reality and proximity of the threat will increase. Such losses constitute a threat to the positive social identity of a nationalistic group. Losses to an enemy would certainly damage the positive self-image, even if the losses are small. These psychological events suggest a dramatic increase in intensity of emotions. When rage and hatred take over it may be quite difficult psychologically to maintain the cognitive properties of equality. The tendency would be to see the enemy as less and less equal culturally, leading to disgust and dehumanization of the enemy, now perceived through the barbarian

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image. The sense of unfairness that accompanies those emotions could lead to a questioning of the equality of power. If they are equal and we are good, why have we experienced losses? If the answer is in the direction of bolstering group esteem, the losses will be attributed to accidents, mistakes, temporary setbacks, and the idea propagated that we are not weaker but stronger by virtue of will and ability. If the opposite conclusion is reached—that the other side actually is stronger in capability though inferior in culture—a search will be on for allies to bolster the perceiver’s strength. This is a particularly important issue in cases of nationalism-based conflict. Interaction with an enemy group in interstate relations can more easily remain at low emotional intensity than conflict among enemy groups within a country, which may occur in the multiethnic or multinational state. In these situations, people literally live cheek to jowl with one another. The sense of reality and proximity are already primed. Emotional intensity is likely to begin at a higher degree when conflicts are initiated. Once the cognitive and emotional properties shift, behavioral predispositions shift as well. With fear, hatred, and rage driving the response to an out-group now perceived as culturally inferior, dangerously powerful, and extremely harmful in intentions, the predisposition is to destroy them—the ultimate zero-sum approach—to protect one’s own group before they can destroy it. In the prolonged era of the Cold War, the stereotypical view toward which the two primary participants, the United States and the Soviet Union, inclined was that of the diabolical enemy. It is a stereotype that associates with perceived threat, not perceived opportunity. Although there was a parallelism in the prevailing views of the American and Soviet regimes, the view in the United States, especially the public view, was much closer to the stereotypical end of the scale than was the view in the Soviet Union. There was, in other words, greater complexity in the Soviet view than in the American. Such disparity would be expected in a situation in which one party, the United States, was clearly a nation state in our conceptualization and the Soviet Union was a multi–nation state. The barbarian. The barbarian image appears when an intense threat is perceived to be emanating from a political entity viewed as superior in terms of capability but as inferior culturally. Barbarian was the term employed by Chinese, Romans, and Greeks to describe their tribal tormentors. In the extreme, the threatened community will view the threatener as follows: it is simply and ineluctably aggressive in motivation, monolithic in decisional structure, cunning in decisional style and willing to resort to unspeakable brutality including genocide, and determined to take full advantage of its superiority. Emotions commonly associated with this image

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are disgust more than contempt (since the barbarian is considered greater in capability even though culturally inferior), anger, and fear. Disgust is modified by the presence of fear generating from the superior capability of the barbarian. Fellow citizens who do not share this simplified and rigidified image will be accused of cowardice and treason. Despite the resemblances to the diabolical-enemy image, this image, due to its cognitive and emotional properties, does not serve as the cognitive underlay for an aggressive defense posture. Given the capabilityasymmetry factor, the fear emotion will be strong while the identification of alternatives would be narrow, making people wish to avoid direct conflict. A more reasonable primary course of action for dealing with a threat of this dimension will be a search for allies who can be persuaded of the probability that a failure to deal with this threat will affect seriously and adversely their own national interests. In terms of social-identity theory, perceivers would probably like to engage in direct social competition with this hated and disgusting opponent, in the most violent form of eliminating the threat altogether, but they cannot because the opportunity—that is, the capability—is not there. Creativity options, such as changing the basis of comparison from one-on-one to an alliance against one, will be sought. Thus, perceivers must build coalitions to overcome their weakness and improve their ability to at least contain the barbarian. Today the barbarian-simplification pattern most commonly appears in minority communities that are relatively highly achieving and view their less-achieving neighbors as threatening. Only a few such communities, however, have a capability potential sufficient to make the goal of nation statehood a sensible objective. They are more likely therefore to think of emigration than to generate a nationalistic response. Fairly typical of those who do respond nationalistically is the case of the Maronite community in Lebanon. The predominant image in that community of Syria, of Lebanese Muslims, and of a nascent Arab national community is indeed inclined in the direction of the barbarian stereotype. Also true to expectations, the Maronite leadership has focused its strategy on gaining external allies to balance the existing capability asymmetry in favor of the barbarian threatener. Here they have had periodic successes, some of them fairly dramatic, but ultimately have failed to attract the permanent allies necessary to balance off the asymmetry. However, there is one example of a polity that is of considerable importance in contemporary world politics and that views its primary threateners in terms that approximate the barbarian stereotype. We refer to Israel and its confrontation with the forces of pan-Arabism and politically resurgent Islam. The unique element in this application is that the Israelis are responding to threateners who are not yet capability-superior but are perceived, because of an overwhelming population and resource advantage, to

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have the potential for becoming superior. Despite this perceived cultural inferiority among Israelis toward their neighbors, the probabilities are seen as high that Arab superiority in conventional arms is not only attainable but unavoidable. The Israelis recognized that the essence of their problem, given the high probability of eventual threatener capability-superiority, was how to add to their own capability through an alliance system that included both great and near–great powers. In this, they were far more successful than is commonly the case in persuading allies that the alliance system served their national interests in important dimensions. Particularly helpful in this endeavor was the existence of Jewish diaspora communities in the United States and Western Europe that were politically influential and viewed the Israeli Jewish community as an especially vital component of the world Jewish community—a community that was a first- or second-intensity identity focus for a great many Jews. Nevertheless, the necessity to rely on more powerful allies to prevent a return to capability asymmetry in the threatener’s favor was a source of deep concern for the Israelis. Alterations in the world political situation could easily force a reassessment in one or more of these allies of the utility in assuming risks that benefited a single ethnic community. The conclusion was defensible that the alliance system protecting Israel, even though exceptionally long-lived, ultimately was fragile. The search for a capability equalizer had to go on, however, given the lethal quality of the stereotypical image of the threatener. As mentioned, the unique aspect of this stereotypical application was that the threatened viewed its capability inferiority as potential but probably inevitable. Even without its allies, Israel was perceived as capable of defeating any combination of its enemies. And Israeli policy was very much one of an aggressive defense. Yet movement was in the direction of a relative increase in the capability bases of Israel’s tormentors, and the assumption they would achieve superiority, despite the inferior culture, was broadly accepted. Therefore, the problem of establishing unilaterally a future security system that would serve the equalizing function was addressed with a sense of urgent necessity. The long-range solution to that problem, adopted early on, was that Israel should become a nuclear power. Indeed, the advent of nuclear weaponry was particularly fortuitous, for Israel had no difficulty constructing scenarios in which Israel, shorn of allies, must face alone an enemy that had an overwhelming population and resource-base advantage and hence the ability to construct a vastly superior conventional-weapons force. Nuclear weaponry was a capability equalizer, and the Israelis early on recognized that quality. Once the nuclear program was in place and bombs were being produced, another aspect of the problem became starkly

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apparent. Nuclear weaponry could serve its equalizing purpose only if Israel’s perceived threateners remained nonnuclear. Were any of them to achieve nuclear-power status, Israel’s ability to deter enemy aggressiveness would sharply decline. A balance-of-terror system, much like that of the Cold War, would come into place. But whereas such a system would make unlikely large-scale conventional military aggression with its implicit escalation problems, aggression through covert warfare or economic warfare would be likely to set in motion an escalatory process. Israel would once again seem very vulnerable to an opponent viewed in terms of the barbarian stereotype. As noted, when a people’s operating definition of the situation is to a major degree instructed by a stereotypical representation of one’s opponent, the decisional operation range of that people will become narrowly restricted. The view of the diabolical enemy or of the barbarian as ineluctable in its aggressiveness leaves little likelihood that one would make the effort to discover, through probing operations, motives that would best be served by peaceful relations. To the contrary, the very act of probing for the existence of such motives would be considered appeasement and would only reinforce the aggressors in their conviction that their target lacked the will to resist. These stereotype-instructed cognitive patterns are particularly likely to associate with nation states. Indeed, the tendency to view crisis situations stereotypically is an integral feature of nationalistic behavior. The imperial image. There is a third type of perceived threat–associated stereotype: the colonial-imperial image. Like the barbarian, this image was more common in the past but in this case the recent past. It occurs when the people of a polity perceive threat from another polity viewed as superior in terms of both capability and culture. That is a situation that was fairly commonplace in the era of robust imperial expansionism. It reflected the unevenness of the movement toward mass politics, a movement only now approaching the point of universality. Western Europe was in the vanguard of that movement and came to view itself and was viewed by politically conscious elements throughout the world as having achieved an unapproachable capability-superiority and a culture that was conducive to maintaining and advancing that lead. Nevertheless, the process of developing in the direction of mass politics continued, though with widely varying tempos and rhythms, in much of the world. The era of imperial expansionism coincided with and contributed to this developing process. The impact of imperialism on development, however, was both progressive and reactionary. It was progressive in that it served as a major change agent, a catalyst for encouraging the appearance and strengthening of elites opposed to traditional norms in the economy. But these new progressive elites included individuals who looked beyond traditional parochial com-

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munities, such as the clan and extended families, as their terminal-identity communities and looked toward nascent national communities. Such individuals were likely to resist the control efforts of the imperial powers and to view imperialism as threatening to the drive for independence of their and other emerging nations. In response, the imperialist power frequently came to oppose the new nationalist elite they had inadvertently encouraged and on many occasions intervened, directly or indirectly, on behalf of the traditional political leaders they once had opposed. A perceived threat from a polity viewed as superior in capability and culture or a perceived opportunity from a polity viewed as inferior in capability and culture is the classic cognitive underlay of the colonialimperial situation. The two situations generate simplification patterning in the direction of stereotypes. The first—responding to threat—we call the “imperial image”; the second—responding to opportunity—we call the “colonial image.” Both are in decline and for the same reason: the growth in political awareness and the movement toward mass politics throughout the Third World. These trends have reduced very significantly perceived capability and cultural distance. And although increasingly atavistic and substantially altered, both stereotypes persist in behavior and remain highly conflict-generating. The imperial stereotype now is viewed primarily in a neocolonial variant. This reflects the virtual disappearance of formal colonial institutions and the appearance of a great many new states, which are ostensibly independent. However, a high percentage of these new states, recently emerged from imperial control, continue to be judged by nationalistic and progressive elements internally as formally independent but still under de facto imperial control. In many cases the control the imperial power exercises is seen as one gained by operating through what amounts to a collaborating elite. The imperial power is perceived to be motivated by the desire to exploit the resources of the colonized people and to do so through the instrumentality of a relationship of economic and political subservience. The decisional structure of the imperial power is viewed as less monolithic than in other threat relationships. Indeed, an anti-imperialism element is frequently perceived to be present in the imperial power decisional structure. The decisional style is adapted to the needs of an indirect control system and is appropriately subtle and discrete. Decisional control, therefore, must be inferred logically rather than demonstrated empirically. The control system, as perceived, amounts to an elaborate web of institutions and individuals. On the surface the system appears to operate through local leaders, but in fact the imperial power is perceived as pulling the strings, often at a very detailed level. The imperial power is viewed as having the capacity to orchestrate developments of extraordinary complexity and to do so with great subtlety. The style is often described as operating through

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a “hidden hand.” The capability-superiority of the imperial power is perceived as a product of these profound orchestrating abilities. The collaborating section of the population, viewed by those resisting as profiting hugely from the relationship, is judged as having betrayed their nation. Psychological studies suggest that a complicated range of emotions will be associated with interaction of groups with asymmetrical power and status. The complex of emotions is affected by perceptions of whether or not the relationship is a just or legitimate one. As mentioned earlier, people can and do often accept inferiority. When the colonial-imperial relationship is seen as legitimate or just, emotions associated with the image include fear experienced by the inferior group when experiencing an interaction that is inconsistent with goals. Coping strategies work toward dealing with emotion rather than the problem. The emotions that cluster with fear (anxiety, despair) were not associated with perceptions of unfairness. Hence, we can extrapolate that fear-inducing interactions are not considered illegitimate, just uncertain and frightening. The action tendencies that result revolve around self-protection—moving way from or avoiding conflict with the fear-inducing agent (Duckitt, 1994). Such interactions are also associated with perceptions of modifiability. Thus, we can argue that in imperialist-colonial interactions seen as just or legitimate but negative, the dominant emotion will be fear on the part of the subordinate people and the behavioral tendency will be to avoid the situation or problem or, at most, to attempt a negotiated reconciliation of the relationship to a positive emotion. Psychological studies offer little in the way of guidelines for positive emotions in the imperial-colonial relationship. We can speculate, however, that when the relationship is considered just and legitimate they include respect by the subordinate people for the imperial group and benevolent paternalistic affection by the imperial group for the subordinate group (Duckitt, 1994: 106). The colonial people who consider the relationship just would attain positive self-conceptions by comparing themselves with some other group, not the imperial master. The behavioral preferences would be simply to maintain the relationship as it is currently conducted, with the imperial master making major decisions and allowing symbolic concessions to the colonial subject. Emotions and action preferences are different on both sides when the relationship and interaction are considered unjust by the weaker, subordinate group. The extremity of mutual stereotyping increases in such situations. Eliot Smith (1993) argues that the weaker party will experience jealousy and will make demands. The conflict will receive considerable attention, and equality (of resources, status, or power) will be demanded. Anger and shame accompany the feeling of jealousy and can push people toward antagonistic and hostile actions toward the superior group, including rebellion, even

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though they are well aware of the potential consequences. The lack of perceived fairness is an important component in producing the propensity for hostile action toward a more powerful group. However, it should be recalled that such actions are likely only when social mobility and creativity are not options and alternatives are identified. The former conditions occur when the superior group is not permeable and when the salience of the attachment to one’s own group is highest (Lalonde and Silverman, 1994). In addition, the system of dominance must be perceived to be unstable, providing the subordinate group with cognitive alternatives to the current system. In such situations, emotional intensity would increase as the salience of social identity increases people’s sense of reality and arousal. These conditions can be provoked by threats to goals and standards and the identification of alternate options. For example, the weakening of European capabilities after World War II increased the alternative futures possible for nationalist independence movements in European colonies. It can also be provoked by efforts to destroy a group, either literally through genocide or figuratively by attacking group cohesion, values, and loyalty. This threatens the survival and/or security needs of the group. These patterns persisted among nationalists in much of the Third World even as the Cold War came to an end. It was the cognitive model that defined the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, for Iranian nationalists. The shah was viewed as the willing surrogate of American imperial control of Iran and his regime as totally lacking in nationalist legitimacy. The Iranian Revolution, perhaps the best example of a populist revolution in human history, was viewed as an anti-imperialist triumph of such proportion that it presaged the passing of the imperial era. But when the secular nationalists were bested by a religious elite with early mass support, the religious victory was perceived within the parameters of the neocolonial stereotype. The nationalists came to the conclusion that the religiopolitical leadership was, like the shah, a willing and witting surrogate of U.S. imperial control. A broad consensus developed among secular nationalists on the following view: sensing the shah’s unpopularity and fearful that this could weaken the U.S. position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, the Americans sought to take advantage of Khomeini’s charismatic appeal and found Khomeini only too willing to cooperate. The Americans therefore orchestrated the revolution and placed Khomeini in power. What followed was exquisitely ironic and highly instructive regarding the worldview of collaborating elites in the context of the imperial image. As strongly as the Iranian nationalists had resented and condemned the shah’s dictatorship and its perceived imperial sponsorship, they quickly came to view the theocratic dictatorship of Khomeini as even less tolerable. Many thousands, even millions, fled Iran, and they and those remaining yearned for the overthrow of the theocratic regime. Not illogically,

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given their view of American omnipotence and their own sense of profound inefficacy, the nationalists concluded that direct action to overturn the regime would be futile without U.S. cooperation. They felt, therefore, their only recourse was to persuade the Americans of the enormity of the mistake they had made by imposing Khomeini on Iran and to make the case that U.S. interests would be better served by replacing the religious dictatorship and working through the secular nationalists. They were, in effect, offering to assume the role of the collaborating section of the population. Prior to the revolution, the secular nationalist opposition to the shah had viewed the Middle East largely in terms of the imperial image. Middle East leaders who had allied with the United States were described as collaborationists totally lacking in nationalist legitimacy, essentially traitors to their nations. Thus King Hussein of Jordan and Anwar Sadat of Egypt were dismissed as willing instruments of U.S. policy. Israel was viewed as an American surrogate and the primary regional actor in the Americans’ orchestration scheme. Their regional opponents, most notably the late Hafez al-Assad of Syria, were viewed as allies in the anti-imperial struggle. Sympathy was strongly expressed for the Palestinian struggle to regain their lost homeland, and efforts by the United States to encourage a PalestinianIsraeli peace process were condemned as patently designed to produce a Palestinian capitulation. The shah and his supporters, in marked contrast, saw the relationship as just and viewed the Middle East in virtually a mirror image of that of the nationalists. Hussein and Sadat were described as moderate, thoroughly responsible patriots. Al-Assad was described as an irresponsible radical and a willing agent of the Soviet Union. Israel was viewed very differently given the judgment that it was culturally fully on par with the United States. It was seen as an important but less powerful ally of the United States and, like the United States, actively working for a stable and peaceful region. The peace process of Palestinians and Israelis, it follows, should be supported fully. This worldview of the shah, the willing collaborator of U.S. policy, paralleled closely the regional view of the Middle East that prevailed in the United States. Indeed, the point is generalizable. When imperial control is exercised indirectly through a collaborating elite, that elite will be inclined toward a stereotypical view of their own polity and region that conforms closely to that prevailing in the imperial power. True to this pattern, the view that came to prevail within the secular nationalist community in Iran, and, more pointedly, the very large Iranian exile community, both royalist and secular nationalist, was virtually identical to that of the shah as outlined above. The worldview prevailing within Iran’s theocratic regime, in contrast, paralleled closely that outlined above of the secular nationalists in the years preceding the Iranian Revolution.

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However, increasingly rapid erosion of these stereotypically inclined definitions of the situation is inevitable. They rest on the assumption of hegemonic ambitions on the part of a United States that are impossible in terms of capability and that will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. The societies of the Middle East are now characterized by mass politics, a fact that would make a long-term exercise of indirect colonial control by a far distant United States both exceedingly costly in terms of resource expenditures and dangerous in terms of great power interactions. Thus, even if the judgment of hegemonic ambitions should be correct, such ambitions are unlikely to be sustainable in the middle term. Viewed even more broadly, the cognitive underlay for the colonial-imperial situation with its assumption of cultural inferiority/superiority is unlikely to be sustainable in the long term. The rogue image. The rogue image is relatively new, at least in the worldviews of leaders of the West in the Cold War conflict. During the Cold War they held an image of the dependent of the enemy wherein a country was viewed as inferior in capability and culture but controlled by and supported by the enemy. That image disappeared with the end of the Cold War. Nevertheless, former allies of the Soviet Union, along with some other countries, continued to pose threats and were perceived as both inferior and threatening. U.S. policymakers have described such states repeatedly. For example, Anthony Lake (1994: 45–46), when national security adviser, wrote: Our policy must face the reality of recalcitrant and outlaw states that not only choose to remain outside the family [of nations] but also assault its basic values. There are few “backlash” states: Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya. For now they lack the resources of a superpower, which would enable them to seriously threaten the democratic order being created around them. Nevertheless, their behavior is often aggressive and defiant. . . . These backlash states have some common characteristics. Ruled by cliques that control power through coercion. . . . These nations exhibit a chronic inability to engage constructively with the outside world, and they do not function effectively in alliances. . . . Finally, they share a siege mentality. Accordingly, they are embarked on ambitious and costly military programs.

The code words reveal the image. The writing is replete with references to a family (bad children), the weakness of these states, the incompatibility of their values with those of the rest of the family of nations, their aggressive nature, their control by a small elite, and the futility of trying to deal with them reasonably and constructively. Responses to this type of state are driven by a sense of superiority, hostility, and antagonism. They are bad children who must be taught a lesson, and that lesson is taught with

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force. Negotiation is not considered a serious option. Examples of this are numerous: American reaction to Saddam Hussein’s resistance to weapons inspection was to bomb. When Slobodan Milosevic resisted points in the Rambouillet Accords that would have given forces under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) the right to wander unimpeded throughout Yugoslavia, negotiations ceased and Yugoslavia was bombed. When Manuel Noriega thumbed his nose at the U.S. efforts to promote free elections, Panama was bombed. Often it is assumed that one individual is responsible for the behavior of the rogue state—eliminate Noriega, Saddam, or Milosevic and the problem will be solved overnight. Perceptions of Opportunity The degenerate image. The most important of stereotypical views that associate with perceptions of opportunity is the degenerate image. It occurs when there is an intensely perceived opportunity to achieve a value at the expense of a polity that is viewed as relatively equal or even greater in capability and culture. The values most commonly of concern are those relating to national grandeur and an enhanced exercise of influence in world affairs. Both values are classifiable as nationalistic values and are likely to be highly determining only in nation states and/or nationalistic groups in non–nation states. The public appeals of the leaders of Germany, Italy, and Japan were heavily couched in nationalist symbolic terms, and the prevailing view in all three polities of their international opponents inclined toward the degenerate stereotype. The publics thus were inclined toward a view that made reasonable their belief that they could achieve predominance over other polities that they did not perceive as inferior culturally or in terms of the hard factors in capability measures (e.g., resource base, industrial base, educated population, and military base). A country seen through the degenerate image has the following perceived characteristics: it is uncertain and confused in motivation, characterized by a highly differentiated decisional structure that suffers from lack of a clear sense of direction, lacking in a clear decisional thrust and largely incapable of constructing an effective strategy, and lacking the will and determination to make effective use of its power instruments or to mobilize effective public support. Citizens who do not share this image are judged as effete and lacking in will, much as is the citizenry of the target polity. As is true with the diabolical-enemy stereotype, disconfirming evidence is likely to be interpreted as confirming. Both stereotypes associate quickly with the needs of important vested interests, and both are extremely difficult to falsify. The emotions that associate with the image are disgust, contempt, scorn, and anger that may ultimately turn to hatred. This combination leads to a de-

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sire to eliminate the offensive group and can lead to dangerous underestimation of an adversary’s abilities (Izard, 1977: 337). Whereas disgust combines with fear in perceptions of the barbarian producing hostility, contempt and disgust combine with anger and scorn in the case of the degenerate, which can lead to dehumanization and then to genocidal violence. This is a stereotype of a country that may be technically strong but that lacks the capability needed to use its technical strength. The motivations of such a stereotyped country are assumed to be harmful, so the drive to eliminate the problem, particularly when the power asymmetry is in the perceiver’s favor, is likely to be strong. In social-identity terms, the degenerate is, of course, an out-group. Its weaknesses provide the cognitive alternatives to compete with a realistic sense of probable success. Once again an image change may evolve once conflict actually occurs. The leaders of a state challenging another deemed a degenerate are blinded by the image to the importance of information indicating that resistance is occurring. However, a substantial portion of the aggressive state’s population may recognize the resistance and come to view the degenerate as a diabolical enemy instead. Threat from the victim’s power and actual ability to resist replaces a perception of opportunity, and the image changes. An extreme example of this stereotypical view was that of Saddam Hussein of Iraq in his confrontation with the United States and its allies. Disregarding a large number of opportunities to disengage from this highly asymmetrical situation without a disastrous loss of face, Saddam apparently believed to the end that there would be a loss of will to engage on the part of his weaponry-superior opponents. More typical was the operating worldview of Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese military. They at least did possess formidable war capabilities, and all saw a reality that made plausible the achievement of their aggressive ends. In the non–nation state, a willingness to risk making major sacrifices for the grandeur or world influence exercised by a territorial community that is a compound of several identity communities is unlikely to develop. The regime speaking for that territorial community may well lack the decisional latitude to consider any such adventures. To do so would be to risk the disaffection of one or several of the identity communities that constitute the territorial community. Even in those situations in which there is what we call “core-community nationalism,” the need to maintain some unity of purpose will restrain the adventurous inclinations of members of the core community who may indeed respond favorably to policy suggestions that would serve grandeur interests. It follows that the most aggressive manifestations of nationalistic behavior—those associated with advancing grandeur interests and a vastly increased influence in global affairs—are unlikely to appear in non–nation states.

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The colonial image. A second stereotypical image associated with perception of opportunity for achieving nationalistic values occurs when an opportunity is identified to gain control over another polity perceived as significantly inferior in capability and as lacking the cultural attributes that could reduce that inferiority. The nationalistic values advanced would once again be those of grandeur and of enhancing to a major degree the influence exercised in world affairs. There will, of course, be other values served, such as the satisfaction of economic vested interests and/or of religious and ideological messianic interests. But in the nationalist era, the determining force of nationalism is likely to be great. The stereotype toward which a polity perceiving such an opportunity will incline we call the “colonial stereotype”—the reverse of the imperial image. The colonial image has the following characteristics: the target polity is viewed dichotomously in terms of its political elite, with one section seen as behaving moderately and responsibly as manifest in a willingness to collaborate with the imperial power. The other section, in contrast, is viewed as behaving in an agitating and irresponsible manner, opposing the imperial purpose sometimes to the point of allying with and serving the interests of enemies of the imperial power. The moderate, responsible section is motivated to support what is perceived as the civilizing mission of the imperial power. The decisional structure of the moderate section is differentiated, and the decisional style is one reflecting the tutorial efforts of the imperial bureaucracy. The agitating section, seeking to end the imperial relationship, is seen as monolithic in decisional structure and cunningly destructive in decisional style. It is particularly inclined to make the effort to mobilize the most alert elements in a largely inert general populace. The imperial power capability advantage rests on the “immaturity” of the colonial population as manifest in an inability effectively to recruit, organize, and lead a military force and to make effective use of advanced weaponry. Those citizens of the imperial power who do not share this essentially contemptuous view will be regarded as having “gone native” and lost perspective. In this era, in which formal colonial relationships have largely come to an end, the colonial image continues to be applied to essentially neocolonial relationships in which the imperial power exercises indirect control, operating through a collaborating elite in a formally independent state. Members of the imperial-power polity, being high-status, will experience disgust and contempt but also pity in emotions related to this image. Action predispositions range from wanting to avoid contamination through contact with the inferior to moving forcefully against them to punish bad behavior. A hypothetical illustration would be the imperialist’s reaction to human rights abuses by those deemed inferior—the acknowledgment that the action is horrible but that is simply what uncivilized people do; and the

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only hope is to maintain the colonial relations and continue to try to civilize. The action is looked upon with disgust and contempt, but it is what is to be expected, not cause to withdraw from the relationship. The action may provoke angry punishment as well, part of the continuation of efforts to civilize the child. As in the case of the degenerate image, contempt can lead to dehumanization and extreme violence or even genocide. But contempt in this case should be modified by the propensity to feel pity. When faced with rebellion that is threatening to the status quo, the emotional and behavioral predisposition by the superior, or imperial, power is anger, close attentiveness, and repression of the actions of the rebellious group. This was clearly the case during the Cold War whenever a country perceived as a colonial was identified as taking actions that were too independent of either superpower or that may threaten the balance of power between the superpowers, whether intentionally or not. But in the absence of that kind of context, and in the era of neocolonial domination, there is little a colonial country can do to seriously threaten the imperial power. Consequently, in conflict cases, policy preferences will be more for nonviolent repression in the form of economic sanctions, isolation, refusal to give trade preferences, and so on. The actions and demands of the colonial country are still considered illegitimate and inconsistent with the goals of the perceiver, and responsibility for the conflict is attributed to the colonial country. In the aftermath of the Cold War the number of countries perceived by Americans as colonials is persistently large but declining. Several Arab regimes that joined the U.S.-led coalition to force an Iraqi evacuation of Kuwait were viewed very much in terms of this stereotype. Indeed, possibly the only exception was the Syrian regime led by Hafez al-Assad. The case of Jordan is particularly instructive. The regime of King Hussein had been seen since 1957 in accordance with this stereotype. But in 1990, when the invasion of Kuwait took place, the Jordanian population overwhelmingly sympathized with the Iraqi action and was hostile to the U.S. response. Hussein simply lacked the decisional latitude to take action opposed to the wishes of so large a section of his population, and he adopted a stance of benign neutrality. In the eyes of the Bush administration, Hussein’s failure to join the coalition was an uncharacteristic act of irresponsibility. For some years following this choice, the king was treated more in the agitator category, as was Yasser Arafat, who made the same choice and for the same reason: the popularity of Saddam’s perceived challenge to Western imperialism was so overwhelming within the Palestinian community that Arafat lacked the decisional latitude to join with Egypt and Saudi Arabia in alliance with the United States. Both Hussein and Arafat would regain their former status with the U.S. government when they behaved

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with “moderation” and “responsibility” by associating with the U.S.brokered Arab-Israeli peace process. A major area in which a nationalism-associated perceived opportunity exists in the post–Cold War era is that of a perception on the part of a national community that state independence and/or unity can be achieved. That perception is likely to associate with an altered capability image— both of one’s own polity and of the polity or polities that have stood in opposition to that independence or unity. The perceptual movement is in the direction of seeing capability-sufficiency for achieving the goals of national independence and unity. This perception has a parallel in countries wherein colonial images of others have been dominant. Sectors within the imperial power will see the claims and demands of the colonial upstart as justified. In this case the image is not at the stereotypical extreme, and policy preferences will be for conciliation and “ambivalent tolerance” (Duckitt, 1994: 108).

Conclusion The goal of this chapter was to present the psychological underpinnings of political perception and nationalist behavior. In the process, we moved from the psychological laboratory to international politics and the behaviors of nation states in the context of particular perceptual images. The realities from history demonstrate the extent to which findings from the laboratory are relevant to the real world and that political psychological frameworks can be constructed to utilize psychology in explaining politics.

Table 4.3

Images and Policy Predispositions

Image

General Policy Predisposition

Enemy Barbarian

Wary suspicion, containment Fear, form alliances

Imperialist

When domination is stable: fear, avoid conflict, submit

Colonial

Paternalistic policy guidance and direction Contempt, mobilize for competition Derogate, isolate

Degenerate Rogue

Policy Predisposition in Intense Conflicts Hostility, defense Preemptive strikes, precipitate alliance intervention (potential for genocide) When conflict is unstable: anger, shame, struggle for liberation Most commonly nonviolent repression Disgust, offensive aggression Hostility, violent repression (potential for genocide)

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We end with Table 4.3, summarizing the discussion of the policy preferences attached to images.

Notes 1. Groups can be created and destroyed. They can be created when smaller identities are collapsed into a new identity; members can adopt group-related roles; the group’s political norms are articulated; members see the group as an in-group clearly distinct from other groups in society (which enhances self-esteem and loyalty); a common enemy is present; and common goals are shared by members of the group. Similarly, groups can successfully merge, and individuals can be admitted into an existing group when out-group members being brought into the group are individuated; crosscutting categorization schemes are encouraged; and situational cues associated with the old group membership are removed (Haunschild, Moreland, and Murrell, 1994). 2. Social identity is distinct from personal identity in that “social identity contains social identifications: identity-contingent self-descriptions deriving from membership in social categories (nationality, sex, race, occupation, sports teams, and more short-lived and transient group memberships). Personal identity contains personal identifications: self-descriptions which are ‘more personal in nature and that usually denote specific attributes of the individual’” (Gergen 1971: 62) (e.g., idiosyncratic descriptions of self that are essentially tied to and emerge from close and enduring interpersonal relationships; see Hogg and Abrams, 1988: 25). 3. This list was developed by John Levine for a group of scholars examining group loyalty under the auspices of the Research Training Group, Mershon Center, Ohio State University, in 1994. 4. It is generally argued that these images are universal but that not all of them appear everywhere. Americans, for example, do not really have an imperialist image because there is no such thing in the international environment experienced by Americans, that is, a country superior in capability. People have images that are cognitively useful. If a particular type of state does not exist in the environment a society experiences, the image will not be part of the people’s worldview. 5. Izard (1977: 95) argues that hostility is the “experiential/motivational underpinning of aggression” that does not inevitably lead to violence. Instead, anger, disgust, and contempt “interact in hostility [and thereby] determine the likelihood and nature of aggression.” Hatred is the same.

5 Nationalistic Values and the Capability Base of Nation States

In Chapter 4 we examined causes and patterns of behavior among nationalists. In this chapter we shift levels of analysis to the nation state itself. The power of nation states is related to nationalist values. The central argument is that nationalism carries with it a package of values producing clear predispositions in terms of identification of threats and opportunities to the nation and responses to those threats and opportunities. As a consequence of the luxury and curse of a population holding these values and giving primary loyalty to the nation, nation states have a unique combination of capability factors that enhance the state’s ability to carry out the policy preferences described in Chapter 4. Several cases are used to compare nation states and non–nation states in terms of values, behavior patterns, and capabilities.

National Values and the Value System In this book, values are considered to be choice patterns, choices involving diverse elements of social organization such as customs, political beliefs, religions, and the like. This definition is similar to Clyde Kluckhohn’s (1951: 40) wherein values are “a conception, explicit or implicit, distinctive of an individual or characteristic of a group, of the desirable which influences the selection from available modes, means and ends of action.” Nationalist values are those values that associate closely with an intense identification with a national community. They can become highly salient, especially when there is a strongly perceived threat to the national community or an opportunity for that community. On such occasions, nationalist values will be major determinants of overall political behavior. But even at such moments in time there will be other critically important values 123

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that will also impact strongly on behavior, and the behavioral outcome will reflect a balancing and reconciliation of these major determinants. The outcome will point to the emergence of a predisposition to choose among available policy options in a manner that reflects an implicit formula compatible with the value reconciliation that has occurred. When nationalist values are highly salient, their impact on behavior will be of critical importance, but the form that impact takes will vary with the overall systemic context. For example, for Iranian nationalists in the early 1950s, nationalism was associated with liberal tolerance and freedom. For fascists in the 1930s, it was associated with order and authority, but in combination with placing a high value on radical change in the form of influence redistribution. The point is, the policy impact of strongly held nationalist values will not be self-evident and can be made only within the context of a value system. The Intensity and Salience of Nationalist Values Values that relate directly to the primary identity community at times have an exceptional influence on an individual’s political behavior. For nationalists, a strongly perceived threat to values relating to the national community will generate in individual and collective behavior an affective response of unparalleled intensity. When an intense threat to values relating to the identity community is perceived, a concern for dealing with that threat will be a dominant factor in the political behavior of the citizens of a nation state and, to a considerable degree, will subsume the influence of other values. Only when the perceived threat to the national community is reduced are other values likely to regain a determining role in behavior. When the citizens of a nation state are generally satisfied with conditions relating to the national community, the salience of nationalist values for the major policy decisions of the day is likely to be low. But overnight, especially if a threat is suddenly perceived to the nation state, the salience of nationalist values increases, and nationalism will become the primary behavioral determinant. This behavioral pattern for nation states appears to be ineluctable. Even liberal internationalists committed to movement in the direction of universalism are likely to behave nationalistically if they perceive a serious threat to the national community in which they were socialized. The rise in European hostility toward immigrants in the 1990s, particularly those from Third World Islamic countries, reflects this pattern of a strong reaction toward threats to values associated with the nation. Surveys demonstrate the growth of the perception of threat: beliefs that immigrants decrease employment opportunities and increase crime are exaggerations of reality. There is a general rejection of aspects of multiculturalism, such as permitting instruction of immigrants in native

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languages or the idea that foreign cultures can enrich one’s nation. In 1992, for example, two-thirds of Danes surveyed rejected the former possibility, while two-thirds of Italians surveyed doubted the latter (Betz, 1994). In a 1990 survey, 45 percent of Austrians agreed with a statement describing foreigners as a threat to the Austrian way of life and identity (p. 95). In a 1991 survey, 24 percent of German respondents agreed at least partially with the statement that “we should take care to keep the German people pure and prevent the mixing of peoples,” and in 1992 37 percent agreed that “it would get to the point that Germans have to defend themselves against foreigners” (pp. 95–96). This trend is occurring among a population much larger than the fringe, right-wing, skinhead gangs responsible for attacks on foreigners in several European countries. In fact, public opinion in Germany is increasingly and overwhelmingly hostile toward those hate groups and their violence (Fijalkowski, 1996). It is also not understandable by simple reference to the flood of refugees entering Europe since the late 1980s. In fact, Germany, Italy, and Denmark all need continuing supplies of immigrant labor due to low birthrates. As Jürgen Fijalkowski notes, “while the number of potential migrants may exceed any demand that Germany and other European countries will have, immigration pressures pose a problem only in the distant and unknowable future. Currently, migrants are not overwhelming western Europe” (p. 143). The reaction is thus not one toward a tangible threat to economic, political, or social well-being posed by immigration but to traditional national values, which are threatened by many sources in Europe today. The immigrants are a scapegoat, one easily recognized and easily associated with alien values. The intensity of nationalism and its impact on behavior will vary sharply depending on the context of the international power environment. The prevailing view within national communities in Eastern Europe during the Cold War was that they were incapable of achieving genuine independence for their state organizations because of the opposition of the Soviet superpower to such a move (Krooth and Vladimirovitz, 1993). These communities thus lacked the option to give expression to their national values, and those values hence lacked salience in the environmental setting. There were nationalistically based impulses such as the Berlin Uprising in 1953, the Hungarian Revolution and the Polish October, both in 1956, the Prague Spring in 1968, and the Solidarity movement in Poland in the early 1980s. But these were defeated, and the regimes in Eastern Europe were not granted legitimacy by the people for any lengthy period (J. F. Brown, 1991: 34). Indeed, such was the dissociation between the state and nation that there was serious questioning as to whether the intensity of attachment to the national community had dissipated. Even in West Germany there were many who had come to believe that their terminal community had

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ceased to include the people of East Germany. But as the unthinkable began occurring in the form of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the option of independence was suddenly available even to national communities in the former Russian empire. At that point, nationalist values gained high salience, and it was quickly apparent that the intensity of attachment to nationalist values was in most instances at the primary level (Bugajski, 1993). Characteristically, nationalistic behavior gave definition to the general behavioral thrust. There was a broad consensus in the Arab world as well that Arabs lacked the capability to achieve genuine independence for a state organization resting on Arab national communities, a conviction that predated the Cold War. Indeed, there was great uncertainty regarding the membership of and the intensity of identity with such communities, including, most importantly, an Arab national community with aspirations for establishing an Arab state embracing the entire Arabic-speaking population (Antonius, 1938; Chalala, 1987; Malik, 1952). There was a broadly accepted view among politically participant Arabs that the existing Arab states were creations of European imperialism and, as such, colonial entities that were reflective of European imperial rivalries rather than the identity aspirations of the Arab people (Tibi, 1990; Dawisha, 1994). Then, as the Cold War developed, the Arab state system was frozen essentially along the lines drawn by European imperialism. But within that system, a few regimes did advocate movement toward the creation of an Arab nation state based on an Arab national community that was an amalgam of several of the territorial communities in existing Arab states. By the late 1950s, those regimes had come to look to the Soviet Union as their protector against perceived U.S. efforts to replace them with regimes that would accept fully the frozen status quo—within which Arab national values lacked salience. Arab national values were highly salient in the Egypt of Gamal Abdel Nasser and its Syrian ally (L. C. Brown, 1984; Nafaa, 1987; Tibi, 1990; Dawisha, 1994). They were joined after the 1958 coup in Baghdad by Iraq, and briefly there was a near power equivalence in the region of those responding to Arab national values and those accepting the status quo. This ended abruptly, however, when Anwar Sadat took Egypt, well and again the most important of Arab states, into the American alliance (Ajami, 1987; Nafaa, 1987). Then, as the Soviet Union began disintegrating, the few communities in which Arab national values continued to have some salience were consumed with a sense of inefficacy. Their quiescence was interpreted by outside observers as reflecting a loss of appeal for Arab national values that in turn suggested at most a low intensity of identity with a broad ethnic Arab community. The conclusion that Arab nationalist values were held, if at all, at a low level of intensity by all but a fringe of the Arab public was put into ques-

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tion by the popular reaction to the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Arab nationalist values were suddenly highly salient and proved to be held with great intensity by large sections of the Arabicspeaking population—but not all. While demonstrations supporting Saddam Hussein as a symbol of resistance to Western imperialism occurred in capital cities in several Arab countries, in the end Arab soldiers did fight against their fellow Arab soldiers from Iraq. This episode provided a basis for constructing a profile of those parts of the population that were and were not behaving nationalistically. This nationalistic response, however, was briefly possible only because the supporting public believed the Arabs had a capability sufficient to allow them to see as available the option of openly confronting those—and that meant in particular the United States—who stood opposed to Arab national aspirations. The catastrophic defeat Saddam Hussein was to suffer destroyed this illusion of capability sufficiency to pursue Arab nationalist objectives (R. Owen, 1994). The immediate consequence was a reduction to very low levels of the salience of national values. But the episode, viewed broadly, suggested that outside observers had seriously underestimated the strength of an identity with the broad ethnic Arab identity. Typology of Nationalist Values Extrapolating from the discussion in Chapter 4 of group identity and loyalty, a typology of nationalist values in the operating value systems of most nation states in this era includes the following: placing a high value in the unity, the independence, the dignity, and the prestige of the state and the material well-being of the members of the national community. The salience of four of these values—unity, independence, dignity, and prestige—is likely to depend on the existence of a perceived threat to the value or a perceived opportunity to achieve the value. A perceived opportunity to achieve independence or a perceived threat to independence, for example, could lead to that value virtually absorbing the national decisional agenda. But in the absence of either threat to or opportunity for independence, that value will lack salience and essentially can be ignored as a determinant of an implicit formula for indicating the outlines of a generalized policy path. A perceived opportunity for giving expression to the national-unity value would likely produce a more equivocal response. For example, if the opportunity developed to bring members of the national community living under a foreign sovereignty into one’s national jurisdiction, albeit at a very high price, there almost certainly would be value conflict; the outcome of that conflict would reflect the circumstances, that is, the range of other values that become suddenly more salient, and the overall composition of the value system.

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German unification at the end of the Cold War is an instructive example. During the Cold War the option of unification seemed to many Germans, in both West and East, unavailable on capability grounds. As mentioned above, this inability to consider unification led to an uncertainty as to the composition of the German community. Was it the territorial communities of both Germanies? Or were there two German communities— the West German and East German territorial communities? If the answer proved to be the latter, both West Germany and East Germany could be considered distinctive nation states. If not, then the nationalist value of unification was lacking in salience on grounds of capability inadequacy but might well have retained its high intensity. The answer was quickly and dramatically apparent as the Soviet Union, in the early stages of disintegration, surrendered its control in Eastern Europe. Almost overnight the option of reunification was available to and eagerly grabbed by the German people. After years of separation, West Germans, particularly after the 1960s, became less and less interested in East Germany and unification. West Germany became prosperous on its own, defined its security in terms of the NATO alliance and, in 1969, began a process of neutralizing conflict with Eastern Europe, a process that in effect signaled acceptance of the status quo (Grosser, 1992; Mahncke, 1992). Public-opinion polls taken in West Germany provide empirical support of the decline in hope and expectation for unification. Clearly, the years of separation had worn away at the idea of West and East Germany as one nation. In 1986, a poll found that one-third of West Germans polled regarded East Germany as a foreign land, and this was particularly the case among those in the younger age bracket (fourteen to twenty-nine), where 51 percent regarded East Germany as foreign (Plock, 1993: 114). In addition, only 9 percent of respondents believed that they would see a united Germany in their lifetimes (p. 114). Nevertheless, in a 1987 poll, 70–80 percent of respondents regarded themselves to be advocates of reunification (p. 114). The speed of the actual reunification demonstrates the extent to which the desire for a united German nation was merely sleeping, not dead, in both East and West Germany. It took only months from the disintegration of East Germany in October 1989, to Helmut Kohl’s ten-point plan for unification in November, to formal unification on October 3, 1990. Importantly, the initial push for unification during this time came from demonstrators in East Germany. The value of material well-being of a national community is the most likely of the nationalist values to be persistently salient but also the most ambiguous. We assume that non–nation states’ concern for the well-being of sections of the citizenry who are not members of one’s own first-intensity identity community is likely to be far less intense than that for the members

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of the national community in nation states. Such a concern projects as a willingness to make sacrifices for enhanced well-being of relatively deprived sections of the community. But the definition of what constitutes an unacceptable material status for a section of the community would reflect a reconciliation of a range of salient values in the operating value system. For example, is an egalitarian value salient and of high intensity? If so, the combination of the nationalistic concern for the general welfare and egalitarianism would ensure that a powerful case would be made for a fairly generous description of what constitutes an unacceptable material status. The final outcome, however, would reflect the balancing of these and other values that would be salient for the issue. In the immediate post–Cold War era, conflict relating to nationalism has been primarily a consequence of the aspirations for independence and unity on the part of several would-be nation states. But the really devastating conflict relating to nationalism in the twentieth century—World War II—was the consequence of competition for preeminence in the exercise of influence in interstate relations and in the quest for national grandeur—an extreme manifestation of the nationalist value of prestige. The Cold War, in sharp contrast, was a conflict in which one of the two primary actors, the Soviet Union, was a multinational state that viewed the nationalism of its component nationalities as a threat to internal security. Its behavior bore little resemblance to that of the World War II fascist regimes, which were driven by the quest for influence and grandeur. For the generation that was socialized in the Cold War era, therefore, an era in which nationalism was associated with aggression at the international system level and was a primary determinant of the conflict agenda, was old history and a distant memory. However, the ingredients that made possible a nationalistic world conflict are present in the post–Cold War era and might well result in a World War II–type nationalist conflict, although now in a nuclear setting. The nationalist values of dignity and prestige have the surface ring of a nonthreatening benevolence. That judgment might be fair in a situation in which a nation state understands that it lacks the capability to expand its exercise of influence in world affairs and, at the same time, perceives little or no threat to its security and to the range of influence being exercised. Even in such a situation, however, the perception that the nation state has been slighted could lead to conflict. The perception of a loss of face, for example, might well lead to the threat of retaliation, and that in turn could lead to an escalating crisis that may be difficult to contain. More serious in the generation of conflict in response to the loss of prestige and to wounded dignity is the phenomenon of a declining worldpower status. This occurs most commonly as a result of a gradual, almost imperceptible, relative decline in the state capability base. The declining nation state is likely to be confronted suddenly by a realization that the

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range of influence it once exercised in world affairs is being challenged seriously. Its public is likely to regard the challenge as an assault on the national dignity and an intolerable blow to the national prestige. Voices inevitably will be raised demanding a redressing of the grievances; and depending on the intensity with which the values of dignity and prestige are held, the government may be compelled to take actions that could lead to a serious crisis. British and French responses to the loss of empire after World War II illustrate this pattern. Even more serious is the situation in which there is a perceived opportunity to expand significantly a nation state’s influence. That perception may rest on the judgment that the state government in the past has lacked the will and determination to play the role in world affairs that it has the capability base to play, or on the judgment that the relative capability picture has shifted sharply in the nation state’s favor and the state has gained the potential to increase the range of influence exercised. In either case, voices inevitably will be raised insisting that the range of policy options now available has broadened sharply and arguing that the newly available options be accepted. The decision to accept or reject these demands will be a reflection of the relative weight the value of national prestige carries in the operating system of values. Political realism, especially as presented in the writings of Hans Morgenthau (1966), argues that (in the middle term at least) the policy options adopted would conform to the state power-potential. The rationale for this policy package would take the form of what Morgenthau called a state’s “nationalistic universalism” (pp. 321–331). This would amount to a presentation of the state’s national interests—defined in terms of power—in a form that would have universal appeal and hence would effectively conceal the national power purpose of the perpetrator.1 At certain moments of crisis, when nationalistic values are threatened or confronted with major opportunity, the behavioral response can appear to be almost exclusively nationalism-associated, a response that reflects the exceptional intensity of affectivity when the fortunes of the terminal identity community are in question. A classic example of the perception of opportunity is expansion by Nazi Germany, and the result was World War II. Nationalism and National Normative Systems The argument that the individual’s behavior will reflect a balancing of highintensity values that are salient at a particular moment in time should be supplemented with the following corollary: nationalism is best viewed as an important component of the overall sociopolitical normative system that characterizes a society at a particular moment in time. Nationalism is not the entirety of a country’s political values, but it is linked with a variety of

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ideologies or broader value systems. The policy process, both foreign and domestic, results in an outcome that reflects a balancing and reconciliation of those norms, with their varying intensities, that constitute the normative system (see, e.g., the discussion of Germany in Elias, 1996: 154–170). When that system includes norms associated with nationalist values, nationalism can be expected to be a major factor in determining the outcome. However, describing that outcome in terms of a typology of nationalism exaggerates the importance of nationalist values relative to the broad range of values that constitute the normative system and disguises the complexity of the balancing process. It leads as well to the kind of reification of nationalism that is implicit in much of the literature on nationalism. The list (presented above) of behavioral patterns toward which a polity may be predisposed when the members of that polity identify at a primary intensity level with a national community amounted to a conscious effort to disaggregate from overall sociopolitical behavior those elements that relate directly to a concern for the independence, the welfare, the security, the dignity, the prestige, and the grandeur of the national community. Reaggregating through an effort to look at nationalism in the context of an overall normative and value system operative in dealing with challenges is necessary to understand the specifics of a country’s foreign policy. We have no thought of being able to describe or really to understand the process of reconciling and balancing a complex of values and norms, each with its own behavioral predispositional direction, that are salient for dealing with a particular challenge. The most we can do is to identify elements of a value or normative system and then to examine the policy outcome that in part is reflective of their interactions. To illustrate, we suggest a propositional picture of ingredients of the normative system of the United States that are held with sufficient intensity to be significant factors in the policy process, both domestic and foreign. In addition to nationalism, they may include the following: liberalism, which we see as a commitment to and tolerance for the free expression of the individual personality; humanitarianism, a commitment to individual and community dignity and material well-being; nonauthoritarianism, a commitment to a sharply limited exercise of official control; democracy, an acceptance of the right of citizens to participate actively in the political process; progressiveness, an openness to change and a willingness to depart from traditional norms; nonascription, a preference for achievement based on individual efforts rather than on familial influence; and laissez-faireism, with restricted regulation.2 The assumption is that each of these factors, including nationalism, predisposes a polity in behavioral directions and that actual policy outcomes reflect a balancing of these predispositions as well as those associated with several vested interests—economic, governmental (including military), ethnic, and personal.

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Given a normative system such as the above, some foreign policy behavioral patterns related to nationalism can be expected. Support for the doctrine of national self-determination, for example, and an opposition to imperial control of another national community could be anticipated given the strength of U.S. national, liberal, and humanitarian norms. What follows is a description of and some tentative judgments regarding the importance of nationalism and other salient ingredients in a particular outcome: the general direction of U.S. policy in the early post–Cold War era. A major expressed goal for U.S. policy in the post–Cold War era was that of advancing a movement throughout the world toward so-called freemarket democracy. It is a policy that appears to have been in remarkable harmony with much of the American normative system outlined above, although its listing does not reflect the newness of this extreme rejection of moderate regulation. Furthermore, the policy of prodding the world toward a free-market democracy was of a kind with policies working toward nuclear nonproliferation, human rights, eliminating terrorism, and advancing the Middle East peace process. The United States, the only remaining superpower, to all appearances was exercising the leadership consonant with its power position and was doing so with an almost messianic purpose. Operation Desert Storm, which involved U.S. orchestration of much of the world, including NATO and the United Nations, to reverse the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, was seen as giving full expression to the goal of national self-determination. This was also the view of the U.S. role in Bosnia. The rescue operation in Somalia appeared to serve a humanitarian goal. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among the United States, Mexico, and Canada was presented in terms of a major advance for freemarket democracy. The operation in Haiti was seen as being in harmony with a broad spectrum of American norms. There was in all of this little surface manifestation of nationalism. In fact, the policies were presented as reflecting a demeanor of national selflessness—an effort by the United States to secure a new and better world order and a willingness to make significant sacrifices for that purpose. But was that pattern really one without a strong American nationalist dimension? A case could be made that U.S. policy was in harmony with the above normative system; it was not nationalistic but promoted increased global collective action through international institutions. But instead, the U.S. controls over the actions of the United Nations, for example, were so substantial as to bring into question the legitimacy of the UN organization for much of the world. American primacy in Desert Storm was unconcealed. Pleas from even cooperating Arab leaders that an “Arab solution” first be explored were treated as patently absurd. Demands from Third World regimes that the nuclear nonproliferation policy be accompanied by an explicit timetable for nuclear disarmament by the United States and other nuclear powers were rather rudely ignored.

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The rationale put forth inside the United States for this obtrusive diplomacy was that it was a function of accepting the responsibility of world leadership. But the widespread judgment outside the United States—that it was more a reflection of American nationalist behavior—is surely worth considering. Indeed, the nationalist value seen activated and highly determining the above outcome was that of national grandeur. The Americans’ insistence on primacy in the Middle East peace process, in Balkan diplomacy and war, in the nonproliferation campaign, and in the human rights campaign was widely viewed in the world as manifestations of nationalistic arrogance. Since the prevailing norms, including those relating to the nation, are presented in terms of a normative system, it is possible to conclude that both general views of the normative underlay of U.S. policy are correct to some degree, that is, the behavior was inspired by the panoply of American values. The Somalia intervention to provide relief for mass starvation was an instructive case. A humanitarian concern clearly was present, but so was an interest in demonstrating U.S. leadership in the new world order. The latter we see as reflecting a sense that national prestige was at issue; the United States had to demonstrate the responsibility of a great national power. Assuming leadership over and orchestrating a major relief program were nationalistically satisfying. But then the case became muddled. The United States found itself attempting to deal with a complex of identities— national, clan, and subclan—and leaders with little concern for liberal, democratic, and humanitarian norms. No easy formula for a solution compatible with the U.S. normative system could be found, and the operation became increasingly expensive. Then, when there were American casualties and some horrifying examples of brutality against Americans, whatever nationalist enthusiasm that had been generated rapidly dissipated. We classify the case as an example of limited nationalist salience. National pride and prestige were of sufficient importance to justify a significant operation but not a major military operation with attendant casualty figures. No really compelling vested interest appeared, and mass starvation in Somalia, because of improved weather conditions, in large part ceased for the moment. Thus, an argument for continuing the operation did not emerge. Fortunately, an exit plan could be developed that involved minimal damage to prestige. The above analysis follows the path suggested here for estimating the importance of nationalism as a foreign policy determinant. It is based on the assumption that any specific foreign policy line is the product, essentially nonconscious, of a reconciliation of a large number of determinants, only one of which may be nationalism. Thus, the analysis of the policy outcome inescapably is the base from which inferential judgments regarding the importance of the determinant of nationalism and other determinants must be made. The nature of the balancing process and the weightings of the determinants can be dealt with only propositionally.

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Nationalism and fascism. Whereas the American example is of nationalism in the context of American liberalism, nationalism and its relationship to the rise of fascist dictatorships are more often the subject of inquiry. Carlton Hayes’s (1931) preoccupation with the relationship of nationalism and totalitarian populism has something of an archaic ring in the post–Cold War era. Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese militarists who occupied center stage in World War II tend to be viewed as major actors in a very different historical era. Yet Hitler and Mussolini, in particular, were exemplary leaders in the era of mass politics, and the phenomenon of fascism with which they were associated is likely to recur, possibly many times over. When it does so, it is likely to be in close relationship with nationalism. It is important, therefore, that in our description of the behavioral impact of nationalism we focus explicitly on fascism. The defining characteristic of the phenomenon of fascism is the effort by an aspiring elite to establish and maintain totalitarian control over a society through the agency of state terror and a demagogic manipulation of symbols. The search for a doctrinal definition of fascism is likely to fail. Wolfgang Benz (1990), examining elements of Hitler’s fascism, for example, identifies some imagery that had a useful popular appeal at that particular time and place and techniques for using that imagery in National Socialist rule. As he notes, the “ideology of National Socialism was meager in the extreme, in essence confining itself to several stereotypes of the enemy . . . ; the propagation of Social Darwinism and abstruse racial and hereditary theories; and to the postulates of an aggressive all-German nationalism” (p. 273). Fascism quite simply is not an ideology if ideology is meant as a system of values that is translatable into a program of action and an associated worldview. There was no Karl Marx of fascism. The unifying feature of fascist movements is in the nature of the symbols used to mobilize mass support. They are consistently symbols with a romantic-collectivist appeal: the great leader, heroism, war, victory, world leadership, demonic enemies (internal and external), and a glorified projection of prevailing identity communities. Those communities in the mass-politics era are most likely to be national or religious-sectarian or a complementary compound of both. Nationalism, in other words, is likely to be a central feature in the overall romantic-collectivist appeal. Fascist movements demonstrate the powerful attraction of the nation and its glorification as group identity. Particularly in conditions of social upheaval and misery—as in Germany after World War I but across Europe even before World War I as industrialization was accompanied by increasing mass political awareness and participation—identification with the nation state and patriotism were actively promoted as a means of preventing political unrest from erupting. The emphasis on the group, communal needs and norms, and the safety and security

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provided by the group makes fascism a difficult competitor for liberal political movements that emphasize individual liberties. As Alan Cassels (1975: 8) notes: Although the nineteenth-century power structure might regard nationalism as a safeguard against revolution, it was a Frankenstein’s monster that was conjured up. Popular nationalism was subversive of almost all nineteenth-century values, fostering intolerance, emotionalism, and violence at the expense of compromise, debate and reason.

Conservative traditionalists were naturally inclined toward an organic view of political society, and some among them recognized the potential appeal of this organic view, translated symbolically, to the emerging politically participant mass public. But these conservative traditionalists wanted essentially to restore to power an old elite, and this objective limited the parameters within which they could exercise a demagogic appeal. Fascism offered an appeal to traditional values, glorification of the group as a nation, and opportunity for individual success based on merit rather than social status (Hamilton, 1971: xxi). A successful fascist leadership was more likely to be representative of a counterelite, unencumbered by established interests and with an unambiguous objective of replacing the prevailing elite. Then, with totalitarian control having been achieved, the counterelite would develop into a new established elite. It follows that the likelihood of success for such a counterelite would be in direct proportion to the weakness of the established elite, as would develop in the event of a catastrophic economic crisis. The main thrust of nationalist appeal in such circumstances is compensatory. In periods in which individual aspirations have suffered calamitous reversals, an aspirational transference occurs to the national community, with the individual gaining vicarious satisfaction from great nationalist achievements. The new leadership, it follows, is likely to be predisposed to engage in policies that would enhance the grandeur of the nation state or at least to expand its influence in world affairs. Such a predisposition associates particularly with a leadership that has achieved power as a consequence of a crisis sufficiently severe to upset the prevailing elite and, with it, much of the prevailing normative system, thereby eliminating or weakening customary restraints on aggressive behavior. However, a fascist movement may achieve success in a far more incremental manner and without the replacement of an established elite. This is particularly likely to be the case in societies in which the movement toward mass politics has been proceeding at a rapid pace but is not yet complete. It was apparent in societies such as Argentina, Spain, and Japan in pre–World War II years. There, the patterns toward establishing fascism differed significantly from those seen in Italy and Germany. Of these three

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societies, only Japan clearly meets the criteria for our definition of fascism, that is, an aspiring elite seeking to establish totalitarian control exercised through the agencies of state terror and a demagogic manipulation of symbols. The Japanese military, which was the core element in the ruling elite, represented the aspiring elite. It was a solidly established institution with deep cultural roots rather than a vanguard of a counterelite. To be sure, there was an elite alteration under way, but there was nothing comparable to the elite replacement that occurred in Germany and Italy. Similarly, much of the normative system remained in effect. The traditional control factor, later referred to as normative habitual, was a significant element of the overall system of control, and that was certainly not the case in the radical change regimes in Germany and Italy. Still, the level of control exercised was totalitarian, and the primary means of control were state terror and a demagogic manipulation of romantic symbols. Yet even here there was a difference. The Japanese internal propaganda effort was strikingly less obtrusive. The close association of fascism and nationalism is obvious and has been the basis for strong negative attitudes toward nationalism. It is in fact unlikely that an elite seeking to maintain totalitarian control in part through the manipulation of symbols could do so if nationalist symbols were not available. Furthermore, it is in association with fascism that an aggressive advancement of national grandeur interests and an insistence on the exercise of greater influence in the world arena are most likely to occur. Yet it is important to keep in mind that an association of nationalism with liberal humanitarianism, for example, is a far more frequent occurrence, and the outcome of the action far more acceptable.

Nationalism and State Capability In this section we make a case for the proposition that a nation state will have a significant power advantage compared with a non–nation state, all other factors being equal. Just how significant that advantage will be depends on the type of non–nation state being compared. The advantage over a non–nation state characterized by core-community nationalism, for example, will be less significant than that over a non–nation state characterized as multiethnic. To make our case, we explore the impact of nationalism on state capability from several perspectives. Nationalism, Legitimacy, and the Internal Control System Amitai Etzioni, in his A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations (1961), advances a scheme for the assessment of the authoritative control

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of complex organizations. He looks at the control picture in terms of four dimensions. The four, if suitably weighted, can provide the basis for constructing an analytic momentary picture of the operating control system of an organization. The Etzioni scheme can be adapted for effective application to the state and can provide a momentary picture of the authoritative control system operating in a state.3 The scheme, in other words, provides a means for describing the bases of a regime’s power position and for evaluating the stability of that power position. The first control dimension is the utilitarian. It refers to the degree to which the material aspirations and the participation aspirations of the different elements of the citizenry are being satisfied. The second dimension, coercion, refers to the extent to which coercive instruments are being applied to produce citizen acquiescence. The third dimension, normative habitual, refers to the extent to which a habitual acceptance of governing norms provides the basis for governmental control. The fourth dimension, normative active, refers to the extent to which a government resorts to the active manipulation of symbols to generate and to stabilize citizen support. The particular operative control system will vary depending on the societal characteristics of the state. A state resting on a traditional society, for example, exercises control in large measure by the habitual acceptance of governing norms. The point is essentially definitional. The citizens are socialized to accept traditional norms and expect to live essentially as have their ancestors. The dimension of coercive control focuses on individuals within the traditional community who are viewed as posing a challenge to the established authorities. Should the challengers be victorious, the nature of the control system is not disrupted. The governing norms and the habitual acceptance of those norms would remain unchanged. Of course, challenges to the control system that require a more serious adjustment do occur on occasion. A sharp decline in living standards or the denial of traditional rights could produce dissatisfaction, which in turn might necessitate the application of coercive measures or an active manipulation of, for example, religious symbols designed to persuade the citizenry of a sacred quality to societal norms. The real threat to the operative control system in many traditional societies developed from the appearance of movements that advocated a rejection of traditional norms. This was especially serious when the changeoriented element of the citizenry began to look away from parochial communities as their focus of identity and toward much larger communities, such as a national community. When this occurred, not only traditional norms lost their force; so did many of the symbols of the traditional system. In the transitional period, therefore, the weighing given the normative habitual dimension of the control system is sharply reduced. The dimension of control most likely to be seriously upgraded is the normative active. This

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involves the active manipulation of symbols, and the symbols with the greatest appeal to the expanding change-oriented community are those related to the national community. However, such symbols have little appeal to the traditional element of the society. Indeed, the traditional elites tend to see in such secular symbols a clear manifestation of blasphemy. In the transitional period, the weight given the dimension of coercion almost certainly increases, but the primary target of coercion depends on the nature of the governing elite. If the governing elite is change-oriented, coercion as a dimension of control of traditional elements will be upgraded. But the traditional acquiescence and passivity of that element make a very high weight for coercion unnecessary. If the governing elite is traditional, a sharp upgrading of coercion of the change-oriented elements is called for, but traditional elites have only limited ability to produce a coercive instrument that would be effective against a popular and demanding element of the citizenry. Their vulnerability to modernizing challengers is very apparent historically. The above situation characterized much of the Third World in the immediate post–World War II period. The appearance of an assertive nationalism, even in what at first was a small minority of the population, changed the control picture forever. The ability of the old imperial powers, operating through or with the cooperation of a traditional elite, to exercise effective control as they had been doing was much reduced. The choice they confronted was either to reinforce the imperial power coercive force very substantially or to give up control. By and large, the choice made was to give up imperial control. The situation was different, however, for the primary actors in the emerging Cold War. Seeing, as both did, their national security and other interests as seriously threatened, they were strongly motivated to secure areas of particular strategic concern. The option was available, especially for the United States and the Soviet Union, to establish a neocolonial control in their areas of strategic concern. The formula for doing so was to work through a cooperating elite willing to pay the price in a loss of nationalist legitimacy and, with the assistance of the mentor power, to construct an effective coercive instrument. The cooperating elites through which the United States and the Soviet Union operated in their areas of strategic concern tended to be sharply different with regard to their attitudes toward nationalism. The U.S. allies tended to be drawn from the traditional elites. Relying as they had on the traditional passive acquiescence of the citizenry, they would have great difficulty creating a coercive instrument that would be effective against a populist element of the population and yet could be kept under control. Thus the task for the United States in constructing a coercive instrument was to provide technical assistance, funding, and training and essentially to build such an instrument

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from scratch. The Soviet allies, in contrast, tended to be ideological Marxists who eschewed nationalism but understood the requirements for building an internal security coercive force. Nevertheless, they tended to need the presence of a Soviet military force, especially initially, to complement their own coercive force. The essential point to be made, however, is that for the old traditional elite, for the imperial powers exercising colonial control, and for the United States and the Soviet Union seeking to maintain control over areas of strategic concern, the appearance of nationalism in an increasingly large section of the concerned population compounded manyfold the problems of exercising authoritative control. The converse point is even more important, however. When the governing elite of a polity shares with the population as a whole an intense identification with a national community, nationalism will be an important and often critical factor in the exercise of authoritative control. The nationalistic behavior that is directly relevant here is the favorable popular response to the manipulation of symbols that relate directly to the national community. That response, which strengthens the position of governing authorities and hence can be a significant factor in the control system, is a manifestation of the normative-active dimension in the control scheme. The importance of normative-active control, the dimension in which we place the response to the manipulation of nationalistic symbols, will not necessarily be overly apparent in noncrisis periods. When, for example, there is general prosperity and, within the population, reasonable satisfaction with influence exercised internally, there will likely be little conscious concern with the problems of internal control. Coercion going beyond routine law enforcement need be applied only to marginal elements of society, and an acceptance of governing norms will be granted nonconsciously. Manipulation of national symbols in such a situation is likely to be ritualistic and largely confined to patriotic holidays. However, a severe economic crisis accompanied by labor unrest, for example, would suddenly alter the control equation. The utilitarian dimension would lose its strong weighting, which would necessitate a dramatic adjustment to the control system. That adjustment would be sharply different for a non–nation state as compared with a nation state. Given the severity of a crisis involving labor and other popular unrest, the normative-habitual dimension could hardly be strengthened to the point of providing a new and effective balance. To the contrary, a widespread questioning of governing norms might accompany popular unrest. Coercion would be strengthened, and that would be the primary control system adjustment for the non–nation state. But the application of coercion, though potentially capable of producing a stable control system for a period, is hardly likely to enhance the legitimacy of the regime. In this example, the normative-active control dimension, or the manipulation of highly appeal-

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ing symbols, would be the one to restore lost legitimacy to a regime compelled to use coercion to maintain order. The symbols that could serve this purpose best are those that relate to first-intensity identity communities; the regime that speaks for a nation state would have the ability effectively to manipulate national symbols as a primary control device. The case to be made would be that the citizens must in this moment of crisis make great sacrifices for a symbolically depicted nation. The manipulation of symbols relating to the nation should have the additional merit of strengthening regime legitimacy. The multinational and multiethnic non–nation state will have a plethora of first-intensity identity communities and will have available symbols relating to each. But any attempt to improve the ability of a regime to exercise control via a manipulation of these symbols would be dysfunctional and more likely to produce a disintegration of control. Whatever utility the manipulation of symbols relating to a particular identity community would carry in that community would likely be offset by the negative response those symbols generate from other component communities of the non– nation state. The point is that a favorable response to the manipulation of symbols relating to the national community is an important manifestation of nationalistic behavior. It grants regime authorities in a nation state a major basis for asserting claims to legitimacy. Such claims, in turn, can be of critical assistance in persuading a citizenry to support a regime and to accept the obligation to make major sacrifices for the good of the national community. The importance of generating such a response varies directly with the degree of crisis-relatedness of a situation. Thus, when the control system is stable— as when it is weighted most heavily in the utilitarian and normative-habitual dimensions—there will be little reliance on nationalistic behavior as a means for generating support for a regime. In such periods, the manipulation of national symbols tends to be muted and ritualized, as in a Fourth of July celebration. In contrast, when there is a severe economic crisis accompanied by major popular unrest and coercive measures are necessary to deal with the unrest, as in our example, the normative-active dimension of the control system will achieve far greater importance in nation states. Similarly, if the crisis is external in focus, as when there is an intensely perceived threat to state security, there is certain to be both a serious recourse to the manipulation of national symbols on the part of regime authorities in nation states and an intensely favorable response on the part of the citizenry. In both crisis situations, nationalism—that is, a predisposition to behave nationalistically—serves as a basis for rallying the popular support necessary to deal with the crises. When viewed in terms of the internal control system, the case is strong in support of the proposition that the nation state as compared with

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the non–nation state, all other factors being equal, will have a significant power advantage. The ability of regime authorities in a nation state to manipulate national symbols grants those authorities assistance in overcoming internal crises and consequently can be described as “empowering.” In contrast, regime authorities in non–nation states, denied the ability to rally popular support to deal with the crises by a manipulation of powerful symbols, must rely heavily on the coercive dimension to maintain control and in doing so may risk regime legitimacy. Severe internal crises may well threaten the non–nation state with disintegration. Dealing with External Challenges A parallel point can be made regarding external crises in which there is an intensely perceived threat to national security. Here, too, the nation state has a power advantage as compared with the non–nation state. That conclusion is not widely shared in the literature. Raymond Cline (1975), a major figure among power analysts, has tried to construct an operationalizable power equation that would serve as the basis for a reliable estimate of momentary state power. In the late Cold War period, he applied the equation to the United States and the Soviet Union and came to some rather startling conclusions. In terms of “hard” capability factors (i.e., those such as industrial base and military instrumental base that lend themselves to sophisticated quantitative analysis), his conclusions were generally persuasive. Looking at these factors only, Cline made the judgment that the United States was decisively superior—a judgment that would seem to have passed the test of time. But Cline clearly believed that the Soviet Union, despite the American advantage, was in fact the capabilitysuperior state. In making his case, he stressed two “soft” capability factors included in his equation: “will” and “strategic proficiency.” He concluded that the Soviet Union was sufficiently superior in these soft factors to shift the overall power-equation advantage in its favor—a judgment that certainly has not passed the test of time. Hans Morgenthau, writing shortly after World War II, advanced what he saw as an inclusive list of power factors, including hard as well as soft factors. Power analysts writing since Morgenthau’s classic study have implicitly accepted that list, although the terminology they use varies substantially, and the claim for inclusivity of his list is therefore strong. Morgenthau’s soft factors were national morale, national character, quality of government, quality of leadership, and quality of diplomacy. The latter, he asserted, was the most important of the power factors (1966: 135). But Morgenthau made no real effort to provide working definitions for his soft factors, an essential first step for the kind of serious conceptual development upon which an operational strategy could be based.

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Where in this list should a predisposition to behave nationalistically be placed? Nationalism relates very closely to what Morgenthau had in mind for three of these factors: national morale, national character, and quality of diplomacy. In listing national morale and national character, he seems to have believed he had identified the bases in any state for a manifestation of the “will” necessary to effect a desired outcome. He apparently saw superior will as a product of high morale among a citizenry and of some kind of strength of character, not identified, that associates with particular cultures (1966: 122–139). But the conceptual base for such conclusions was undeveloped. Indeed, it is our conclusion that the effort to provide some solid base for inferring what Morgenthau and others see as will requires considerable reconceptualizing of Morgenthau’s soft factors. The ability to manipulate national symbols to produce within the citizenry a willingness to make great sacrifices, including the risking of life itself, for achieving desired national values (which can range from security to grandeur) is a major manifestation of the ability to gain the necessary will. The presence of nationalism does not obviate any need to look at other factors that effect a manifestation of will in state capability calculations. But such a manifestation does associate with the presence of nationalism. Furthermore, conceptualizations of nationalistic behavior offer the prospect for developing schemes with operational potentials for assessing the impact of nationalism on state power. The control system outlined above is one such scheme. The key element to be identified would be the ability of regime authorities in times of crisis to effect a normative active dimension to that system at a first-level intensity. The indicator of effectiveness would be the strength of popular response to the manipulation of national symbols. As discussed above, in noncrisis periods the manipulation of such symbols is commonly confined to the rhetoric of national holidays and other ceremonial occasions. The test of the national legitimacy of regime leaders occurs when the manipulation of national symbols is a necessary ingredient in generating a willingness of the public to make the sacrifices necessary to deal with a crisis. The point can be illustrated with a brief look at three examples of regime responses at the beginning of World War II: the United States, a nation state responding to an intensely perceived threat to national security; Hitler’s Germany, a nation state responding to an intensely perceived opportunity to achieve enhanced national grandeur and influence; and the Soviet Union, a non–nation state responding to an intensely perceived threat to state security. For most of the 1920s, the control system that existed in the United States had been stable. This reflected a general utilitarian satisfaction and a full, if nonconscious, acceptance of established governing norms. The use of coercion was confined to those societal elements perceived to be

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“alien radicals” (Dallek, 1983: 112), and the manipulation of symbols was inconspicuous and largely confined to ceremonial occasions. The economic crisis of the Depression was a shock to the stability of the system, but the adjustment was not threatening to established governing norms and necessitated little upgrading of the coercion dimension. The alteration that occurred was primarily in the normative-active dimension. President Franklin Roosevelt was naturally adept at manipulating national symbols, and he did so to generate a willingness to accept the material sacrifices necessary to deal with the crisis. Nationalistic behavior in the form of a response to the manipulation of symbols depicting a threat to the welfare of the national community followed the pattern to be expected from the citizenry of a nation state. Roosevelt saw in the developing crisis in Europe a threat not only to liberal, democratic, and humane values but ultimately to the security of the American nation. But in this he was ahead of the American people (Dallek, 1983). It is doubtful that his strong attachment to liberal, democratic, and humane values was shared, or shared with the same intensity, by much of the American public. More important, however, the threat of expansionism to the American nation from the fascist states was not readily apparent to a people very conscious of the barrier to expansion presented by the two great oceans. American national interests, they seemed to be saying, would be best served by focusing governmental efforts on dealing with the economic crisis in the United States. Roosevelt was clearly aware of this preference and obedient to it despite his concerns, as early as 1935, that indications of the potential for German aggression were also indications of threat to the United States (Dallek, 1979). However, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, erased this isolationist manifestation of nationalism. Franklin Roosevelt announced a program to mobilize America’s industrial base, resources, and people for the purpose of creating an overwhelmingly powerful military force. His call for enormous material sacrifices, the postponement of career interests, and, for those of military age, a willingness to risk life to deal with this threat to the security of the nation was received with approval, even enthusiasm, and with little dissent. Roosevelt’s manipulation of national symbols in dealing with this external crisis was masterful yet careful not to overstep the limitations set by American political liberalism on such manipulations (Laurie, 1996). The response was optimally favorable. The control system that was operative in the Depression served equally well in maintaining a consensual base for regime policy in confronting the external threat. No serious adjustment was necessary. The case illustrates one of the most important features of nationalistic behavior: the generating of a willingness on the part of the national community to make enormous utilitarian sacrifices in order to construct the instruments—military, diplomatic, intelligence, and economic—necessary for dealing successfully with an

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external challenge. This ability—to generate a willingness to make sacrifices to deal with an external challenge—is the focus of the most important impact of nationalism on state capability. The control system operating in Germany in the 1920s, in contrast to that of the United States, was far from being optimally stable. Germany had undergone severe inflation in the early years of that decade, which had wiped out much of the savings of the middle class. As a consequence, German authorities lacked the kind of utilitarian satisfaction that was a central factor in the stability of the American control system. Then, in addition, Germany lacked the consensus in support of its traditional governing norms that existed in the United States. The institution of the monarchy had been overturned when Germany was defeated in World War I, and there was an uncertain attachment to the republican institutions of the successor Weimar Republic. Given the weakness in the utilitarian and normative habitual-control dimensions and the unwillingness of the government to consider an increased reliance on coercion, the operating control system of the Weimar Republic had to be judged as tenuous. But there was one remaining option: to develop the normative-active dimension of the control system and to do so primarily by the manipulation of symbols relating to the German nation. Germany was clearly a nation state, and the German population could be expected to respond strongly to a manipulation of German national symbols. Why, then, was there not more of an effort in this direction by German authorities? The answer relates closely to the terrible defeat so recently suffered by the German nation in World War I. The most powerful national symbol by far was that of the Versailles Treaty—the symbol of vengeful and humiliating treatment of the German nation by the victorious allies. Indeed, a serious effort to manipulate German national symbols almost certainly would have led to an insistence on the rectification of German national humiliation and to a questioning of the nationalist legitimacy of a government, the Weimar Republic, that submitted to this humiliation. Leading officials of the Weimar Republic quite simply were unable to play a role comparable to that of Franklin Roosevelt in large part because the Weimar Republic was a consequence of military defeat, that is, itself a symbol of national humiliation (Cassels, 1975; James, 1989). Instead, there appeared in Germany on the nationalistic right several prospective national leaders, in particular Adolf Hitler, who were able to manipulate those symbols with great skill but who were not concerned with defending the Weimar authority system. Hitler’s purpose was quite the opposite: a radical restructuring of German institutions and the replacement of a governing elite and a regime unwilling to defend the grandeur of the German nation. Hitler’s ability to manipulate national symbols was a major factor in his rise to power in Germany. Clearly, he had reached a major section of

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the German public with this normative-active appeal. Hitler’s “defiant nationalism” defused his opposition while increasing his support (James, 1989: 140). But at the time of his accession, he not only lacked majority support but also was viewed by another broad section of the public with a mixture of fear and loathing (Steinert, 1977). To maintain his position of authority, he had no real alternative to developing the control dimension of coercion, beginning with street violence during electoral campaigns even before he came to power. Indeed, viewed in the perspective of this analytic frame, fascism, wherever it appears, is characterized by a system of control in which both the normative-active and coercion dimensions are very intense. Opponents of the regime are threatened simultaneously with the threat of brutal coercion and with appearing as unpatriotic by opposing a government whose every action is wrapped in the flag. This Hitlerian control system was sufficiently strong to provide the basis for a policy of expansionism and aggrandizement of universal dimension. In this context—German nationalism humiliated by the rearrangement of Germany’s eastern borders after World War I, the manipulation of nationalist symbols by the regime, and the demonization of Poland—the control system served to extract from the German people a willingness to make extreme sacrifices in mobilizing the resources, the industrial base, and the population to construct an instrumental capability that made plausible achieving the goal of universal domination.4 Then, as World War II progressed, it served to produce an acceptance of a terrible loss of life and devastating destruction in an increasingly problematic pursuance of that goal. The coercive dimension in the control system was essential for the war effort, as is evident in Marlis Steinert’s (1977: 50–51) argument that personal observations and historical studies alike report resigned acceptance of war by the German population rather than prowar hysteria. This resignation was a product of years of coercive pressure by the regime, repressing protest and encouraging passive acceptance of orders. The fear of coercive retribution denied the population the option of serious opposition to a policy of expansionism. But even more apparent is the critical importance of nationalist behavior in the phenomenon of German expansionism. The popular response to the manipulation of symbols relating to the nation was a central ingredient in the behavioral mix. In addition, the government carefully controlled information, forbidding listening to foreign radio broadcasts and informing the public that Germany was the victim and the rest of Europe was responsible for the war. Polish atrocities against Germans were widely reported by the propaganda machine (Steinert, 1977: 56). The control system in the Soviet Union in the 1920s resembled the optimal stability of the United States even less than did Germany’s. The economy was in shambles, and extreme distress characterized the situation for

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much of the citizenry. The utilitarian control dimension was present at something more than a minimal level only for the veneer of the population that was actively involved in the communist movement. The revolution had eliminated with stunning totality traditional governing norms, and the revolutionary norms were yet to become part of popular awareness. The normative-habitual dimension thus could be classified also as no more than minimally present. The new Soviet leadership made the effort to manipulate ideologically appealing symbols, but here again their efforts were effective only with the revolutionary veneer. There was a focus on the international proletariat community—a focus that produced little apparent resonance within the population. Stalin was clearly worried that the Soviet Union as constituted would not withstand a long war with Germany. The multinational characteristic of the Soviet Union made its survival as a political system doubtful, particularly considering the violence of Stalin’s rule during the 1930s (Ulam, 1974: 314–328). Consequently, when he appealed to the citizens to fight against Germany’s invasion, he appealed to the Russian and other nations, not to the class struggle. He knew, as he told one adviser, that “we will never rouse the people to war with Marxism-Leninism alone” (quoted in Medvedev, 1979: 124; see also McNeal, 1988: 241). Stalin also relied upon the people’s attachment to the Orthodox Church as a mobilizing force. The Church called for resistance to Germany, and Stalin modified his anti-Church stance during the war (Ward, 1993). The burden of maintaining regime control in the Soviet Union thus fell on the dimension of coercion. Even within that narrow veneer of the population that was ideologically committed to the regime, the use of coercive instruments, such as the periodic purges, was necessary to maintain control. A comparison of Nazi Germany, a nation state, and Stalin’s Soviet Union, a non–nation state, is particularly instructive for the student of nationalism. Both regimes were classifiably totalitarian in terms of the degree of control exercised over their citizenry. But the ability of Hitler to mobilize popular enthusiasm in support of regime policy, in large part by manipulating national symbols, had no parallel in the Soviet Union. This lack of enthusiasm translated as a significant capability deficit. The overwhelmingly superior Soviet forces ordered to invade Finland, for example, performed miserably against an inferior but highly motivated and nationalistic Finnish army. This inability to mobilize popular support for the regime to deal with even the most extreme external crisis became desperately apparent in 1941, when Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union. Reactions to that invasion by the peoples of the Soviet Union demonstrated dramatically the shallowness of the identification with that massive multinational state that had developed in one generation of Soviet rule. This was particularly apparent among non-Russians, many of whom were prepared to re-

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ceive the German military as liberators and some of whom were willingly recruited into support forces for the Germans. But a lack of willingness to risk life and property in opposing the invading armies characterized Russians as well. As discussed in Chapter 7, the Soviet leaders of this multinational state understood that their goal of developing an intense identification with the Soviet territorial community could not be achieved if they were to indulge in nationalistic appeals to the Russian national community. The dynamics of doing so could lead, in effect, to a new Russian empire. Yet at this critical moment the leaders were confronted with an inability to mobilize a willingness on the part of the Russian people to make the sacrifices necessary to stop the German advance. In the interests of survival, they really had no option other than to abandon their policy of opposition to what they described as Russian “chauvinism.” Now and for the remainder of the war, they couched their appeals for popular support in symbolic Russian nationalist terms. The U.S., German, and Soviet examples were designed to illustrate the advantage of nation states as compared with non–nation states in the ability to mobilize a public willingness to make major sacrifices to deal with external crises. In our view, this mobilization ability, which relates closely to the existence of nationalist legitimacy for a regime, incorporates much of what Cline and others refer to as “will.” But the juxtaposition of the two nation states in the example, the United States and Nazi Germany, was designed also to suggest the limitations of nationalism in producing such will. Both regimes could claim to have nationalist legitimacy, but Hitler’s heavy reliance on coercion for control purposes reflects a lack of broad legitimacy for his regime for critical elements of the German population that rejected the governing norms of the regime. The best Hitler could hope for from this section of his population was passive acquiescence—and that is what he got.

Nationalism Viewed Within a Capability Paradigm Our conclusion thus far is that the primary impact of nationalism on state capability lies in its enhancement of a regime’s ability to mobilize resources to deal with an external challenge. But nationalism impacts on state capability in several directions, and the student of nationalism should aim for providing an overall picture of the impact of nationalism on a particular state’s capability at any moment in time. The painting of such a picture, however, would be facilitated greatly by the availability of an analytic frame for looking at state capability. The ordering device suggested here is one that looks at state capability in a functional frame consisting of

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three sections. The first section is the power-potential base. The focus here is on factors such as the natural resource base, the industrial base, and the population base that together establish the parameters of potential state power. The second section is the mobilization base. Here, the focus is on those factors that determine the ability of state authorities to translate elements of the resource base into instruments for achieving governmental objectives, both internally and externally. Together they provide the basis for evaluating the ability of a regime to mobilize the elements of the power-potential base for a projection of state power. The third section is the power-instrumental base. The factors included are the governmental organizations and the equipment that will be manipulated directly to project influence for the achievement of desired objectives. The importance of military instruments for the projection of influence is universally recognized by power analysts. But Morgenthau’s (1966: 135) undeveloped contention that the quality of diplomacy is the most important of the power factors should be taken seriously. He viewed the quality of diplomacy as resting very much on the existence of military forces, including a wellfunctioning military bureaucracy, as well as on other sections of the bureaucracy that are critical in the evaluation of the quality of government as a power factor. Other power instruments would include, in particular, a foreign affairs office and diplomatic corps responsible for the development and execution of foreign policy, an intelligence office and corps, an information and propaganda office and corps, and bureaucratic offices and staffs responsible for planning and executing foreign economic policy. Nationalism and the Power-Potential Base The analytical task now is to position nationalism within the perspective of this power framework. Looking first at the power-potential base, the element that relates most directly to nationalism is the population base. Most commonly, power analysts deal with the population in terms of numbers, income, education, and technical skills. A major additional concern should be to determine if the population constitutes a national community. This will be the case if the territorial community underlay of a state is the focus of a first-intensity identity attachment for the population as a whole. If it is, the community can be expected to respond to an intensely perceived external challenge by agreeing to mobilize the resources necessary to confront the challenge—a challenge that may be based on perceived threat or perceived opportunity. If not, and the territorial community instead is, for example, a compound of identity communities with competing aspirations, the task of mobilization would be much more difficult. It follows that if the population of a state constitutes a national community, then the powerpotential estimate of the state would be enhanced considerably.

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Hans Morgenthau (1966: 122–129) included national character in his list of power factors. This factor, like most of the others, was conceptually undeveloped. But a reasonable assumption is that Morgenthau believed that some cultural traits existed that would predispose a people toward making an intense commitment to their state and that such a commitment would translate into an enhanced capability rating. There is a clear association of commitment at this level, with a first-intensity identity attachment to a national community. It is a commitment of a quality that leads a people to stand firm in the face of severe crisis. It is second only to the ability to mobilize resources as a manifestation of nationalistic behavior in the enhancement of state capability. There are two analytic devices presented in this book that may have utility in indicating the applicability and importance of nationalism as a factor in state-capability assessment. The first of these is the nationalism checklist presented in Chapter 2. That checklist was designed to indicate the probable predisposition of a polity to behave nationalistically. That predisposition should be at an optimal level if a checklist application indicated a population in which the politically highly attentive element continued to grant the national community its terminal loyalty and in which the population was classifiable as fully participant; a population that occupied a territory that was both defensible and had the resources to provide an acceptable standard of living; a population that saw itself as culturally and linguistically unique, had a memory of a common past, and had expectations of a shared future; and a population that saw a harmony in the relationships of its national community and other communities with which it identified. In most cases, of course, the application of the checklist would indicate a nationalistic predispositional base that was considerably less than optimal. But it should provide the basis for constructing a predispositional profile. The second device is the control-system scheme considered above. In contrast to the checklist, the control-system scheme is best used as a device for identifying “active” nationalistic behavior that is serving a mobilization purpose. Nationalism and the Mobilization Base When the normative-active dimension is a first-intensity control factor and is characterized by a manipulation of national symbols, the mobilization process as a manifestation of nationalistic behavior is taking place. In the context of Morgenthau’s power-factor list, this phenomenon seems most closely related to national morale (1966: 129). The excitement associated with a strong response to the manipulation of national symbols suggests a high state of participant morale. Morgenthau’s quality-of-government power factor (1966: 139) doubtless deserves a multidimensional development. Here, too, one of those

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dimensions relates closely to nationalism. The degree of acceptance by a citizenry of the authenticity of a regime in speaking for the national community, that is, its nationalist legitimacy, is a critically important aspect of an evaluation of the quality of government. This is particularly true in the evaluation of state capability. The case of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, is particularly instructive in this regard. There is little reason to doubt that the shah and his father, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, were intense Iranian nationalists. Indeed, they were de Gaulle–like in referring to themselves as indistinguishable from their country. They did not simply speak for Iran. They were Iran. Yet in the eyes of much of the Iranian people, both lacked nationalist legitimacy. Iran is a non–nation state of the core-community variety. As is typical in that category, the members of the core community (Persian- and Turkish-speaking Shiite Muslims) regard Iran as an allembracing nation state. The Iranian minorities are less convinced, however, and many members of these communities have at best a low-intensity identification with the territorial community. For them, therefore, the question of the shah’s Iranian nationalist legitimacy had little relevance. But the denial of nationalist legitimacy to the two Pahlavis extended well into the core community and especially into the politically highly attentive element (R. W. Cottam, 1979). Both Pahlavis achieved absolute control in Iran and did so by following the same pattern. They accepted the assistance of a great external power, the United Kingdom for Reza Shah and the United States for Mohammad Reza Shah. In both cases, the rise to power was at the expense of Iranian political leaders who were granted nationalist legitimacy by the majority of politically participant core-community Iranians. The case of Reza Shah was classifiable as an example of indirect, nonformal colonial control, and that of Mohammad Reza Shah was of the similar neocolonial variety, the former common in the pre–Cold War era and the latter in the Cold War era. Both types of essentially imperial control were common, and the negative consequences for nationalist legitimacy were therefore widespread. The control system utilized by Mohammad Reza Shah after he consolidated power in the late 1950s provided an era of stability in Iran. Thanks very much to an expanding oil income, Iran’s economy moved into the “takeoff” category, and despite a growing distribution disparity, Iranians by and large could expect to see an improvement in the standard of living. The utilitarian-control dimension thus was of first-intensity importance. The shah’s dictatorship was absolute, and his terror instruments were viewed by the citizenry as omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. In addition, the citizenry assumed that the shah could count on full U.S. support in the event of an internal crisis. Coercion, too, was at the first-intensity level.

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Nevertheless, despite the strength of this control system, the shah was very conscious of the need to bolster the normative active dimension. He made every effort to identify and to manipulate symbols that would relate his dynasty and his rule to the Iranian national community. But this effort was remarkably unsuccessful outside his rather small core support group, which consisted largely of the newly rich. His lack of nationalist legitimacy was manifest, for example, in his inability to attract popular support from elaborate ceremonies such as his long-delayed coronation and, more significantly, from the influence and prestige Iran was gaining in international affairs. The vulnerability of the shah’s control became apparent in the mid1970s, when Iran suffered a moderately serious economic crisis. This weakened the utilitarian dimension of his control system. But the coercive apparatus was intact and should have been sufficient to deal with the level of discontent resulting from the economic difficulties. However, the shah, apparently shocked by public manifestations of hostility, vacillated in his applications of coercion (Zonis, 1991). Sensing a developing vulnerability, increasingly large sections of the population began to express their opposition to the regime. Particularly noteworthy was the symbol manipulation by the emerging revolutionary leadership. The shah was depicted especially effectively as an agent of American imperial control, and Iranian national symbols became the exclusive property of the revolutionaries. Given the predominance of religious laymen and clerics in the revolutionary leadership, symbols relating to Islam and to the umma, the community of believers, were an increasingly important element in the symbolic mix. The promise of future conflict on identity grounds was becoming apparent. But both secular nationalists and Islamic activists regarded the shah as irreconcilably illegitimate. The shah’s fall from power is better described as a collapse than as an overthrow. Morgenthau’s quality-of-leadership power factor (1966: 116–117) can be related to nationalism similarly. We have noted above the exceptional facility with which Franklin Roosevelt was able to manipulate national symbols and to generate the desired response. That response was the reinforcement of a commitment to the national community and the regime representing it, as well as a willingness to make the sacrifices necessary to give the nation a strong voice in world affairs. For Roosevelt in particular, the desired response was one that would make possible the mobilizing of American manpower and resources to confront a serious external challenge. The importance of this aspect of leadership is especially well illustrated by the role Charles de Gaulle was able to play as president of France. He served during a period when the capability image of France in much of the world was one of serious decline and the ability of the French government to project influence in world affairs was viewed as below the

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level of one of the world’s great powers. De Gaulle, deeply committed to the persistence of French grandeur at the great-power level, was able to rally the French people to support a foreign policy that was in tune with his image of French capability. He largely succeeded in projecting an influence in world affairs that was, albeit briefly, at this desired level. Nationalism and the Power-Instrumental Base Military capability, understandably, tends to be a primary focus in the overall capability analysis of states. It is, after all, a critical variable in determining a state’s ability to deter and contain direct aggression or to achieve expansionist objectives. However, Morgenthau’s assertion that the “quality of diplomacy” is the most important power factor is compelling (1966: 135). Producing a desired foreign policy outcome at a strategic level is likely to call for a manipulating of environmental trends that requires a multifaceted diplomacy. It requires the development of a leverage system for bargaining purposes that includes far more than military levers. It requires the development of institutions capable of manipulating economic trends and world public-opinion trends. It requires an intelligence capability that permits the identification of critical developing sociopolitical trends as well as the construction of a picture of the operating political milieu in target polities. Then, of course, it calls for a diplomatic corps capable of orchestrating this entire foreign policy complex for the achievement of strategic and tactical ends. What effects can one expect to see on this area of the capability picture from a predisposition to behave nationalistically? In other words, what differences in the power-instrumental base are likely to associate with nation states as compared with non–nation states? It has already been suggested that a disadvantage that is sometimes present for nation states as compared with non–nation states involved in interstate conflict is a tendency to view target polities in sharply stereotypical terms. This tendency to construct a highly simplified picture of the target denies the nationalist strategist the ability to see policy options that are in fact available and could lead more effectively to the desired outcome. A related disadvantage is the restrictions public opinion places on strategists in nation states to consider policy options that would appear to be damaging to national prestige. Here, too, such options might well offer a more promising path toward achieving policy objectives. Both disadvantages relate to the quality of diplomacy that emerges from an application of power instruments. However, generally nationalistic behavior grants nation states a major capability advantage in the power-instrumental base arena. The most important of these advantages devolves from the enhanced ability of nation states to mobilize resources and manpower to confront an

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external challenge. The willingness to sacrifice consumption and even career interests that characterizes a nationalistic population results in an ability of a regime to construct and run a high-quality power instrument base. This is to be seen especially in the unity and commitment of the personnel appointed to the various power instruments. Multinational and multiethnic non–nation states in particular are likely to have problems in these two areas. State authorities here must strive to achieve some balance in appointments made from component ethnic and national communities or risk generating serious dissatisfaction. But the intensity of commitment to the power-instrumental purpose on the part of personnel recruited from a diversity of communities is certain to vary widely. Suspicions that some communities are more trusted and favored than others are unavoidable. In the core-community non–nation state, personnel recruited from non–core communities will run the dual risk of seeing their loyalty to the government questioned by core-community colleagues and being accused of having sold out to the core community by members of their own communities. This problem is particularly apparent and dangerous for the armed forces of a non–nation state where questions of unity of purpose and commitment are central to effectiveness. Will personnel recruited from all the communities in the territorial-community compound be willing to risk making the ultimate sacrifice in executing the military mission of their units? The practice in the Soviet Union of assigning units drawn largely from Asian communities to support missions is an obvious manifestation of this problem. Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, at the close of the Cold War offers many illustrations of the relevance of nation statehood as compared with non–nation statehood for military capability. Poland and Yugoslavia offer an interesting contrast in several dimensions. Poland easily meets the criteria of a state resting on a national community. But in the Cold War era the Polish regime had little claim to nationalist legitimacy (Bernhard, 1993; Taras, 1996). Like the shah’s regime in Iran, it was perceived by much of the population as owing its position to external interference and hence was unable to speak legitimately for the Polish national community. The denial of legitimacy certainly extended to the securityforce leaders but probably not to the military per se. The military personnel were drawn from the national community and, like most of that community, had no real option to operating within the system. They were spared, therefore, the onus of national illegitimacy. Not only was the military positively regarded, but it was viewed “as having inherited all the glorious traditions of Poland’s military past, not only of those that led directly to the establishment of the People’s Republic but also those linked to the opposing political camp at the time in question” (Wiatr, 1988). Yugoslavia, in contrast, clearly did not meet the criteria of nation statehood. It was, rather, a multinational non–nation state in which the territorial

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community was a compound of identity communities with historical memories of mutual hostility. The Tito regime was not regarded as illegitimate as was the regime in Poland. Its willingness to stand up to the Soviet Union and its position as a leader of the nonaligned world were much admired. To be sure, its control system included at the first-intensity level the dimension of coercion. But there was a degree of material satisfaction and a somewhat grudging acceptance of governmental norms. The regime was to a degree accepted by the population as a legitimate voice for Yugoslavia (J. F. Brown, 1991; Schöpflin, 1993). Neither did its officials suffer the onus of national illegitimacy comparable to that of their Polish counterparts. After Tito’s death and after the passing of the Cold War, a history of collaboration with the old regime did not preclude running for office in the successor regimes. Nevertheless, when, after the Cold War, an awareness appeared that the option of secession from Yugoslavia was available to the component national communities, there was an immediate receptivity. A strong momentum developed toward embracing that option. The Yugoslav military, which had manifested considerable organizational pride in the Tito years and indeed gained some of the appearance of a national Yugoslav army, became a “corporate entity in a race for its own survival” (Remington, 1996: 165). The case speaks loudly of the impact of nationalism or the lack thereof. Despite the ethnic similarities and the existence of institutions such as the military that served the entire territorial community, the appearance of a credible option to pursue independence for the sectarianbased national communities led not only to disintegration but to the development of genocidal hatreds. The irony of the description, common in the Cold War period, of Tito’s Yugoslavia as an example of “national communism” could hardly be greater. Yugoslavia offers another example of the vulnerability of the military power instrument in the non–nation state, especially one with a multinational dimension. The Polish military, in contrast, came to be viewed quickly in the post–Cold War period as a legitimate instrument of the Polish nation state. The primary power-instrumental base advantages that associate with nation states as compared with non–nation states suggested by these examples are the following. The first is the intensity of commitment among the defense and foreign policy personnel to state security interests and to the achievement of established foreign policy objectives. The legitimate leadership of a nation state should be able to assume a level of commitment of that personnel at a first-intensity level—a level at which there would be a willingness to risk making the ultimate sacrifice. Their counterparts in non–nation states, in contrast, will understand that the intensity of commitment among defense and foreign policy personnel will vary situationally but only exceptionally will be at a first-intensity level.

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The second is the unity of purpose of the personnel of the power instruments. Differences in policy preference will exist, of course, among such personnel of nation states as well as non–nation states. But in the nation state, there will be an overweening concern with the interests of the territorial community, which by definition is coincidental with the national community. This concern will translate into a unity of purpose relating to serving the national interest. In the non–nation state, the first-intensity community concerns of the personnel will not have a single focus. They may, in fact, depending on the type of non–nation state, have a wide diversity of foci. The reconciliation of the interests of several different identity communities will be the demanding task of the governing officials assigned to give policy direction for particular power-instrument interests. In times of crisis, this can easily lead, as we have seen, to severe internal conflict and even to disintegration of the power instrument. Third, and with respect specifically to the military power instrument, there is likely to be in nation states a willingness to accept a policy of universal conscription and, especially in times of national crisis, to volunteer for military service. In core-community non–nation states, this behavioral response can be expected from within the core community but is far less likely from other identity communities. In Canada, for example, the French-speaking community was long resistant to a policy of conscription, whereas the English-speaking core community was supportive. In multinational and multiethnic non–nation states, coercion is often necessary to produce acquiescence in a policy of conscription. Likewise, the morale and esprit de corps of the armed forces are likely to be enhanced when there is unanimity in strong community identity. Another area of significant capability advantage for the nation state is the bargaining base from which diplomacy operates. Thomas Schelling, in Strategy of Conflict (1973), discusses the importance of commitment in a bargaining strategy (pp. 21–52). His illustration is that of burning your bridges behind you in order to give credibility to a stated determination not to retreat. The metaphor is apt for the diplomacy of a government of a nation state and much less so for that of a non–nation state. The example of the Cuban missile crisis provides a good illustration. The willingness of the Soviet Union to place missiles in Cuba indicated a strong commitment to defend Cuba. The Soviet Union could not retreat from this position without the loss of prestige and credibility, which would seriously diminish the Soviet capability to deter generally. The U.S. administration, under President John F. Kennedy, responded with a threat to attack the missile positions unless they were dismantled and the missiles returned to the Soviet Union. This threat, too, exemplified the commitment bargaining strategy, since any retreat would prove unacceptably costly. It was a moment of truth. But the Soviets retreated and did so in the full glare of international publicity.

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The case is highly instructive. The Soviet non–nation state had available the option to retreat. Its public was relatively unconcerned with the attendant loss of prestige. The arena of the crisis was far distant, and the threat to Soviet security as a consequence of the retreat was minimal. The American nation state had no such option. The U.S. public was aroused and intensely convinced that U.S. security was imperiled by the Soviet missile presence. A retreat in the glare of world publicity, with its attendant loss of national prestige, was simply inconceivable. The addition to capability that should accrue from this bargaining advantage of the nation state is unlikely to be realized in full, however. Full realization would occur only if bargaining partners consciously recognized the strength of commitment that associates with intense identification with the national community. This rarely, if ever, will be the case. Instead, interstate conflict is characterized by a strong tendency to view the other in stereotypical terms. A characteristic feature of the stereotypical view of a state perceived as threatening is that the great advantage of that state in capability terms is a consequence of greater will and determination. A would-be aggressor’s stereotypical view of a state perceived to be vulnerable to aggression tends to be equally out of harmony with actual responses of nation state targets of aggression. A central feature of the expansionist view is that the target, whatever its actual power-instrumental base, lacks the commitment or the will to respond effectively to the threat or fact of aggression. Such a reality-view serves to make reasonable aggression against a target or targets that, looked at in terms of the “hard” power factors only, would be judged as significantly more powerful than the aggressor. Furthermore, even when confronted with strongly nationalistic reactions from their targets with an attendant fierce commitment to resist the aggression, the Hitlers and Saddam Husseins tend to deny those reactions and to retain the operating worldview that allowed them to anticipate victory. Leaders less inclined to view the political landscape stereotypically in times of crisis and more able to view antagonists with a disciplined detachment are likely to recognize the bargaining advantage that accrues to nation states. They will understand the impact of nationalistic responses on the decisional latitude of nation states.

Nationalism and Decisional Latitude As was apparent throughout the discussion of nationalism and state capability, a major behavioral tendency that distinguishes nation states from non–nation states is that of governmental decisional latitude. There are two determinants that form the basis of these differences. The first is the

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degree of commitment the authorities can expect from their citizenry. If this is translated in terms of a willingness to accept major sacrifices and to incur major risks, the citizenry of a nation state tends to be more accepting. This is especially notable if the comparison is made with a multi national or multiethnic non–nation state. As a consequence, authorities in the nation state will have greater latitude to deal with challenges to state security and the welfare of its citizenry. Viewed in terms of available policy options, the range tends to be greater for the authorities of the nation state. They may be able to consider options that involve considerable risk, including that of loss of life, whereas the authorities in non–nation states may have serious difficulties justifying taking such risks with one or several of the identity communities that incorporate the territorial community. In other words, the task of developing a consensus behind particular governmental policy options is far more difficult in the non–nation state. These tendencies become far more apparent when the policy of concern is one that is based on an enhancement of the level of influence exercised by the government in world affairs. This is even more the case if the objective is an enhancement of prestige and grandeur. Authorities in a nation state will have the latitude to consider such an option, although they must weigh carefully the willingness of the citizenry to accept extraordinary risks and sacrifices for the achievement of an essentially aggressive purpose. The pattern that appeared in the discussion of Hitler’s Germany illustrates this point. German public opinion polarized upon Hitler’s accession to power (Steinert, 1977). An apparently substantial section of the population manifested little interest in the goals of enhanced world influence and grandeur and rejected emphatically a program of expansionism. But Hitler was able to mobilize his supporters to the point of accepting the risk of extraordinary sacrifices. In order to carry out this program, Hitler constructed a control system that appears to be a characteristic feature of fascism. It was the system that prevailed in the regimes of Hitler’s Italian and Japanese allies. The first-intensity control dimensions were “coercion” and “normative active,” that is, a response to the manipulation of nationalist and other symbols. That control system was sufficiently effective to prevail even in a period of terrible destruction, loss of life, and a certainty of defeat that was apparent to much of the population, if not to Hitler. Hitler’s opponents were intimidated not only by his instruments of state terror but also by the fear of condemnation for their failure to support the national community at a moment of great crisis. There is a second area in which there are differences in nation state and non–nation state behavior with regard to decisional latitude. The determinant here is the willingness of the citizenry to support policies that could be construed as accepting affronts to prestige and grandeur and a

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consonant loss of a degree of influence in world affairs. The case could be and was made during the Cuban missile crisis that the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba did not seriously alter a military equation that was heavily favorable for the United States. The Soviet move, therefore, should not be allowed to lead to a major, war-threatening crisis. But whatever the merits of that case, it could not influence the policy outcome. The option of accepting this new Soviet presence in the heart of the U.S. sphere of influence could not be considered seriously by the authorities. The American public could not condone such a blow to national prestige and capability image. Soviet authorities, in marked contrast, were able to consider and to agree to a withdrawal from the crisis in humiliating circumstances. In doing so, they paid no visible price in the form of an adverse public response. To be sure, the dimension of coercive control in the Soviet Union was sufficient to make an overt display of opposition to this policy improbable. Were Adolph Hitler to have made a comparable policy choice involving national humiliation, an overtly negative public response would have been similarly improbable. But were he to have made such a choice, Hitler would have risked his nationalist legitimacy and, it follows, his ability to manipulate national symbols with undiminished effectiveness. The authorities in the totalitarian Soviet Union, a multinational non–nation state, would have far greater latitude to choose policy options involving a risk to prestige than would the authorities in the totalitarian Nazi Germany, a nation state. A clear pattern therefore emerges concerning decisional latitude in nation states as compared with non–nation states. Authorities in nation states, thanks to the intensity of public commitment to the nation, will have the latitude to choose policy options that involve great risk and major sacrifices in the defense of the security, prestige, and level of influence exercised by the nation state in world affairs. But once mobilized, the citizens of a nation state will expect and demand success in achieving goals attached by the leadership to national defense and prestige.

Conclusion Table 5.1 gives a skeletal summary of the arguments presented in this chapter concerning the differences between nation states and non–nation states in terms of societal values, political control, and state capability.

Nationalistic Values Table 5.1

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Nation State Versus Non–Nation State Control and Capability

Patterns

Nation States

Non–Nation States

Values

Nationalist values: • independence • unity • prestige • well-being

Nonnationalist values of wellbeing for primary identity group

Domestic political challenges: noncrisis

Normative habitual control; utilitarian control

Normative habitual control; utilitarian control

Domestic political challenges: crisis

Normative active control; nationalist symbols manipulated effectively

Coercion; particular identities seen as threatening; manipulation of symbols ineffective

External challenges

State capability high: • decisional latitude great; • mobilization voluntary; • sacrifices voluntary; • extreme imagery of opponents

State capability low: • decisional latitude weak; • mobilization through coercion; • diverse imagery of opponents; • danger of interaction between domestic identity groups and state opponents

Notes 1. The compelling quality of Morgenthau’s concept of nationalistic universalism rests on the simplicity of the power-determinist assumption; power optimizing was the sole motive. Morgenthau’s decision to describe that rationale as “nationalistic” universalism would seem to suggest a nationalist determinism as well. But Morgenthau’s direct treatment of nationalism went in a very different direction. His use of the term nationalistic appears to have been a dangling insight—an intuitive realization of the determining force of the national values of prestige and dignity at critical moments in time. Our assumption, in contrast, is that of value and hence motivational complexity. 2. This list is compiled from a broad range of works on American political values and is meant to be suggestive rather than definitive—for illustrative purposes only. Useful analysis of American political values include Commager (1951), Hartz (1955), Dallek (1983), Matthews (1991), Lind (1995). 3. This argument was first presented in R. W. Cottam and Gallucci (1978). 4. On the manipulation of symbols in popular mobilization by Hitler’s regime, see Baird (1974).

6 Nation States and Foreign Policy: A Case Study

The influence of nationalism and related patterns of imagery on foreign policy can be seen in the conflicts between the United States and Mexico and the United States and Colombia in the realm of international narcotics control. This is an issue area that has evoked nationalistic sensitivities among all the participants. It also offers the opportunity to witness the impact of varying degrees of nationalism on policy preferences and strategy formation. The United States has been described in some detail above as a nation state, and Mexico has been mentioned briefly. Before considering the drug-policy area and the countries’ interaction, Mexico should be considered in more detail; Colombia, which has not been discussed thus far, must be considered in depth. As mentioned, Mexican governments have actively promoted the idea that Mexico is a mestizo country, a true blend of Spanish and indigenous cultures, thereby making it a classic nation state with a uniquely Mexican identity. The reality may be somewhat different from this myth, of course, with controversy surrounding the extent to which the indigenous culture was integrated into the dominant culture or assimilated by it, with the ultimate intention being to destroy (Díaz Polanco, 1997). Regardless of the anthropological debate, the myth has real political significance in defining Mexican nationalism. The country is seen as culturally unique. It also is deeply marked by the existence throughout Mexico’s postindependence history of external threats, ranging from the United States, which took half of Mexico’s territory in successive adventures in the mid-1800s and intervened again in 1914 and 1916, and the French, who established a hereditary monarchy there in 1862. Mexicans are socialized with this history in mind. There are daily tributes to los niños heroes, the Mexican military cadets reported to have committed suicide rather than surrender to invading U.S. troops in 1848, a National Museum of Interventions in Mexico 161

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City, and, in general, a strong commitment to nonintervention in the affairs of others. Mexicans remember, and the centuries of external threats inevitably contributed to the evolution of a third, strong, and unique identity of the Mexican nation. Mexico’s political and economic difficulties are well known. The political system has been dominated by a single political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and the executive is extraordinarily powerful, leading to many criticisms of the political system for its authoritarianism and lack of democratic practices. Nevertheless, while clearly able to criticize the political system, Mexicans are very proud of their country. Jorge Domínguez and James McCann (1996: 38) found 96 percent of survey respondents expressing pride in Mexico in 1991; yet only 35 percent expressed pride in the political system itself (p. 39). Moreover, the Mexican political system clearly has the nationalist legitimacy to withstand instability caused by strong pressures for reform. The PRI now faces real challenges from other political parties, and the executive’s control over decisionmaking is weakening, as is evident in the first-ever election for the mayor of Mexico City, an office previously occupied by presidential appointees. Mexico’s foreign policies have reflected the power of Mexican nationalism, but they have also reflected an imperialist image of the United States and an accompanying sense of Mexican weakness. Mexican presidents have openly criticized the United States for treating Mexico with a lack of respect and equality. Mexico has championed self-determination for all countries, nonintervention, Mexican sovereignty, and collective security. Mexico consistently opposed U.S. Cold War policies in the Western Hemisphere, from the isolation of Cuba to the intervention in conflicts in Central America during the 1980s. Mexican nationalism is evident in its status as the first country to nationalize an industry (the oil industry in 1938) and its staunch insistence that no foreigner will control Mexican soil or subsoil. The importance of dignity and equality was evident in Mexico’s negotiations with the United States concerning the importation of natural gas from Mexico to the United States in the late 1970s. At one point, Mexico chose to forgo any agreement, which meant burning off the natural gas since no other buyer was available at the time, rather than accept a U.S. offer that was demeaning in presentation and less lucrative than that accorded to other natural gas producers (M. Cottam, 1986). Mexico also has been reluctant to submit to the influence of international organizations and thus took a long time to join the Non-Aligned Movement as well as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (participation in which was not approved until 1986), and it never did join the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). As one Mexican official stated, Mexico is

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always the “party pooper” in multilateral meetings because of its strict adherence to noninterventionist principles, which makes it strongly resistant to multilateral operations (Interview, 1997). This is not to say that Mexican nationalism prevents any participation in international organizations or that it always provokes threat perceptions at the prospect of bilateral agreement with the United States. Mexico has been generally supportive of international organizations, particularly when they provide some prospects for diminishing U.S. power and influence. In the Organization of American States (OAS), Mexico has proposed initiatives that would affect U.S. power, including a simple-majority voting proposal. The government has also supported regional institutions like the Sistema Económico Latino-Americano (SELA), which excluded the United States but included Cuba. Moreover, the Mexican interest in the idea of the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada was accompanied by perceptions of opportunity, not threat, as indicated by opinion polls in 1991 showing 52 percent with a favorable view of the United States and, in 1992 and 1993, 60 percent supporting NAFTA (Gonzalez and Chabat, 1996: 46). At the same time, Mexico’s foreign policy has tempered its principles in practice and demonstrated an eagerness to do business with the United States. For example, Mexico’s defense of Cuba was largely legalistic rather than principled (for example, rejecting Cuba’s expulsion from the OAS because its charter had no rules concerning expulsion). Mexico has thus sought a “special relationship” with the United States, particularly in trade. Mexico is certainly less powerful than the United States and very dependent upon the economic interaction with the United States as well as U.S. support in international financial institutions. Nevertheless, it can be argued that Mexico has not used the leverage available to it from a 2,000mile border and a very large and growing community in the United States of Mexican descent. In its bargaining behavior in NAFTA negotiations, in its willingness to obey U.S. demands regarding economic reforms after the debt crisis of 1982 (which have been very harmful for the weakest in Mexican society), and in the political power and importance accorded to the U.S. ambassador in Mexico (unreciprocated in the United States), Mexican leaders have acted with a sense of hopelessness in the face of superior U.S. power. Listening to the rhetoric, Mexican independence and nationalism would appear to be very important in foreign policy formulations, but in practice Mexico often acts as though it were weaker than it is. This is behavior typical of those who perceive another country in stereotypical imperialist terms. Their sense of inferior power—the sense that inevitably the imperialist wins—leads to a notable propensity to think in terms of grand U.S. conspiracies (e.g., U.S. hurricane-seeding was blamed for a severe

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drought in Mexico in 1980) and a failure to develop creative, new, powerbased problem-solving options. The Mexican imperial image of the United States is reflected in the words of Mexican historian Daniel Cosío Villega: “One of the Mexican’s most disconcerting traits is his Olympian intellectual disdain for the United States, which he secretly envies, while blaming it for all his ills and which he has never tried to understand” (quoted in Riding, 1986: 474). Thus, although nationalism is very strong in Mexican policies toward the United States, its strength is devoted to castigating the United States on relatively small issues that flare up and then disappear. Nationalism informs tactical positions absent a broad strategy for influencing U.S. foreign policy. For example, there have been many separate conflicts regarding various U.S. efforts to reduce illegal immigration from Mexico— fences that hurt people, abuse of Mexican nationals by U.S. border agents—but Mexico has avoided formulating a broad strategy. The reasons are related to nationalism and imagery: The importance of the “safety valve” for the Mexican economy is embarrassing to nationalists; the United States is seen as having the power to do whatever it wants. As will be argued below, a comprehensive strategy is possible in the realm of international narcotics, but Mexico’s approach continues to follow the pattern just described. Colombian nationalism, in contrast, appears to be less intense. When one interviews Mexicans, one gets a coherent, comprehensive lecture on Mexico’s history, exploitation, and suffering at the hands of the United States. One gets a comprehensive picture of the Mexican people, their unique culture and history. When one interviews Colombians, the picture not only is very different but very fragmented and lacking in coherence. Colombians, for example, do not immediately remind one of the role the United States played in the secession of Panama from Colombia. They are more self-critical, and some question whether Colombia should even be considered a nation. Scholars agree that national identity was delayed in Colombia until the middle of the 1900s (Martz, 1997: 40) and that regional identity is strong. Yet nationalism does appear to be a factor in Colombian politics, a factor that appears occasionally but less often than in other Western Hemisphere countries (Dix, 1987). This may be due in part to the fact that Colombia has faced few external threats and has had multiple periods of severe internal political violence. Historical events such as la violéncia, a period of political violence that lasted from 1947 until at least 1957 and by some accounts into the 1960s, would have made the development of a strong national identity difficult. Nevertheless, Colombians do make sacrifices for their country, as is evident in the many police, prosecutors, and administrative officials who have lost their lives in the Colombian war on drugs. (Being a police officer in the Colombian antidrug unit

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of the police is considered to be quite prestigious and sought-after, according to one knowledgeable source.) Colombia is, as David Bushnell (1993) puts it, “a nation in spite of itself.” Colombian foreign policy has nationalistic elements as well, much of it related to the narcotics issue. Nationalistic policies emerged in the oil sector (Bushnell, 1993: 210). Colombia did not simply follow the Cold War policies of the United States, either, although it was supportive in general. During the administration of President Julio César Turbay Ayala, Colombia supported the U.S. move to prevent Cuba from obtaining a seat on the UN Security Council. However, during the presidency of Belisario Betancur, Colombia opposed the Reagan administration’s policies in Central America and joined Mexico, Venezuela, and Panama in an effort to promote a peace process known as the Contadora. Colombia participated in the UN-negotiated solution to the civil war in El Salvador. In the 1990s, a Latin American regional focus has been an important component of Colombian foreign policy. The G-3 (Group of 3), for example, was organized with Mexico and Venezuela as a “political-diplomatic organization with subregional goals” that has increasingly turned its attention to subregional trade (Tokatlián and Tickner, 1996: 115). Yet such acts of independence from the United States have been accompanied by a general willingness to respond positively to U.S. demands, even demands that for others would seem to be a violation of national sovereignty and an insult to nationalist values. A recent example of this is Colombia’s approval of an agreement allowing U.S. ships to enter Colombian waters in pursuit of suspected drug traffickers, an agreement considered a violation of national sovereignty by other countries in the Caribbean (Latin America Weekly Report, February 11, 1997: 74). Whereas Mexican elites have seen the United States as the exploiting imperialist, Colombian elites have tended to see the United States as the benefactor-imperialist, the imperialist who will punish if crossed but who, if obeyed, will reward. Thus, we will analyze two bilateral relationships. The first is that of Mexico and the United States, in which nationalism is strong and in which the mutual perceptions consist of the colonial and imperial images, with Americans perceiving Mexicans generally through the colonial image (discussed at length in M. Cottam, 1986), and Mexicans perceiving the United States through the imperial image. In the second bilateral relationship, Colombia and the United States, nationalism is much weaker in Colombia than in Mexico, and the image of the United States is (or was—see below) that of the imperialist but seen in terms of offering opportunities for Colombia. Meanwhile, the U.S. image of Colombia, like the standard U.S. image of Latin America (see M. Cottam, 1994), is that of the colonial. The drama of these sets of nationalism and images is played out in the realm of the international war on drugs. U.S. policies have been driven by

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nationalism and the colonial image, as have Mexican and Colombian policies. Mexican and Colombian officials have approached the demands of the United States in accordance with the variance in their nationalism, that is, differently. The United States has approached Mexico and Colombia through the prism of U.S. nationalism and the colonial images of those two countries. In the process, the United States has inflamed Mexican nationalism and has increased the intensity of Colombian nationalism—possibly more so than any other single event in the history of Colombian foreign policy—by providing Colombians with an external threat.

The Drug War in U.S. Foreign Policy The drug war has a long history as an element in U.S. foreign policy. Bilateral drug-related issues with Mexico hit the news in the early 1970s, when the United States essentially closed border traffic by slowly searching people crossing the border under the auspices of Operation Intercept. Mexico quickly complied with U.S. demands that it improve its drug interdiction efforts. U.S. policies toward the Andean countries increased in importance during the 1980s and became well known when the Andean Initiative was announced. This program became the central component of the Bush administration’s war on drugs in 1989 and 1990. The initiative was Congress’s in response to increasing public concerns about drug consumption and related crime. The new Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) was established in 1989 under the auspices of the Anti-Drug Omnibus Control Act of 1988. Its mission was to coordinate the drug war among the many agencies involved and to develop the annual National Drug Control Strategy. The ONDCP is the home of the country’s so-called drug czar, but if any agency has “control” of the policy’s international implementation it is the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), which is also home to the assistant secretary for narcotics matters. Congress plays an enormously important role in determining the nature of the policy through its budgetary powers and willingness to be involved. The major emphasis in U.S. policy has been on the control of supply. Although the control of demand has not been neglected, demand-related programs such as prevention and treatment have received less funding. The budgetary figures for 1996 through 1998 indicate that demand-related programs have received and will continue to receive about half that of supply-reduction programs, or one-third of the operating budget (ONDCP, 1997). The emphasis within supply-related programs has also shifted over time between interdiction and eradication. The operating budgets of U.S. agencies involved in these components of the international drug war, the

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Customs Service, the Department of Defense, and the Coast Guard, are larger than that of INL (Riley, 1996: 40). In the early 1980s, the focus of the drug war was on training and improving the law enforcement capabilities of the Andean-country police forces. This did not meet with much success, and the emphasis then turned to the militarization of those police forces. When the newly trained police also failed to stop drug production, U.S. officials began to focus on the Andean-country militaries as the security branch most capable of fighting the drug war. They would be trained and equipped by the United States. In 1989 the United States shifted its approach from eradication of coca fields and growers to trafficking interdiction. It was not until 1990 that the economic-aid component of the policy began to increase significantly, including crop-substitution programs. The Bush administration’s strategy under the Andean Initiative reflected these policy priorities. It was described in a House of Representatives report (U.S. Congress Report, 1991: 3) as a broad program of military, law enforcement and economic assistance to the cocaine-producing countries of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, designed to reduce the supply of cocaine to the United States. With a total budget of over $231 million for the fiscal year 1990, the strategy seeks to disrupt cocaine production and trafficking operations through crop eradication, interdiction and enforcement measures in the Andean source countries.

The stated goal of the Andean Initiative was to support the cocaineproducing countries “in their efforts to control and defeat the drug trade” in order to achieve “a major reduction in the supply of cocaine from these countries to the United States through working with the host governments to disrupt and destroy the growing, processing and transportation of coca and coca products“ (U.S. Congress, Report, 1991: 10). Despite this declaration, the policy was planned to suit U.S. interests, goals, and tactical preferences even in the face of widespread criticisms and complaints by Andean officials. The Bush administration emphasized the military and police component almost exclusively, although there were increasing allocations for economic assistance as well as plans for improving trade opportunities for Latin America, plans such as the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative and the Andean Trade Preference Act. Another central characteristic of the drug war was the increased role of the U.S. Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. Initially, the Defense Department strongly resisted any involvement in a drug war, maintaining that this was a law enforcement problem, not a military security problem, and that it would divert attention from the real security missions of the military. Later, U.S. Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney announced that the drug war was a “high priority national security

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mission,” signaling the military’s reluctant acceptance of the policy (Washington Office on Latin America, 1991: 12). The U.S. military would be involved in assisting the Andean-country militaries, whose inclusion in the drug war was now seen as essential. In 1989 President George Bush signed a National Security Directive that authorized military personnel to leave secure areas and go into areas where they could find themselves in combat with guerrillas and/or traffickers. The training program was developed jointly by Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and the Army/Air Force Center for Low Intensity Conflict. According to the congressional report: Teams of military advisers will remain in-country with each battalion and police unit/staff for eighteen months or longer, if necessary, upon completion of the training program. “The degree to which the advisory teams would be operations is unspecified,” notes a DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] summary of the Southcom strategy. In addition, Mobile Training Teams will offer standardized progressive training to host country personnel, both in the region and in the United States. (U.S. Congress Report, 1991: 15)

U.S. military and law enforcement personnel are placed in dangerous situations through this policy and have come under fire in combat with drug and guerrilla personnel. Among the outcomes of the militarization of the drug war in U.S.Mexico relations were increased U.S. antidrug aid to Mexico, the establishment of Mexico’s Northern Border Response Force at U.S. urging, and increased collaboration (operational planning, sharing of intelligence) between Mexican military-police officials and U.S. military counternarcotics officials as well as civilian law enforcement agencies (T. Dunn, 1996: 139). The involvement of the Mexican military in antidrug efforts increased during the late 1980s with U.S. approval and assistance. After several disastrous raids on suspected drug bases, the Mexican military’s involvement diminished, but it increased again after 1994 when Ernesto Zedillo became president. Currently, the United States provides training and intelligence support for the Mexican military’s antidrug forces. Mexican military officers are receiving training in U.S. Defense Department programs designed to create antidrug specialists in the Mexican military who will, in turn, train others. The Clinton administration has followed roughly the same pattern as the Bush administration, although Republican critics in Congress argue that the Clinton administration had no real interest in the drug war. Clinton did radically reduce the size of the ONDCP upon entering office, although it has grown again since then. Clinton’s budget allocations for international eradication and interdiction programs have been lower than

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those of the Bush administration (about $1.6 billion in 1997 versus $3 billion in 1991) (Suro, 1997: A11), although the overall demand-supply ratio is essentially the same. But the Clinton administration moved from an emphasis on interdiction to eradication in its international program. As time has progressed, some aspects of the initial drug program, as reflected in the early goals of the Andean Initiative, have come into effect. For example, DEA training programs in the Andean countries are institutionalized and looked upon positively by DEA officials. They regard their counterparts in Colombia, for instance, as honest, very hardworking, and quite courageous in the risks they take. The same cannot be said for DEA views of Mexico (New York Times, April 24, 1997). The interaction between militaries is also institutionalized in this policy domain. As the program has aged, U.S. attention has turned to other aspects of narcotics control, such as encouraging transformations of legal systems in Latin America to produce and enact laws preventing money laundering, controlling precursor chemicals, permitting asset seizure and confiscation, and permitting the extradition of Latin American nationals to the United States to stand trial in U.S. courts. Meanwhile, Congress has remained involved and active in U.S. antidrug policy. Congress mandated in 1986 that the U.S. State Department prepare the annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report on the extent to which drug-producing and/or -transiting countries that have received INL support have met the goals and objectives of the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances including action on such issues as illicit cultivation, production, distribution, sale, transport and financing, and money laundering, asset seizure, extradition, mutual legal assistance, law enforcement and transit cooperation, precursor chemical control, and demand reduction; accomplished the goals described in an applicable bilateral narcotics agreement with the United States, or a multilateral agreement; and taken legal and law enforcement measures to prevent and punish public corruption—especially by senior government officials—that facilitates the production, processing, or shipment of narcotic and psychotropic drugs and other controlled substances, or that discourages the investigation or prosecution of such acts. (Department of State, INL, 1998: 34)

The president, on the basis of this report, shall certify to Congress that the countries in question have done a satisfactory job in the war on drugs. Countries that fail to be certified may be denied all U.S. aid not related to the antinarcotics efforts, and the United States may vote against their requests in international financial institutions. The general congressional view is that Congress has a role to play in foreign policy, Congress funds the drug war and foreign policy in general, and it is Congress’s responsi-

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bility to ensure that the money is well spent. If a country does not pass certification, specific sanctions are applied by law.1

The Colonial Image of Latin America and U.S. International Narcotics Policies Evidence that a country is seen through the dependent colonial image can be found in the words and actions of policymakers. Both reflect assumptions that the perceiver’s country knows what is best and that the colonial country should accept the advice and decisions made by the perceiver. Bargaining with the country is usually zero-sum and frequently does not occur at all. Decisions are imposed; leverage is used quickly and brutally to make the country do as it is told. Another strong pattern that emerges is the simplification of the colonial’s polity. It is assumed that political actors there are either good or bad, obedient or subversive (or irresponsible). Nationalism, cultural concerns, political traditions, institutional structures, and policy priorities—all are ignored, and stereotyped states are assumed to be malleable in the hands of the perceiver’s state. The verbal and behavioral evidence from U.S. decisionmakers in the war on drugs in Latin America fits the pattern described above. The pattern is evident throughout policymaking and advisory circles, and it is very strong. During the 1970s, it appeared that perceptions of Latin America were becoming more varied and complex (see M. Cottam, 1994). The Reagan administration reversed that at the executive level, and debates and discussions about the drug war indicate that the colonial image was the dominant image of Latin America in Congress and elsewhere by the late 1980s and early 1990s. Elements of the image are evident in the decisionmaking pattern as the Andean Initiative and the bilateral drug policy toward Mexico were developed, in the use of U.S. leverage, in arguments concerning how the drug war can be made to succeed, and in the evaluations of the political conditions in Latin American countries involved in the drug war. The policy was designed by the United States to serve U.S. interests. It was then presented to Latin America with the expectation that it would be accepted. This is behavior frequently associated with the colonial image. Despite the fact that the Andean strategy required cooperation from Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru, it was developed unilaterally, without their participation (Washington Office on Latin America, 1991: 11). As initially formulated, the program revolved around U.S. interests exclusively. In the first place, the drug-supply focus absolved the United States of the more expensive and difficult solution regarding drug demand at home. The administration was verbally responsive to Latin American complaints that the United States would effectively combat drugs only by attacking the

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demand side of the equation, but policy was not significantly affected, and the demand-versus-supply issue has never been fully engaged in policy debates in the United States. The tactics preferred by U.S. policymakers for implementing the Andean strategy have been those of the military and law enforcement. The selection of these tactics put control of the hemisphere-wide policy in U.S. hands, as the United States would be responsible for designing and implementing the military and law enforcement elements, including legislation passed in Latin American countries as part of the drug war. Both the Bush and Clinton administrations recognized that the drugwar strategy would have to be multilateral, but that never meant partnership in developing the strategy. Multilateral summits have been held regularly since 1989. In the first summit the United States modified some aspects of its strategy that were objected to by the Latin American presidents. However, those concessions were largely cosmetic, and the direction of the policy remained essentially that preferred by the United States. For example, at the first summit, Cartagena I (1989), President Bush refrained from pushing Latin American governments to accept the U.S.-preferred approach of heavy reliance upon domestic and foreign militaries in the drug war and acknowledged that addressing U.S. consumption was a crucial factor in controlling the flow of drugs. He also publicly accepted the importance of economic aid for producing countries (Bagley: 1992). Nevertheless, the thrust of the strategy remained interdiction and eradication, and Andean countries were strongly urged to commit their own militaries to and accept U.S. military involvement in their efforts to eradicate and interdict coca and cocaine. The 1992 summit (Cartagena II, held in San Antonio, Texas) followed a similar pattern (Bagley, 1992: 8–9). The Miami summit in 1994, with Bill Clinton as president, ratified the UN Convention of 1988, the Cartagena Agreement of 1989, and the San Antonio Declaration. Despite common agreement that narcotics flows and consumption are a problem and should be addressed, the importance ascribed to the problem by the United States is simply not shared by Latin American countries. Bruce Bagley (1989) argues that the unilateral decisionmaking of the United States follows a clear pattern. When the war appears to be going well, consultation with Latin American countries occurs. When the reverse occurs, as when a country’s share of the drug market increases or following embarrassing events, the United States “frequently abandons its cooperative approach and acts unilaterally without consulting or even warning” its partners (p. 51). This is strikingly evident in U.S. interactions with Mexico. As will be seen, after the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena in Mexico, the United States militarized the border, kidnapped Mexican nationals involved in the killing, declared international law irrel-

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evant in the extension of U.S. law enforcement activities into the territories of other countries, and passed the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which not only initiated the certification process but also declared it a crime to make and market drugs outside of the United States with the ultimate aim of exporting them to the United States. Finally, as will be seen, U.S. perceptions of Mexico, Colombia, and other Latin American countries involved in the narcotics issue reflect the simplification associated with the presence of a strong colonial image. There are differences in that U.S. policymakers in the executive branch, but not necessarily the legislative branch, tend to have a more complex view of Mexico compared, perhaps, to any other Latin American country. Nevertheless, American nationalism produces continuing problems in U.S.-Mexico cooperation in the drug realm.

The Drug War in U.S.-Colombia Relations Relations between the United States and Colombia in this policy area were generally positive during the 1980s but were more difficult during the 1990s. The U.S. program in Colombia is big. In 1998 Colombia received $289 million in counternarcotics assistance from the United States, making it the largest U.S. security assistance recipient in the hemisphere and the third largest globally (Shifter, 1999). By the middle of 1999 Colombia was searching for $3.5 billion in antinarcotics trafficking aid, and U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey recommended that the United States provide $1 billion toward that end (New York Times July 17, 1999). U.S. agencies working in Colombia on drug matters include the DEA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as the State Department’s various divisions. The U.S. programs are designed to improve Colombian law enforcement capabilities through training and equipment and to strengthen the judicial system. There have always been differences of opinion between the two countries. For one, Colombians maintain that the United States has refused to take strong steps to deal with demand reduction. Without this, they argue, the war cannot be won. The U.S. response has been that it is working on demand and that supply must be fought. Second, Colombians complain about the U.S. certification policy, which requires an assurance that a country is cooperating with the United States or abiding by the 1988 UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances. The certification requirement is described as self-serving and arrogant—What right does the United States have to “grade” another country on its programs and policies? The U.S. response is consistently that this is the law, Congress mandates certification, and as long as the United States supplies other countries with aid to fight a drug

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war it has the responsibility to ensure that such aid is properly used. More specific issues include extradition and negotiations for the voluntary surrender of drug lords. All of these issues were “manageable” in that they were not relations-breaking conflicts. However, when Ernesto Samper was elected to the presidency in 1994 these and other issues were incorporated into a general U.S. condemnation of Samper, who, according to U.S. intelligence information, ran a campaign to which the narcos from the Cali cartel contributed several million dollars. Colombia was decertified twice, in 1996 and 1997, and U.S. hostility toward President Samper was unmitigated. His replacement, Andrés Pastrana, met with U.S. approval, and Colombia was recertified in 1998 and 1999. The following section reviews areas of conflict and addresses the role of nationalism and images in the character of these conflicts. Although U.S. officials maintain that Colombia has been pushed into its own war on drugs by the United States, Colombia’s war against drugs has a long history. It was and is important to Colombians that they be seen as taking the lead in this policy, that Colombia has made its own decisions, and that it has been a leader in the international effort to control narcotics (see, e.g., Office of the President, 1989: 8). Columbia’s Consejo Nacional de Estupefacientes (National Anti-Drug Council) was established in 1974, and action against the drug cartels increased dramatically in the 1980s. The National Police created a special antinarcotics unit in 1981 (the Organismo Especial de Antinarcóticos). Investigations into the drug industry sponsored by Liberal Party officials in 1982 resulted in the beginning of the narcoterrorism that has killed thousands of Colombian officials and civilians. The drug industry set off the first salvo in the assassination of Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonilla and followed through with more assassinations, bombings, and kidnappings throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 1985, Medellín cartel drug lord Carlos Lehder actually funded an attack by the M-19 guerrillas on the Colombian Palace of Justice. Over 100 people lost their lives, including fifteen justices of the Supreme Court and Council of State. The attack occurred as the Supreme Court was about to rule on the constitutionality of an extradition treaty with the United States. In the years since, hundreds have been victims of narcoviolence, including police and military officers, judges, journalists, attorneys general, and presidential candidates. Thus, Colombia’s own war on drugs has been vastly more complicated than that of most countries. In addition to the “normal” components of the war—eradication of narcotics-related plants, arresting producers and traffickers, struggling with the inevitable effects of drug-money corruption on the political system, and addressing the money-laundering problem— Colombia has had the added trauma of extraordinary levels of drug-related violence. In addition, despite being one of the oldest democracies in Latin America, Colombia has had to contend with guerrilla movements that also

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commit acts of extreme violence and have periodically joined forces with the narcos. The guerrilla conflict was accompanied by the rise of right-wing paramilitaries and human rights abuses by the military. Narcoterrorism became the chief drug-related problem in Colombia, and combating it has been a major objective in Colombia’s war on drugs. The problem has been approached through a complicated series of government strategies, ranging from intense efforts to improve and increase the effectiveness of law enforcement (which has included accepting aid and training from the United States), to negotiations wherein the drug lords have been enticed to surrender. Throughout, nationalism became an increasingly important factor. The Colombian government has had to balance a desire to cooperate with the United States against public pressure not to make concessions regarding Colombian sovereignty. Nationalistic outrage has been expressed on several occasions, ranging from anger at President Virgilio Barco’s 1989 agreement to permit the United States to introduce a radar system into Colombia, to outrage over the presence of U.S. troops in Colombia in 1993 (Tokatlián, 1994: 136; Martz, 1997: 275). Rather than retelling the story of Colombia’s war on drugs, the following section highlights some of the central conflicts in U.S.-Colombia relations concerning international narcotics. One of the central issues has been the extradition of Colombian nationals to the United States to face drug-crime indictments in U.S. courts. The Colombian judiciary has been the country’s weakest institution in the drug war. As mentioned, judges were frequent targets of narcoterrorists. During the 1980s members of the judiciary were poorly protected, had little in the way of advanced technology for crime fighting (such as computers), and had huge caseloads. Moreover, the judges have primary responsibility for investigating criminal cases, that is, judges must build the case for prosecution and issue an indictment. They were thus easily intimidated, overworked, and tempted by bribes; as a result, few cases resulted in conviction (Gugliotta and Leen, 1989; Riley, 1996: 161). Under such circumstances, it is easy to understand why the drug lords would be adamantly opposed to extradition. The chances of being convicted and imprisoned for a long period of time were much greater if they went to trial in the United States. But extradition is not simply an issue of importance to the drug lords. Long before the U.S. counternarcotics program became an all-out war against drugs, extradition was a political issue in Colombia. Some presidents, legislators, and members of the public opposed extradition, and the Colombian Supreme Court was called upon to rule on its constitutionality—and ruled against it—on several occasions. A treaty was signed with the United States in 1979. It was declared null and void by the Columbian Supreme Court in 1986 on the grounds that it was signed by an interim president. It was revived after receiving the proper signature, but the Colombian Supreme Court again declared it unconstitutional in 1987

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because “the procedure prescribed by the Constitution with respect to the framing of laws has not been followed” (Office of the President, 1988: 46). The treaty was not favored by President Belisario Betancur (1982–1986) anyway, although he reversed his opposition to extradition after the assassination of his justice minister in 1984. The next president, Virgilio Barco (1986–1990), favored extradition but ran into the abovementioned obstacles from the Colombian Supreme Court. The Court’s ruling in 1987 would have required Barco to resubmit extradition legislation to the Colombian legislature, but that was politically impossible. Nevertheless, Barco managed to circumvent the problem and extradited several drug operatives during his 1989–1990 campaign against the narcos. In 1991, the new Colombian constitution formally prohibited the extradition of Colombian nationals. This provision has been challenged, and the Colombian Supreme Court held it to be constitutional. In 1997, the Samper administration renewed efforts to have the constitution changed, and once again extradition was permitted. The United States was still not satisfied, however, because extradition was not retroactive to the constitutional change. In its annual review of Colombia for certification the United States blamed corruption for President Samper’s inability to have the nonretroactivity clause revoked (Department of State, INL, 1998). The extradition issue reflects the complexity of Colombian politics. There is nationalistic opposition to extradition in principle. At the same time, the narcoterrorists launched a fierce campaign to eliminate any threat of extradition. They announced they would “prefer a Colombian grave to a foreign prison” and implemented a program of terror that cost thousands of lives during the late 1980s and early 1990s (Embassy of Colombia, 1997: 3). Further, they allegedly spent a great deal of money in propaganda campaigns (also in the form of bribes to members of the legislature) to raise nationalistic ire against extradition. One cannot analytically separate the importance of fear, intimidation, and nationalism in the Colombian rejection of extradition. Clearly, fear played a role, as did corruption. But symbol manipulation designed to arouse nationalistic opposition would be useless if nationalism were not there to begin with, a pattern noted in Chapter 5. Moreover, opinion polls taken before the propaganda campaign related to the 1991 constitution provide consistent evidence that two-thirds of Colombians opposed extradition (Clawson and Lee, 1996: 111). Nationalistic sensitivities producing objections to extradition were genuine. Nevertheless, U.S. officials, in confidential interviews, describe the entire 1991 constitution as having been “bought” by narcos because of the antiextradition clause. In government documents related to Colombia there is no mention of the complexities of nationalism and terror as a factor in Colombians’ mixed views toward extradition. This is reflective of the simplification of polities when perceivers have a strong image of that country, in this case that of the colony.

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Negotiations with the narcos was another area of disagreement between the United States and Colombia. Various Colombian governments had used negotiations successfully to convince many guerrillas to turn in their arms, and some officials hoped the same approach could be used to end the reign of terror perpetrated by the drug lords. It is important to note, however, that the idea of negotiations was only a tactic in a broader strategy that at times included massive, and violent, crackdowns on drug operatives. In particular, after the 1984 assassination of Justice Minister Lara Bonilla, and again in 1989 and 1990 following the assassination of Liberal Party presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan Sarmiento, Columbia experienced periods of virtual warfare. The drug lords made several overtures (1984, 1988, and twice in 1990) to the government indicating that they would dismantle the drug business (Clawson and Lee, 1996: 102) in exchange for light sentences, the opportunity to return to society, and a promise that they would not be extradited to the United States. Naturally, this option of bargaining with criminals was not uncontroversial. Nevertheless, three successive administrations, from Betancur through César Gaviria, explored the possibility and negotiated to some extent. In fact, negotiations were successful in reducing narcoterrorist acts and in dismantling the top echelons of the Medellín cartel. They were less effective in the case of the Cali cartel (p. 102). Negotiations as a concept has received considerable public support (p. 111). These negotiations have not been positively regarded by U.S. officials. Colombian officials asked for and did not receive U.S. support for the idea in 1984 and 1988. In 1988 the Colombian responsible for exploring negotiations with the cartels, Germán Montoya, President Barco’s chief of staff, stated, “We must take into account the United States reaction in the event that Colombia implements this proposal. We cannot discard the possibility of political and commercial reprisals” (quoted in Clawson and Lee, 1996: 105). The United States was not pleased with the Gaviria administration’s negotiations, either. By 1994 the DEA, Attorney General Janet Reno, and U.S. Senator John Kerry, among others, criticized the negotiated surrenders, light sentences, and nonextradition policies and claimed that they had heightened corruption in the Colombian judicial system. Kerry went so far as to call Colombia a “narcodemocracy” (Martz, 1997: 276). This issue area also manifests the impact of nationalism and images. First, Colombian behavior shows the hallmarks of the imperialist image of the United States. Checking with the United States before proceeding with a domestic political decision on a matter of extreme importance, considering the high level of violence perpetrated by the narcos, as was done during the Betancur and Barco administrations, is a sign of perceptions of weakness and obedience to the imperial power. One can imagine the dilemma of these policymakers, caught as they were between public pressure for an end

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to the violence and domestic disagreement over the issue of negotiations, and pressure, both anticipated and real, from the United States not to negotiate. Certainly, the most important goal for Colombia would be an end to violence. The difficulty of designing a policy that achieved this goal and simultaneously satisfied the United States would have been very great. Gaviria’s response was to cooperate with the United States in the ground war, thus having to face nationalists’ wrath at the presence of U.S. troops in Colombia, while negotiating with the narcos and thereby facing U.S. wrath at the light sentences and lack of extraditions. Gaviria may well have been the most nationalistic of these three presidents. Not only did he follow his own policy decision and risk U.S. hostility; he also insisted that the United States address seriously the problem at home and reduce demand by 50 percent by the year 2000. The United States, for its part, was again unconcerned with the domestic priorities of the Colombians and with the political difficulties its policies created for Colombian presidents. Had Colombia been considered an equal, the United States would have been fully sympathetic to its need to eliminate narcoterrorism and supportive of a policy that both achieved that and had some successes in dismantling at least one cartel. But Colombian concerns were always secondary to the need of U.S. politicians to demonstrate a tough stand on drugs. U.S. foreign policy for Colombia, is, as Michael Shifter puts it, “nearly indistinguishable from U.S. antinarcotics policy” (1999: 18). This is particularly important in light of the priority Colombia must now give to the increasing power and violence of two major guerrilla organizations, counterviolence by paramilitaries, and crime-related violence that makes Colombia a global murder capital. American nationalism made American interests—controlling the flow of narcotics—the first and only item on the policy agenda. By late 1999, however, the director of the ONDCP, Barry McCaffrey, recognized the extent to which Colombia’s first priority had to be reaching some settlement with the guerrillas. By that time guerrilla activity had so threatened the state and had produced extensive obstacles to the antinarcotics efforts that McCaffrey called for a $1 billion aid package for Colombia to combat narcotics. The effort to combat narcotics was directly linked to the guerrillas in that they financed themselves in part through narcotics trafficking. Interestingly, the case shows the weakness of Colombian nationalism as well. Colombian obedience to the United States is certainly in part due to lack of leverage, which in turn is closely tied to the imperial image of the United States. But the degree of Colombian tolerance of U.S. involvement in Colombia’s drug war can be attributed to low levels of nationalism. By asking for U.S. approval for negotiations with the drug lords, Colombians invited American interference in domestic affairs, something Mexico would never do. Colombia was not completely without nationalism, but the weak-

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ness of nationalism led it to be a sometime factor in political considerations in Colombia, not a continuous factor. These perceptual characteristics may be changing. The Colombian perception of the United States as an imperial state—with the positive but especially the negative connotations—may be stronger today than ever before. Moreover, thanks to recent U.S. actions, Colombian nationalism may be on the rise. This is due to the final issue area to be considered in U.S.Colombia relations: certification. As mentioned, Latin Americans everywhere find the certification process insulting, and Colombians are no exception. Although documents do not state this, it is widely believed that Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Robert Gelbard believed that decertification would cause President Samper to fall from power, and so he advocated it for that very purpose. (Gelbard denied any U.S. interest in Samper’s political survival, saying in an interview published in the Colombian paper El Tiempo on May 5, 1997, that it is a Colombian decision. His extreme dislike of Samper and Samper’s close ally and possible successor, Interior Minister Hector Serpa, is also evident in the interview.) U.S. conditions for recertification are also indicative of U.S. contempt for Colombia and Colombians. There are five demands, which, from the Colombian perspective, could never be met to U.S. satisfaction, largely because they are smoke screens for the real goal—the end of the Samper administration. The demands include the use of granular herbicides (which Colombia has refused to do); extradition of narcos under indictment in the United States; longer sentences for narcos; elimination of the narcos’ ability to run businesses from jail; and legislation providing for asset seizures of narcos’ drug wealth. The Colombian government passed legislation regarding asset forfeiture and money laundering in 1996 and has made the effort to begin the process of changing the constitutional prohibition on extradition. From the U.S. perspective, however, it was all too little too late, and decertification continued in 1997. Although U.S. officials in the executive departments involved in certification believe that Colombia could be recertified before the end of Samper’s administration, members of Congress would surely object in the strongest terms. As Samper’s term came to an end Colombia was certified, perhaps to enable quick action once Samper’s successor took office. Decertification infuriated Colombians and most likely backfired. It increased Samper’s power and encouraged the growth of nationalistic hostility toward the United States. The American flag was burned in front of the U.S. Embassy, the main labor organizations organized demonstrations against the United States, and the press decried Colombia’s treatment as the scapegoat for failed U.S. drug-control policies (Latin America Weekly

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Report, March 4, 1997: 116; and March 11, 1997: 125). This is true despite the fact that Colombian public-opinion polls showed that 61 percent of respondents have a negative image of Samper (Latin America Weekly Report, February 11, 1997: 74). Thus, the United States strengthened Samper, providing a reason for the Colombian public to support him even though they did not like him. Indeed, he did not fall, despite U.S. efforts, and left office on schedule in 1998. In short, Colombia’s political system, its lengthy history of democratic processes, and its incipient nationalism were drastically simplified by U.S. policymakers as the extradition, negotiation, and certification issues show. Moreover, U.S. nationalism is also evident in these areas. The extraordinarily positive self-image is evident in the assurance that the United States knows how to conduct the war on drugs and will instruct others regardless of their own domestic considerations. More centrally, however, the influence of a strongly positive self-image is evident in the unwillingness of U.S. policymakers (despite lip service) to accept the problem of demand at home as a credible issue in the war on drugs. This will be discussed at length after our examination of the United States and Mexico. In broader political-psychological terms, the United States provided Colombia with an external threat that should increase Colombian nationalism. The United States attempted not only to interfere in Colombian politics but also to cause the elected president to fall from power. Colombian politicians condemned the United States in the strongest terms, saying, for example, that Colombia was treated like a “slave” by the U.S. government (El Espectador, February 17, 1997). The anger generated by U.S. actions can be seen clearly in statements by Colombian officials. Noting that 20,000 Colombians had lost their lives in the last twenty years of fighting the drug war, and that Colombia had devoted more than $2 billion to the war, ten times more than it has received in foreign aid, one official stated: “These Colombians fought in every form imaginable to preserve and protect our values, children, security, and democracy, the second oldest in the hemisphere” (El Espectador, February 18, 1997, our translation). Samper proposed that the Non-Aligned Movement become the organization through which international narcotics programs are channeled, thereby eliminating U.S. domination in the issue area. At the same time, the imperial image of the United States and an accompanying sense of weakness may explain Colombians’ failure to develop a consistent strategy that signaled to the United States that it would not be treated as an inferior, as well as their failure to develop available leverage to the utmost. Colombians complained bitterly about U.S. demands and orders yet followed up with extraordinary concessions, such as an agreement to permit interdiction of naval traffic by U.S. forces in

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Colombian waters. High-level Colombian officials are sent to the United States to assure Congress that Colombia has done its part in the drug war. And despite his criticism of the United States after decertification in 1997, before the decision was made President Samper made “frantic” efforts to demonstrate his government’s cooperation with U.S. demands (Latin American Weekly Report, February 25, 1997). These steps were taken despite the fact that no country has paid the price Colombia has paid in the war on drugs, a price exacted as a direct result of Americans’ demand for drugs. If any country has an ethical or moral right to argue that the United States should, indeed must, do something about demand before cooperation can occur, it is Colombia. And if any country has the moral right to play a strong hand in demanding quid pro quo concessions from the United States for that cooperation, it is Colombia. Colombia’s failure to confront the United States with all available leverage is another sign of the imperial image of the United States and the sense of its own weakness. For example, Colombia receives considerable support from the European Union on drug-related matters. Germany, for example, provides 1.5 million marks to Colombian police forces annually. Moreover, European investment in Colombian industry is important, as is European tourism. Moreover, the Germans, in particular, are sympathetic with the negotiation strategy for dealing with the narcos and have asked the United States to cooperate in that arena (El Tiempo, May 5, 1997). The Europeans have a different view of drug policy and considerable influence with the United States, but the Colombians have not used this as leverage. In addition, the OAS and the United Nations are reasonable alternative international organizations with an active interest in drug policy to whom the Colombian government could turn to internationalize the approach to the problem and thereby minimize the influence and power of the United States. But instead, President Samper suggested that the Non-Aligned Movement take the leading role, a suggestion bound to be opposed by the United States because it would completely deny U.S. influence. In short, that idea is a nonstarter. The anger associated with insults to nationalism and the cognitive properties of the imperial image of the United States are mismatched at present in the case of Colombia. Together they can spark rebellion, but only when the self-image is positive enough for people to see their own power options and to take a creative approach to problem-solving. Colombian nationalists have not gone beyond expressions of anger to a strategic plan for getting equal treatment from the United States. Given multiple problems in Colombia revolving around political and criminal violence, that positive self-image is unlikely to develop soon.

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The United States and Mexico in the War on Drugs The interaction between the United States and Mexico regarding illegal narcotics has similarities and differences compared to U.S.-Columbia relations. Mexican policymakers are certainly more stridently nationalistic than are Colombians, and the imperial image of the United States is, if anything, more intense. Policymakers and opinion-setters in the United States, in contrast, have several images of Mexico. Some hold the classic colonial image. Others have a much weaker colonial image or a complex, nonstereotyped perceptual picture of Mexico. Recognition of the importance of Mexican nationalism is at the heart of these perceptual variations, with complexity increasing with the understanding of Mexican nationalism. It also tends to vary across the branches of the U.S. government. Congressional views of Mexico tend to be largely in the colonial image. In congressional hearings on Mexico’s certification, Mexico is blamed for poisoning American youth; the youths themselves are not blamed. Proclaiming Congress’s intended House move to decertify Mexico, “tough but fair” members sought to teach Mexico a lesson with decertification. It would, according to Senator Diane Feinstein, “send a strong signal to Mexico and the world that the United States will not tolerate lack of cooperation in the fight against narcotics” (Feinstein, 1997: 3). Mexico was repeatedly described as rampantly corrupt and the source of most of the drugs coming into the United States. The United States is said to have a duty and a right to correct Mexican behavior. Senator Trent Lott, speaking before the Senate on March 20, 1997, stated that “we have a right” to have Mexican nationals extradited to face charges in the United States and to have our DEA agents carry weapons in Mexico (Congressional Record, March 20, 1977: S2577). With some important exceptions, the executive branch has had more individuals who are sensitive to Mexican nationalism and who carry a fairly complex view of the country and people. There remains, however, little recognition by Americans of U.S. nationalism and its impact on U.S. behavior. Mexico has waged its own war on drugs since the early twentieth century (Toro: 1995). The United States has expressed concern about narcotics from Mexico periodically during the century, establishing early on a pattern of pressuring Mexico to adopt a policy toward narcotics similar to that of the United States (Craig, 1989: 72). As in the case of other Latin American countries, the drug-control policies relating to Mexico have been largely determined unilaterally. Narcotics became a major issue in U.S.-Mexico relations in the 1960s with the extraordinary growth in U.S. demand. Beginning with Operations Intercept I and II (1969 and 1985, respectively), the United States attempted

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to direct Mexico’s internal and international approach to drug production and trafficking. Programs along the border would seemingly require cooperation, but little consultation took place until the late 1990s. Operation Alliance, for example, which began in 1986, “was the primary coordinating body for collaborative drug enforcement efforts in the border region. . . . Its joint-command structure included senior officers from the Customs Service, Coast Guard, DEA, FBI, and INS–Border Patrol as well as representatives from law enforcement agencies in each of the four border states” (T. Dunn, 1996: 113). Nevertheless, it had no representative from Mexico. The parallel operation at the U.S.-Canada border, Project Northern Star, did have Canadian law enforcement participation, however (Mendel, 1995). Even Operations Cooperation and Condor, long hailed as highlights in the history of U.S.-Mexico cooperation in the drug war during the 1970s, consisted of the United States furnishing “aircraft, technology and instruction. Mexicans would furnish money, men and a desire to master the arts of crop destruction and trafficker interdiction” as taught by the Americans (Craig, 1989: 77). Operations Intercept I and II and Operation Cooperation set the standards for U.S.-Mexico narcotics policies, ranging from coercive unilateral U.S. policies to bilateral agreements resulting from U.S. pressure and insistence on addressing the U.S. drug problem through supply-oriented operations. They also resulted in the introduction of U.S. DEA agents into Mexico (Friman, 1995). U.S. pressures have increased Mexico’s attention to the drug industry: consumption may be a U.S. problem, but as U.S. demand has grown and the drug industry changed, the impact on Mexico’s political and justice system has transformed concern about narcotrafficking into a national security issue for Mexico. One-third of Mexico’s defense budget is directed at drug control, and it was declared a national security issue in 1987 by President Miguel de la Madrid (Toro, 1995: 33). Mexico accepted U.S. aid and technology in its war on drugs, with a preference for an eradication approach, in the late 1970s. By focusing on eradication Mexico was able to avoid interdiction, which, particularly along the border, would have involved a much greater U.S. presence in Mexico’s antinarcotics efforts. The United States provided helicopters, airplanes, and training for Mexican pilots. In addition, DEA agents were permitted in Mexico. Mexico used its military forces more than it did the Mexican Federal Judicial Police to carry out the eradication campaign. Mexico modeled its antinarcotics police on the DEA. As the narcotics industry changed, Mexico became a transit country for cocaine from the Andes. Interdiction and increased Mexican border-control efforts then became essential. Mexico’s role in the international narcotics industry began when the country became a major source of heroin and marijuana. After the mid-1970s

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Mexican eradication and interdiction efforts, under the auspices of Operation Cooperation and aided by U.S. equipment, drastically reduced the supply of Mexican marijuana to the United States from 75 percent in 1976 to 9 percent by 1983; it rebounded to 32 percent in 1986 (Chabat, 1994: 379; Ruiz-Cabañas, 1989: 48). Mexico’s role as a heroin supplier dropped dramatically, from 85 percent of the U.S. market in the early 1970s to 37 percent by 1980 (Chabat, 1994: 379). Then the market changed: growers and traffickers adapted to the pressures imposed by law enforcement and eradication efforts, and Mexico became a major conduit for cocaine from the Andes, particularly after the Caribbean–South Florida routes were largely shut down in the 1980s. The Mexican policy was also affected by downturns in the economy in the 1980s and again in 1994, as well as by the pervasive efforts of the drug industry to use its resources to corrupt Mexico’s criminal justice system. Throughout, U.S. demand remained powerful. By the mid-1990s Mexico was “a principal transit route for South American cocaine, a major source of marijuana and heroin, as well as a major supplier of methamphetamine to the illicit market” in the United States (International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1998: 140). As the Mexican drug industry and its impacts changed during the 1980s, so did U.S.-Mexico interaction. Mexican policymakers were consistently sensitive to Mexican sovereignty and rejected U.S. suggestions for collaboration that threatened Mexican territorial integrity (such as joint border patrols allowing incursions across borders by U.S. law enforcement personnel in pursuit of narcos). The relationship hit a crisis point in 1985 when DEA agent Enrique Camarena was tortured and murdered in Mexico by narcos and/or corrupt Mexican police with ties to the traffickers. The U.S. response was Operation Intercept II, and there was increased attention within the United States to corruption in the Mexican criminal justice system. Mutual, nationalistically driven recriminations were launched on both sides of the border, and U.S.-Mexico relations as well as U.S. drug policy in general changed. U.S. drug policy became more nationalistic and unilateral than ever after the Camarena incident. The U.S. policy instruments used in the bilateral drug war became increasing militarized, which, it can be argued, is an indication of heightened nationalistic sensitivities on the U.S. side. Not only is the military instrument a sign of intensified threat perceptions; it is also an instrument to be relied on when quick results and diminished interference by critics become important. Americans, in particular, understand their own military power to be exceptionally effective in achieving their goals. Moreover, the United States may have tremendous resources and power, but the executive branch faces many limitations in being able to implement its preferred foreign policy strategies. There are multiple groups, institutions, and agencies involved in formulating, approving, and

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implementing foreign policy. The executive branch has more control over and less interference from other foreign policy actors when it uses the military instrument, particularly in low-intensity operations such as the drug war. Symbolically, at least, the military speaks for the state and acts only at the behest of the national government. It therefore can be used to send a clear signal of the president’s policy and goals. This was personified in Operation Alliance, a collaboration between U.S. military and civilian law enforcement agencies established by Vice President George Bush in 1986 (T. Dunn, 1996: 113). A second indication of heightened U.S. nationalistic sensitivities came in the flaunting of international law when the United States pursued and kidnapped one of those involved in Camarena’s murder. As mentioned, DEA and Department of Justice officials reacted with fury at Camarena’s murder, as well as at the Mexican reaction to the U.S. reaction. Although most suspects were brought to trial in Mexico, two were arrested in Mexico and, through collaboration between Mexican police and DEA agents, brought to the United States, which is to say, the DEA paid for their capture and abducted them to the United States. The Mexican government protested. Ultimately, one of the cases went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the abduction in 1992, thereby asserting a U.S. right to undertake extraterritorial legal action, which was previously considered a violation of international law (Nadelmann, 1993: 447). As in the Colombian case, the lengthy history of U.S.-Mexico relations regarding drug policy can be found in many sources (see, e.g., Reuter and Ronfeldt, 1992; Chabat, 1994; Toro, 1995). Here we turn to some of the central issues of conflict. One includes several flashpoints that can be lumped together as Mexican territorial integrity and sovereignty. Mexican nationalism is intensely sensitive to any perceived effort by nonnationals to exercise power or decisionmaking authority on Mexican soil. Any such action is perceived as a challenge to the authority of the Mexican state, is associated with the history of invasion to which Mexicans are very sensitive, and is simply not acceptable. This is a general matter of principle in Mexico’s foreign policy. Noninterference in the affairs of others is expected of all and required of Mexico itself; hence Mexico will not contribute forces to a multilateral military operation. International narcotics matters offer plenty of opportunities for threat to these sensitivities in that cooperation among the various countries involved implies, at a minimum, an overlap of law enforcement activity. Mexicans are very cautious about that interaction. From their perspective, if you give the United States an inch, be prepared for it to take a mile. If concessions regarding Mexican sovereignty are made on this issue, the United States will soon be making similar demands in other issue areas,

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such as immigration. That is not acceptable. Peter Reuter and David Ronfeldt (1992) argue that declaring narcotics production and trafficking to be a national security issue was based not only on concerns about the narcos’ violation of Mexican sovereignty but also on the implications the issue held for U.S. pressures for permission to interfere with strict Mexican sovereignty. The Mexican preference for eradication rather than interdiction in the 1970s is a reflection of a desire not to open Mexican territory to U.S. law enforcement personnel. Although Mexico has accepted DEA training, along with U.S. equipment and aid, it remains extremely important that this not translate into decisionmaking authority. Mexicans will decide how the drug war works in Mexico. This has frustrated U.S. policymakers who have long wanted Mexico to follow the U.S. approach to international narcotics control (Ruiz-Cabañas, 1992: 154). This particular component of Mexican nationalism was threatened after the abduction of Humberto Alvarez Macháin for the murder of agent Camarena. Mexico protested, and when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legality of the abduction in 1992 Mexico retaliated by banning U.S. drug-control activities, by prohibiting DEA agents from carrying weapons on Mexican soil, and by announcing the so-called Mexicanization of the drug war. It was decided that Mexico would not accept U.S. drug-control assistance and would take complete responsibility for drug-control policies and practices in Mexico. In 1996, because of the Mexican financial crisis, President Ernesto Zedillo once again accepted U.S. assistance. But the policy itself—and it still has supporters in Mexico—was a clear nationalistic response to threats to national sovereignty by a country perceived to be an imperialist. All matters concerning the operation of U.S. law enforcement personnel on Mexican soil are also evaluated under the umbrella concern of protecting Mexican territorial sovereignty. These include permitting border crossings by U.S. law enforcement personnel engaged in hot pursuit of criminals, which Mexico has refused to allow; permitting overflights of Mexican territory by U.S. intelligence aircraft tracking drug traffickers, which was agreed upon only after difficult and complex negotiations under the careful scrutiny of Mexican nationalists (Reuter and Ronfeldt, 1992); and permitting DEA agents to carry weapons on Mexican soil. This last issue has been particularly sticky, in that it provides a clashing point for Mexican nationalism and long-term DEA resentment about the Camarena incident. Mexico is repeatedly asked to permit the DEA to carry weapons— and it repeatedly refuses. U.S. decisionmaking in this area is interesting, for this is one domain in which the executive branch generally has control, but not always. This is the domain of tactics: what kinds of cooperative programs should be developed, what should the United States ask for in terms of access to Mexican

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territory, what equipment is needed to fight narcotics production and trafficking in Mexico, and what kinds of intelligence and training are necessary? The high-level response has been increasingly empathetic, if not sympathetic, to Mexican nationalism. One indication of this is that extradition is not the high-publicity issue in U.S.-Mexico relations today that it is in U.S.Colombia relations. Mexico has a constitutional prohibition on extradition, except in cases of “exceptional circumstances.” Mexico regularly extradites people with dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship but has extradited only three Mexican nationals under the exceptional-circumstances clause. The United States applies nowhere near the pressure on Mexico that it applies on Colombia regarding extradition. This may be due to the difference in image, in that Colombia is seen through the stereotypical colonial image and Mexico is not, at least among many in the executive branch. In fact, as will be noted below, extradition is more of an issue among those in the legislature who do see Mexico in the stereotypical colonial image. Another important reflection of the increased sensitivity to nationalism and complexity of image is the Clinton administration’s willingness to work with Mexican officials through the High Level Contact Group (HLCG), established in 1996. The HLCG, divided into five topical areas, is designed to develop jointly tactical responses to different issues within the narcotics arena. Importantly, high-level officials from both sides meet regularly, and in both countries, to discuss tactics. This not only is appreciated by the Mexicans but also is an approach that reflects an understanding of Mexican nationalism. Mexicans want to be treated as equals, and in this group they are; they must be in control of tactical decisions affecting Mexico, and in this group they are. The first report issued by the HLCG, in May 1997, does indeed reflect some Mexican concerns, such as production of both narcotics and precursor chemicals in the United States as well as money laundering there. The weakness, of course, is that they must still accept U.S. input into Mexican policies, whereas the reverse does not occur. For example, Mexican officials have complained repeatedly that a central problem in controlling narcotics is weaponry. Drug cartels operating in Mexico get their weapons in the United States, but U.S. policymakers respond to this by saying that the arms flow is due to Mexican demand. Naturally, Mexicans regard this belief as remarkably hypocritical: that U.S. drug consumption is due to supply, not U.S. demand, but Mexican weapon acquisition is due to Mexican demand, not U.S. supply. More important, however, is that this unrecognized double standard is a nice reflection of American nationalism. Not only is someone else to blame for the problem (i.e., the Mexican cartels want the weapons); but by blaming someone else, Mexican influence can be kept out of U.S. politics, which is what nationalistic Americans would want. Moreover, to address the issue seriously would require

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confronting the Nation Rifle Association, which would mean that Mexico is influencing not only U.S. policy but politics as well, and outside interference in U.S. politics is strongly disliked, as is typical of nationalistic people. The signing of an OAS agreement regarding illegal weapons trafficking in November 1997 required only that the United States enforce vigorously existing legislation. Nevertheless, it is an important reflection of the utility of multilateral fora and agreements in defusing some of the nationalistic passions embedded in some issue areas. At the same time, however, the HLCG’s May 1997 report relegates discussion of firearms trafficking to an appendix and dances around the demand-supply issue. Although it is acknowledged that “illegal trafficking in US-sources firearms has facilitated criminal activity in these countries, as it does domestically,” it attributes causality first and foremost to the 2,000-mile border, then to the demand for guns “in the context of [Mexico’s] restrictive gun laws, thriving cross-border crime, and ample supply of US arms” (Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 1997: 89). Nowhere in the evaluation and prescription for prevention of arms trafficking is there a discussion of lax weapons regulation in the United States. Indeed, tight regulation in Mexico, rather than weak regulation in the United States, is specified as a cause of the flow of illegal weapons across the border. A second difficulty in terms of U.S. sensitivity to Mexican nationalism is that even at the executive level sensitivity is not uniform. In part, this is due to differences in the perspectives and working environments of the various agencies involved in narcotics control. The DEA, for example, works on a cop-to-cop basis, not at the higher policy levels. From the DEA perspective, the Camarena murderers had to be punished, and they did what they thought was legal in accordance with the U.S.-Mexico extradition treaty to bring two of those individuals to justice. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld that decision. Moreover, the DEA, as a police organization, must work with Mexican police and therefore runs headlong into the problem of corruption. With that narrow perspective, it is not surprising that the DEA would act in ways that are completely understandable from a cop’s perspective yet are deeply offensive to Mexican nationalism. This has continued since the abductions. Repeated stories from DEA officials complaining about Mexican corruption are offensive, particularly comments by then DEA Director Thomas Constantine that “there is not one single law enforcement institution in Mexico with whom DEA has a trusting relationship” (Congressional Record, March 13, 1997: H961). Continued DEA efforts to be permitted to carry weapons on Mexican soil are consistently resisted. Moreover, the United States has even requested that DEA agents be permitted to vet Mexican drug agents, including administering polygraph tests. President Zedillo’s response was as expected: “That’s ridiculous! Imagine if I told President Clinton that we want to

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have hearings in Mexico to accept his Attorney General! I mean that’s ridiculous” (Dillon, 1997: 4). As a result, according to one highly placed Mexican official, the DEA has “zero influence” because they act like imperialists.2 Thus, although demonstrating some sensitivity to Mexican nationalism, Americans regularly cross the boundaries and offend it. This happens most particularly in arenas in which U.S. perceptions of Mexicans revert to the colonial image. Those who deal with the seamier side of the drug war, such as the DEA, are more inclined to this image and thus make statements and demands reflective of it and neglectful of Mexican nationalism and pride. This tendency is augmented by the nature of their jobs, that is, they implement tactics rather than setting broad national policy and cannot see the implications of their logical tactical suggestions for the broader picture of nationalism. A second extremely important issue, one that inflames nationalism on both sides, is certification. Mexico refuses to recognize the certification process, regarding it as a possible violation of international law and a certain illustration of U.S. arrogance and imperialism. The certification process is definitely threatening to Mexican nationalists, but, most important, it is infuriating. Mexico has been threatened with decertification several times. In 1988 the Senate voted to override the Bush administration’s decision to certify, but it was not joined by the House. In 1996 Mexico was certified after some hesitation, and in 1997 the House voted against certification but was not joined by the Senate. In 1997 the certification process once again inflamed U.S.-Mexico relations. Only two weeks before certification decisions were to be made in the United States, Mexico announced the arrest of General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, the head of the national drug agency, for drug corruption. Mexico’s certification suddenly became a major political problem in Washington, although the Gutiérrez affair was a catalyst rather than the sole basis for the problem. Mexico was already being criticized for insufficient efforts to control drug trafficking and to halt corruption. Apparently, the State Department’s INL, under Robert Gelbard in 1997, advocated decertification, but this was overruled higher up in the decisionmaking hier archy. After the Clinton administration certified Mexico, with the caveat, pronounced by Clinton, that “Mexico has a serious drug problem” (Washington Post, March 2, 1997), Congress leaped into the fray. In a compromise the House gave the Clinton administration ninety days to provide evidence that Mexico had made substantial progress in cooperating with U.S. drug-control efforts and in cleaning up corruption. Specifically, the House demanded that Mexico allow more U.S. law enforcement agents into Mexico, permit agents to carry weapons, end corruption in Mexico’s counternarcotics agencies, extradite Mexicans to the United States, improve

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airway security, and permit the U.S. Coast Guard to chase traffickers and stop them in Mexican waters (Washington Post, March 13, 1997). Otherwise, decertification would follow. It is clear that views toward certification, particularly as applied to Mexico, vary widely within the United States. By 1999, for example, the Clinton administration was strongly in favor of certifying Mexico despite a dismal performance in Mexico’s narcotics-control efforts during the preceding year. One administration official states that the certification process in regard to Mexico was “not about what Mexico has done. This is about convincing the Hill that whatever Mexico has done is enough” (quoted in New York Times, February 14, 1999: A6). At the same time, DEA chief Constantine was before Congress painting a bleak picture of organized crime in Mexico (New York Times, February 25, 1999: A5). Although dissent and disagreement remain, many members of the administration had come to understand how damaging the certification process was to U.S.Mexico relations. Mexican responses to the certification issue demonstrate the powerful emotions that accompany any threat to nationalist values. Mexicans’ anger is expressed in the press and in person. Not only are they infuriated by the arrogance of the United States in “grading” other countries; some would even prefer complete decertification to conditional certification, regarding the latter as a message equal to a parent telling a child that they were bad but, with good behavior, can be forgiven. The Mexican Congress voted unanimously to condemn certification in principle as an insult to national sovereignty (Washington Post, February 28, 1997). Mexican officials speculated that if decertification had occurred, Mexico would have expelled all DEA agents from its soil. They regard the public condemnation of Mexican corruption in congressional debates on March 13, 1997, to be an insult to every honest Mexican, of which, they note, there are many. They condemn American hypocrisy, noting that most of the marijuana consumed in the United States is grown in the United States (Washington Post, February 28, 1997). Finally, they consider it remarkable that their American counterparts would tell them that they need to understand U.S. politics and the role of Congress and not take all the Mexico bashing seriously—while simultaneously expecting Mexicans to respond without consideration of Mexican politics. It would not have been possible for Mexican officials to fail to condemn the United States, given the power of Mexican nationalism. As one official expressed it, Mexican “society as a whole will react very angrily to the decision, and the government will have to reflect that. There is no way the government is going to say to its citizens, ‘we’ve been defamed, but don’t worry about it.’ That’s not going to happen” (quoted in the Washington Post, February 28, 1997: 16). And in 1999 Mexico’s ambassador to the United States stated, “I don’t even want to think what decerti-

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fication would provoke. . . . The equilibrium that underlies our relationship with the United States would be undone” (quoted in New York Times, February 14, 1999: A6). At the same time, Mexico’s narcotics policy reflects the imperial image of the United States. Much of Mexican policy reflects the ease with which Mexican nationalism is threatened. Anticipated imperialist efforts to control Mexico and suspicions about future intentions produce the strong resistance to any effort to give U.S. law enforcement personnel free rein on Mexican soil. And, as one official explained, Mexicans believe that Colombia’s strategy for dealing with the United States is far too compliant. Mexico’s attempt to take complete control of its antidrug program in 1992 illustrates the policy Mexico would like to follow—one that is not beholden to the United States. Nevertheless, Mexican policy also reflects the sense of power inferiority associated with the imperial-colonial image dynamic. Mexico has suffered defeats that are harmful to its self-image: economic problems, rebellion in Chiapas, and the inability to sustain the Mexicanization of the antidrug policy are examples. Moreover, in each instance, Mexico has needed U.S. assistance. Mexico has complied with at least some U.S. demands made at the time of the certification decision, although there were strong denials that it would do so. For example, Mexican drug-related law enforcement personnel are now vetted, including submission to lie detector tests, albeit administered by Mexicans rather than Americans, as the United States had wanted. Psychological arguments would indicate that problem-solving creativity suffers with these dynamics. Mexican policy follows this pattern in that for all its strong rhetoric Mexico appears not to have a complex strategy for dealing with the United States and does not always take advantage of the leverage it has. First, Mexico does not publicly and loudly demand reciprocal measures from the United States in the drug war, such as demonstrable decreases in U.S. demand, control of weapons flows across the border, and information on the drug industry in the United States. These issues are discussed, but only in private. Mexico could and should use the U.S. press for all it is worth, and it should make demands very publicly. Second, Mexico does not take the obvious step of insisting that the entire international narcotics issue be dealt with in a multilateral organization where U.S. power is diminished. Instead, Mexico continues to interact with the United States bilaterally, where U.S. power is at its height. Third, Mexico does much less than it could in improving ties with the Mexican American community. The Israeli example of the power a mobilized interest group can have on U.S. foreign policy seems to be unrecognized by Mexican policymakers, an interesting example of not recognizing the power and leverage potentially available. Finally, American nationalism and images of colonial states are evi-

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dent. Latin Americans repeatedly ask why the United States does not address seriously the demand side of the narcotics equation. Many answers are given: the supply side is cheaper to tackle; demand reduction requires treatment, which does not sell politically in the United States. But nationalism is at the heart of the answer. First, nationalists are highly sensitive to threats to the well-being of their fellow citizens, and in the United States drugs and the international drug trade are seen as a direct threat. For example, during a congressional debate U.S. Representative James Traficant stated, “American cities are busting at the seams with narcotics. . . . Other than a nuclear threat, that is the greatest national security threat our Nation faces and every citizen feels it in every city across this country” (Congressional Record, March 13, 1997: H960). Second, people who strongly value their attachment to the in-group and derive very positive self-images from it, as nationalists do, are unlikely to admit to a fundamental weakness and fault within that group. Not only do they not admit it; they do not see it. This is particularly likely to be the case when a common American view of addiction is that it is caused by lack of character and willpower. To acknowledge that many Americans are attracted to narcotics requires asking why, and the prospect of the answer being lack of character and willpower would be appalling. Moreover, the patterns of narcotics use, its prevalence, and the damage caused to the inner-city poor require an examination of social equity and justice in the United States. Thus, seriously engaging in demand reduction means much more than simply addressing a public health issue. It requires looking into the heart of darkness of a very proud people. Just as Mexican nationalists are loath to discuss Mexican corruption with outsiders, American nationalists will be unwilling to announce to the world that Americans seem to need drugs and that the reasons are rooted in the nature of U.S. society. In essence, Americans have found foreign scapegoats upon whom to blame their problem. Corruption is another issue in which American nationalism and images of Mexico affect behavior. Americans have no trouble accepting the illogic of the idea that Mexican corruption allows drugs to reach the United States, at which point the ingenuity of drug traffickers is used to explain the distribution of drugs throughout the United States. Logic would maintain that corruption is not magically replaced by ingenuity among drug traffickers as the major cause of drug distribution and consumption simply because a border has been reached. Corruption and ingenuity are likely to exist on both sides of the border, making Mexicans less responsible and Americans less perfect. The colonial images of Colombia and Mexico are also readily apparent in U.S. policy. Early on, as noted, U.S. policymakers directed the war, planned the tactics, and ignored the complexities of Colombian and Mex-

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ican politics. The entire certification process is an illustration of the role of the colonial image. Certification requires an assurance that a country is cooperating with the United States or abiding by the 1988 UN Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances. Thus, the Americans give themselves the privilege of determining not only if other countries are doing what the United States wants, for the benefit of U.S. citizens, but also their compliance with the UN agreement. This master-ofthe-universe position is fully in line with the colonial image of others as inferiors who must be instructed and guided. There is a difference, however, in that the U.S. colonial image of Mexico is not as widely shared as is the colonial image of Colombia. More Americans, particularly those in the executive branch, understand and acknowledge Mexican nationalism and know that it will prohibit certain privileges for U.S. law enforcement agents. They realize that Mexicans understand intellectually how the U.S. political system works, and that the executive and legislative branches often use other countries to get at each other, but also that Mexicans are very angry about issues like certification and that the anger drives their response. Nevertheless, there is little recognition of the power of American nationalism in bilateral relations and little, if any, consideration of how the drug policy can not only sidestep Mexican nationalism by not offending it but also use Mexican nationalism to an advantage. Mexicans are expected to respect the U.S. political process and put up with the insults delivered, particularly by members of Congress. It is the case that no U.S. administration can control the wagging tongues in Congress, but that does not mean that every issue has to become a nationalistically sensitive issue. Why some issues become subject to nationalist sensitivities and how they can be neutralized, or even transformed so that nationalism promotes cooperation rather than hinder it, should be at the heart of U.S. policy in the narcotics area. It is not, however, in large part because of the U.S. image of Mexico and because American nationalism is so strong that whatever the United States wants—and however it chooses to get it—is assumed to be just, correct, and right.

Conclusion The cases of Colombia and Mexico in the U.S. war on drugs illustrate the power of nationalism and images in information processing, issue definition, the determination of policy tactics, and problem-solving capabilities. The cases have a lesson as well. Nationalism and imagery are central and unavoidable factors in international politics, and they can be detrimental to problem-solving no matter how good the intentions of all the parties. Rather than insisting that people stop being nationalistic and stop stereo-

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typing, it would be more realistic and reasonable to desensitize the issues. In the case of international narcotics control, we have an issue that will automatically arouse nationalistic values of producing and consuming nations. It is a truly transnational international problem that cannot be addressed without intruding upon the territorial and policymaking sovereignty of nation states. If it is approached bilaterally, as it has been in the Western Hemisphere, it will be approached with the full force of nationalism and imagery. Thus, a sensible alternative would be to insist that international narcotics problems be addressed in a multilateral forum such as the Organization of American States. In such a forum the power of the United States is diluted, thereby also diluting the power of the U.S. colonial image of Latin Americans. Further, nationalistic values of prestige, sovereignty, and citizens’ well-being would be desensitized when narcotics supply and consumption are defined differently, as, for example, public health issues rather than issues of morality. Finally, as will be argued in Chapter 8 regarding human rights, nationalism is less likely to be aroused when individual countries are not singled out as the cause of an international problem, whether as consumers or producers of narcotics.

Notes 1. Mandatory sanctions include: 50 percent suspension of all U.S. assistance for the current year, with the exception of humanitarian aid and international narcotics control aid; 100 percent suspension of aid for following years; and voting against loans for the country in multilateral development banks. Discretionary sanctions include: denial of preferential treatment under General System of Preferences and Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act; duty increases of up to 50 percent; and curtailment of air transport between the United States and the country in question. 2. The remark was made to one of my colleagues by a high-ranking policy official who would not want to be identified.

7 Non–Nation States: Core-Community, Multinational, and Multiethnic States

Whereas nation states hold the seeds of ferocious conflict with other states as well as a propensity for fascist repression of dissent from nationalist dogma, core-community, multiethnic, and multinational non–nation states manifest different patterns of behavior. As noted in Chapter 1, the multiethnic and multinational states have at least two identity groups, there is competition between the groups for scarce resources, and there is differential power (Rothschild, 1981: 102). Often the identity groups are geographically concentrated. Assimilation into a common national identity is resisted in all three types of non–nation states, and the distribution of power among identity groups prevents any single group from establishing itself as the central national community to which others must assimilate. In Chapter 1, core-community non–nation states were described as states with one identity group that sees itself as constituting the community upon which a nation should be based. Other identity groups within the territorial state exist, and, although not powerful enough to strive for independence, they are powerful enough to resist assimilation into the core community. Some core-community states ultimately do evolve into compound-identity nation states, and Russia is a likely example. The leaders of the core community often manifest nationalistic behavior, but the state as a whole does not have the mobilization capacity of a nation state. Multiethnic states differ from core-community states in that they do not have a single community that considers itself the rightful national community for the territorial state. Primary identity and loyalty goes to ethnic groups, with attachment to the territorial state being secondary or lower. No single ethnic group has or perceives itself able to acquire the capability to achieve independent statehood. Multinational states, in contrast, are composed of identity groups that are powerful enough to go their separate ways and form their own states. Primary identity is with the nation rather 195

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than the territorial state, but some attachment to the territorial state is necessary if secession is to be avoided. Attachment to the territorial state is likely to be weaker in the multinational state than in the multiethnic state, since national groups understand their capacity to form a viable independent state. The social comparison process in non–nation states focuses on distinct identity groups. A peaceful political environment can be maintained in a variety of ways: groups can be convinced of the justness of variations in power, capability, and prestige, or they can be convinced that equality is maintained by the state’s institutions. What is important is that the outcome of the comparison is acceptable to members of the various identity groups. Groups differ in what they want and what they think others want and deserve. The differentiation between groups is highly context-specific. As Donald Horowitz (1985: 141–149) notes, ethnic groups living in a single territorial state have complex mythologies about their relative values and positive attributes and stereotypes of one another’s characteristics. Important among these tend to be indicators of relative advancement and backwardness, that is, social distance. The strategies available when social comparison results in a negative evaluation are fairly restricted in the three types of non–nation states considered here. In some, intermarriage, mixed ethnic neighborhoods in cities, migration, and other social practices make mobility across groups possible. Moreover, identities can be fluid and can change as the evolution of a core-community non–nation state into a compound-identity nation state illustrates. Children of mixed ethnic families can choose, in some societies, to be one or the other at different times. But in many cases ethnicity is strongly differentiated by linguistic, religious, and even racial characteristics. In those circumstances people do not have the option of abandoning their ethnic group and joining the other. One is either an Iranian or an Arab, a Yoruba or an Ibo. And this is even more the case in multinational states. The Yoruba and Ibo are both Nigerian, although the latter is less important than ethnic identity. In multinational states identity with the state is even weaker. In the Soviet Union one was either a Ukrainian or a Russian, but Soviet identity was weak. The availability of social creativity options is important for the survival of these states. This is evident in Horowitz’s (1985) description of the mutual views of Tamils and Sinhalese, who saw themselves as quite different and simply valued their own characteristics more than that of the other ethnic group (see also Rothschild, 1981). This can be done by emphasizing cultural characteristics in explaining in-group successes and situational factors in explaining in-group failures and the out-group achievements. Nevertheless, considering the limited resources of many multiethnic and multinational states, social competition is likely to occur,

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challenging the legitimacy of the relative status of groups in a society. Group identity then intensifies, as does the intensity of the images of other groups. The selection of the competition strategy occurs when cognitive alternatives are identified, that is, people believe that the status quo can be challenged, that it should be challenged because it is unjust, and that an alternative is possible. Horowitz (1985: 166) argues that the groups that are “backward,” at least in former colonial societies, will experience highly negative social comparisons in that they will see others as having been more successful in making gains from the colonial experience (in terms of mastering modern skills and acquiring educational advantages). They will therefore be more desirous of political power and prestige and less willing to share it with others. This enhances the basis for a positive self-image since the disadvantaged group now has power, a valued commodity. These groups are more inclined to commit acts of political violence against more advantaged groups. This is an expression of rage at the relationship between themselves and the more advantaged groups, which is a predictable emotion associated with the operative imperial and colonial images. The identity and comparison patterns in non–nation states produce patterns of political conflict different from those found in nation states. For example, although scapegoats are selected from groups in nation states as well as non–nation states, the level of violence directed at the scapegoat may be greater in the non–nation state because of the intensity of group identity and the lack of a common identity. The notion of common citizenship is less salient than in nation states. Thus, African Americans face discrimination, whereas Bosnian Muslims faced mass slaughter. It is easier for hatred to escalate, for people to be dehumanized, when they are considered members of an alien group different on multiple dimensions, not members of one’s own group with some important but nonexclusionary differences. Moreover, because comparisons are made with one specific group, conflict is often dichotomous in multiethnic and multination states, even though the states hold more than two ethnic groups (Horowitz, 1985: 182). This can produce a pattern of conflict that is at once very intense but confined to a limited portion of the country’s territory and populace and ignored by the rest. Leaders of non–nation states must confront constant underlying tensions that can lead to conflict or disintegration. Strategic approaches to these tensions include repression of ethnic and/or national identities, with tactics such as prohibiting linguistically specific media and preventing elites who can rally ethnic and national passions from emerging. Strategies can be developed to promote utilitarian and normative habitual control by preventing negative social comparisons from occurring. Examples include affirmative-action programs that prevent one group from dominating valued

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portions of the economic, social, and political sectors. One common instance of this is ensuring that the military is not dominated by one identity group so as to prevent unrepresented groups from fearing for their physical safety. Finally, programs that promote a third identity and attempt to transfer primary identity from the ethnic group to the state are often implemented. The capability disparity of component communities in a non–nation state presents a major problem for the success of an integration strategy. Members of identity communities with weak capability bases are inclined to see and to resent the overrepresentation of those communities that have large populations and are geographically situated in areas with rich natural resources and/or advanced industrialization. They assume that government decisionmakers who are members of strong ethnic communities will be overly generous in dealing with their own ethnic community. Disabusing them of this belief hence becomes one of the major tasks of an integration strategy. A similar and no less intractable problem associates with the cultural disparity that must exist in non–nation states. The problem is particularly severe if strong judgments are made within the various ethnic communities regarding relative cultural superiority/inferiority of other communities. For example, a community that is weak in terms of population but relatively highly achieving is likely to be seen in stereotypical terms (anti-Semitism being an example). Among the expected attributions would be an arrogant self-concern; an ability to orchestrate a strategy for control of commerce, the professions, and communications; an exercise of overweening influence in governmental decisionmaking largely by purchase; little loyalty to the larger community; and an unwillingness to risk major sacrifices in defending that community. In contrast, a community that is judged to be relatively underachieving is likely to be seen stereotypically in contemptuous terms. Attributions here would include indolence, quite possibly reflecting intellectual inferiority; low moral standards; poor occupational performance; and an inability to perform at an acceptable level in leadership positions, including within the armed forces, although they may perform well as soldiers if sternly but fairly and consistently led by officers drawn from more advanced cultures. Producing a sense of commonality in the face of such perceptual obstacles is indeed a daunting task. Clearly, integration strategies in the non–nation state must be tailored to fit the particular stereotypical view that prevails regarding each ethnic community. In Chapter 8 we will propose a range of integration strategies that are so tailored. Patterns in foreign policies in the three types of non–nation states are also different compared to those of nation states. The citizens are less likely to grant their leaders the decisional latitude found in nation states. Secondary or lower identity with the territorial state would lead to a lower

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willingness to sacrifice for that state, in turn leading to resistance to an adventurous foreign policy. Citizens will be less sensitive to insults and threats in comparison with nation states. Finally, these states are highly susceptible to external efforts to interfere in their internal affairs through influence on ethnic and national groups. They will also face pressures to follow foreign policies amenable to the interests of ethnic or national groups, either in support of their external allies or in support of their ethnic or national kin living in bordering countries. While this pattern occurs in a more limited form in core-community non–nation states, multiethnic and multination states are more permeable and less able to form comprehensive, generally accepted policies designed to promote an agreed-upon “national interest.” Extreme authoritarian efforts to cement the porous nature of these states, by prohibiting travel and communication with others, thereby preventing external powers from taking advantage of the potential leverage offered by the existence of ethnic or national groups, may occur. In the next sections the patterns of behavior described above will be illustrated in several case studies. In particular, the cases will illustrate conflict intensification leading to violence as a part of unfavorable and unacceptable social comparison, difficulties in integration strategies, and the role of identities in disintegration.

Core-Community Non–Nation States At first glance, core-community non–nation states may look like nation states in that there is a territorially defined state with a dominant community that considers itself to be a nation. However, these states also contain minority populations, significant portions of the population who do not identify with the core community and resist assimilation into it despite core-community efforts to promote such integration. They often differ in religion, language, and custom, and they do not grant the territorial state primary loyalty. A crucial distinguishing characteristic of core-community non–nation states from the other types of non–nation states is the manifestation of nationalistic behavior among leaders from the core community. Nevertheless, when the non-core population is large enough, these states cannot mobilize, manipulate symbols, and demand and receive the voluntary, population-wide sacrifices as effectively as a nation state. They are also subject to the efforts by external powers to use minorities with alternative primary-identity attachments as leverage against the state’s corecommunity leadership. Autonomy interests among minorities threaten the cohesion of these states, particularly when the non-core minorities form a large proportion of the population. Several illustrations demonstrate these patterns.

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Iran Iran is an example of a state characterized by core-community nationalism, but it is not a nation state. It has a Persian-speaking community that constitutes approximately half of the overall Iranian population. That community easily meets the criteria of a core community (Vaziri, 1993). Furthermore, it tends to adhere to the pattern of viewing the Persian-speaking core community and the territorial community as a single national community. Iran appears, therefore, to represent a classic example of core-community nationalism. But the case is, in fact, somewhat anomalous. Iran has a large number of ethnic and sectarian minorities, including the Kurds, that lack the capability to make a serious bid for independence without the active support of elements in the external environment. It has one minority, the Azeri Turkish-speaking population, that has a somewhat better than marginal claim to a capability base sufficient to make a serious bid for independent statehood. There have been strong manifestations of particularist nationalistic behavior among some Iranian minorities, most notably the Kurds, the Arabs, the Turkomans, and the Baluchis. The majority of members of these ethnic groups still live in distinct territorial regions, are lightly integrated into the larger Iranian society, and do not grant the Iranian nation primary loyalty (Menashri, 1988), thereby making Iran a non–nation state. Indeed, with the fall of the shah, all of these ethnic groups demanded autonomy. But this has not been the case within the Azeri community of Iran (R. W. Cottam, 1979; Entessar, 1993). The explanation for this anomaly appears to be that an implicit integration strategy has been strikingly successful in Iran with regard to the Azeri population. Intermarriage is widespread, and Azeris can aspire to any political office in the state and to positions in commerce or the professions. To be sure, there is a sense of economic and political deprivation, and the Azeris have been denied the full right to education and publication in the Azeri Turkish language. But history offers strong evidence that the national community for Azerispeaking Iranians, as for Persian-speaking Iranians, is a territorial community that incorporates both linguistic communities. Throughout contemporary Iranian history Azeris have been active in the Iranian national movement and frequently in upper leadership positions (Entessar, 1993: 127). Their attachment to leaders such as Mohammad Mossadeq, who symbolized the drive toward full sovereign independence for Iran, was entirely comparable to that of their Persian-speaking fellow citizens. The case can be made that the core community for Iranian nationalism, a unique case, is an amalgam of the two linguistic communities. The willingness of the Azeri Turks to identify, with primary intensity, with a community in which their freedom to use the Azeri language was restricted

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may well reflect the centuries-long persistence of what Robert Canfield (1991) calls the “Turko-Persian Islamicate culture.” Apparently, following the appearance of Turkish migration into the region, a comfortable ethnic division of labor occurred. Typically, the political leaders would be Turkish, but the scholars, poets, and administrators would be Persian-speaking. The culture was an amalgam with easily identified Iranian, Turkish, and Arab dimensions. Thus, the Iranian national community as it developed in the era of mass politics did meet the criterion of having a distinctive culture. But the persistence or strengthening of a sense of cultural deprivation among Azeris might yet lead to the disintegration of this amalgamated core community. Russia The inclusion of Russia in the category of a core-community non–nation state is debatable and may become obsolete in the short term. The Russian Federation that emerged with the breakup of the Soviet Union manifested fairly quickly the key aspects of core-community nationalism. The Russian community, as is expected in this category, viewed the core community, the national community, and the Russian Federation territorial community as a single community and granted that community a first-intensity identity attachment. Russian nationalism, as well as organizations and individuals expressing it, had been increasing since the 1960s and had become anti-Soviet by the time the Soviet Union imploded (Dunlop, 1983; Spechler, 1990; Szporluk, 1994). The glorification of Russian nationalism emerged as a political movement called Pamyat, or “memory.” It was articulated by Russian writers and social scientists, and it presented Russian culture, history, and the essential ingredient of the Russian Orthodox religion as the basis for a highly emotional appeal to defense of the Russian people as a unique group (Tishkov, 1996). Many additional nationalist political groups emerged during the late 1980s. By 1990 the difference in and potential conflict between Soviet identity and Russian identity was represented by the split between Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, representing Russian and Soviet identities, respectively. There are, however, two central reasons for regarding Russia in the late 1990s as a core-community non–nation state rather than a corecommunity nation state: First, Russia has some minorities, most notably the Tatars and Chechens, that fit the particularist nationalist category and have a marginally sufficient capability to assert some degree of independence, especially if there is a favorable external environment. In addition, one-fifth of the population of the Russian Federation is non-Russian, and some have been granted important concessions on political, economic, and cultural autonomy, indicating that the development of a core community,

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in whatever blend of Russian and minority ethnic characteristics, is far from complete. The 1993 constitution explicitly refers to the Russian Federation as a multinational state (although in our terms it is more appropriately considered to be multiethnic). In most respects the nationalistic behavior of the Russian people parallels that of a nation state. However, as must be the case in this category, the government had to reconcile policy objectives based on Russian nationalism with policy objectives based on particularist nationalisms. The end result of this reconciliation process would likely be a diminution of the influence of both Russian nationalist attitudes and particularistic nationalist attitudes on the policy outcome. Second, Russian identity cannot simply return to a pre-Soviet definition and nationalism. Was there a Russian nationalism before the October Revolution? Referring back to the checklist for the predisposition toward nationalism presented in Chapter 2, one can see that prerevolutionary Russia was fairly low in meeting these criteria. Was there a change-oriented, nationalistic elite? Well, yes and no. The Russian czars began to glorify the Russian nation only in the late nineteenth century. There was a changeoriented opposition to the aristocracy, from constitutionalists in the Duma to the revolutionaries of 1917, but it is difficult to argue that they constituted a nationalistic elite. Certainly the Bolsheviks were not, and many of the others may have been nationalists but did not champion Russian culture and history, as Russia was still a peasant society, not the Westernized industrial society they appreciated (Dixon, 1996). Prerevolutionary Russia also fails in another mark on the checklist; it was not characterized by mass political participation. It was, as mentioned, a peasant society, where interaction and identity with the state was limited. Finally, prerevolutionary Russia was an imperial empire already experiencing the processes of incorporating non-Russians. This was done with both coercion and accommodation. Hence, prerevolutionary Russia was never uniquely Russian in language, history, or culture. Russian identity was strongly affected by its role in the Soviet Union (Guroff and Guroff, 1994). There, Russia was the most important of several communities that had a capability base sufficient in most circumstances to establish and defend independent statehood. Early in the history of the Soviet Union, Soviet leaders moved to prevent the development of core-community nationalism with the Russian national community operating as the core community. They issued dicta forbidding manifestations of Russian “chauvinism,” and similar dicta were issued regarding all other national communities incorporated within the Soviet Union (Aasland, 1996; G. Smith, 1996). The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) did not have the institutional autonomy granted to the other fourteen republics (for example, there was no Russian KGB or Russian Communist Party) (Dunlop, 1993–1994). This is an apt illustration of the dual nature of

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Soviet policy: Russia could not be the core community, as that would threaten other nationalities, but by not providing the RSFSR with the same institutions allowed to the others it became synonymous with the Soviet state, which had those institutions and ruled supreme over the republics. Having eschewed core-community and particularist nationalisms, these leaders sought to develop instead an identity with the multinational state. What was called Soviet “patriotism” was to be encouraged, and such patriotism should be embraced by all the peoples of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union was Russified. What it meant to be Russian was thoroughly blended with the status, power, and prestige of the Soviet Union (Dunlop, 1993–1994). Its collapse was a tremendous blow to Russian pride and necessitates a redefinition of what it means to be Russian. The answer to that question—What does it mean to be Russian?—itself begins with a question: Where does Russia’s territory end? Different nationalists have different answers to that. For many, Russia without Kiev is hard to take; the Crimean area is considered part of ethnic Russia; and there are other territorial deprivations elsewhere. But Yeltsin took a stand on the border issue in 1991, and as time has passed there is decreasing motivation to alter the situation. (This, of course, could change if nationalism in Russia is inflamed and an opportunity presents itself.) Others, such as the Russian nationalist-chauvinist Vladimir Zhirinovskii, want to return to the borders of imperial Russia, whereas the national Bolsheviks want a resurrection of Soviet borders. Russian nationalism has not been captured by any political group, that is, none has been able to acquire the nationalist political mantle, the reputation of being the legitimate voice of the Russian nation. There is, however, a clear political battle among different ideological groups for that mantle. Those groups include, among others, Zhirinovskii’s Liberal Democratic Party, which is essentially ultranationalist with strong fascist overtones; the Communist Party, led by Gennadi Zyuganov, with essentially statist principles; and Yeltsin’s brand of “liberals” (Chafetz, 1996–1997; Tishkov, 1996). The victor in this competition will depend very much on how much damage is done to the Russian selfimage by the current political, economic, and social crisis. Yeltin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, gained some nationalist legitimacy through his tough stance regarding the rebellion in Chechnya, but that alone is not sufficient to call one camp a victor. Putin’s power base was not independent of Yeltsin (he was a hand-picked successor), and he was beholden to power brokers who are seen to have exploited Russia for their own personal gain. Russia’s crisis has the potential to evoke the processes of social causality, justification, and differentiation: Other groups responsible for the society’s problems will be identified; they will be turned into scapegoats, ethnocentrism will increase, and scapegoats will be dehumanized. Signs of this

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are evident in Russia with the anti-Semitism articulated by political figures like Zhirinovskii and the more widespread tendency to assume that certain minorities, such as the Chechens, are inherently criminalistic in nature and as a group are responsible for the crimes of the Russian Mafya (Tishkov, 1997). These real and potential trends have serious implications for the human rights of the many minorities in Russia. Russians may serve as a core community for an eventual Russian core-community nation state. They may also refuse to incorporate the minorities into a core community and discriminate against them if those minorities are regarded as scapegoats. In addition to the direction that evolving, mobilized Russian nationalism will take, the post-Soviet Russian Federation faces several central identity–related problems: the construction of a state structure satisfactory to the identity needs of ethnic minorities in Russia; the status of ethnic Russians living in the successor states; and the question of the impact of nationalism on current and future Russian foreign policy. Russia’s approach to ethnic minorities is the most volatile and conflictprone of the many identity-related issues in Russia. The development of a federal structure considered equitable by Russians and ethnic minorities is both necessary and difficult. The Russian Federation emerged from the Soviet Union’s structure. The Russian Federal Treaty of 1992 produced eighteen republics (Chechnya, Ingushetia [formerly Chechno-Ingush], and Tatarstan did not sign; Tatarstan signed a treaty with the Russian Federation in 1994); six krais (territories); forty-nine oblasts, or regions; two federal cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg); one autonomous oblast (Jewish); and eleven autonomous okrugs (districts). Although the republics accounted for only 15.2 percent of Russia’s population, they had more autonomy in that they are, in effect, states, with statelike governmental apparatuses (constitutions, presidents, a legislature, and laws). The regions, in contrast, were merely administrative units. The republics were nominally ethnic homelands, but in fact only five (Chechnya, Chuvashia, Dagestan, Tuva, and North Ossetia) had non-Russian ethnic majorities. The republics also had a considerable advantage in terms of distribution of resources. They got more from and contributed much less to the central budget. Much of the potential for interethnic conflict in Russia comes from a tangled web of causes, including disparities in political power between regions and republics that produced special power for some ethnic groups and none for others (such as the Volga Germans); disagreements about how the new Russian state should be structured and which units should get what power; and the gradual dissolution of a highly centralized economy, which was perceived as ordering about areas peripheral to Moscow and doing a bad job of managing the economy in the process. Ethnic identity is being used as a basis for political mobilization to generate support for demands on the Russian center across the Federation.

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Russia faced serious problems in two republics, Tatarstan and Chechnya, wherein nationalists recognize a potential viability as independent states. In Tatarstan this view was abandoned in 1994, when the treaty was signed with the Russian Federation, but that treaty was a deep disappointment to many Tatar nationalists, and the ethnic group still has the potential to be mobilized as a nation. Russian political importance and chauvinism increased in Tatarstan and therefore may become a catalyst for Tatar mobilization against membership in the Federation (Broxup, 1996). Yet Tatarstan is regarded as a model for many other ethnicities in the Federation in that through negotiations an ethnic minority achieved considerable concessions from the central government concerning rights and responsibilities (Tishkov, 1996). Chechnya has been a far more dramatic problem, one that demonstrates the extent to which the Russian leadership will go to preserve Russia as a multiethnic state within its current boundaries. Chechnya declared independence from the RSFSR in 1991. Naturally, that declaration was not recognized then; neither was it recognized by the succeeding Russian Federation. Chechnya was conquered by Russia in 1783, and its history as part of Russia is filled with repeated rebellions and their brutal repression. As Russian and then Soviet citizens, Chechens experienced discrimination in jobs and education and, as mentioned, in today’s Russia are often considered to have criminal predispositions. It is fair to say that the general perception of Chechnya and Chechens in Russia is that of the colonial, and the rebellion of the 1990s transformed it into a rogue perception: they are inferior and threatening. Yeltsin, for example, described Chechnya as follows in 1995 (quoted in Tishkov, 1997: 183): On the territory of the Chechen Republic as the result of an armed coup, there was established the most dictatorial kind of regime. The fusion of the criminal world and the regime—about which politicians and journalists spoke incessantly as the main danger for Russia—became a reality in Chechnya. This was the testing ground for the preparation and dissemination of criminal power to other Russian regions.

In the 1990s Chechen nationalism surged again, and the goal was independence and participation in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Opportunity was perceived to remove the rule of an illegitimate government. Dzhokhar Dudayev, a major general in the Soviet military, was elected president of Chechnya in October 1991. His government declared independence, and Yeltsin, in response, declared a state of emergency in Chechnya, an approach typical of those with a rogue perception of other actors. This mobilized Chechen nationalism to Dudayev’s advantage and presented him the opportunity to cast any opposition to his regime, including opposition from the parliament, as traitors (Panico, 1995). It is im-

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portant to note that this was not a mass uprising with Dudayev in the lead. There was important opposition to Dudayev that the Russians attempted to help. They declared war on Dudayev’s government in September 1994. By late 1994 Russian soldiers were fighting against Dudayev in Chechnya, and by 1995 war was full-scale. By 1996 Yeltsin appeared to be faced with a problem without solution. The Chechen capital had been bombarded into submission, and Russian-favored officials had been “elected.” Armed resistance continued in parts of Chechnya, as did public protests. Chechens objected to the election. One important Chechen, formerly a speaker in the Russian Parliament, stated, “There were elections nobody believed. . . . And Chechnya is run like a colony” (quoted in Specter, 1996). Meanwhile, the Russian public had become very critical of the war, but not because they supported Chechen independence. In fact, the Russian public was not opposed to a military solution to the rebellion (Specter, 1996). Violence in Chechnya receded after several cease-fires in 1996 and the efforts of Yeltsin envoy Aleksandr Lebed in August 1996, only to flare up again in another brutal war in 1999. The case is important and instructive in that it demonstrates the fragility of the Russian Federation, the ongoing problem of ethnicity and its potential to become nationalism when opportunities are identified, and the importance to Russians of the current borders of the Russian Federation. Structural efforts to redesign the Federation politically and economically so that its governance is seen as equitable to citizens are crucial. But in the long term the central issue will be whether or not Russians can constitute a core community drawing from and bringing in the multiple ethnic groups in the Federation. If not, Russia will become a very difficult to manage multiethnic state. The difficulty is evident in ongoing drama in Chechnya. Chechen resistance to Russia, and the resilience of Chechen desires for autonomy, provide striking examples of how difficult the formation of a core-community nation state can be. The status of ethnic Russians in successor states is a very complex issue. While many ethnic Russians moved to the non-Russian republics as part of Joseph Stalin’s effort to break nationalistic propensities in those republics, the migration of Russians had been occurring since the sixteenth century (Aasland, 1996). Of all Soviet citizens, these were probably the strongest identifiers with a Soviet state, because they lived in non-Russian republics. They did not identify with the nationality of the republic in which they lived, but they did not live in the republic of their nationality and therefore regarded the Soviet Union as the natural political unit for identification. Moreover, the Soviet Union’s language was Russian, and there was no need to learn the local language. Polls conducted in the 1980s found that 70–80 percent of these people regarded the Soviet Union as their motherland (Rudensky, 1996: 64). The proportion of Russians in the

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total populations of these states varies greatly, with the highest percentages in Kazakhstan, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan (p. 60). As the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1990 the treatment of ethnic Russians was used as a justification for Soviet efforts to crush independence movements in the Baltic states. Yeltsin stated his position on March 1991 on the status of these Russians: “It is the duty of Russia . . . somehow to help them. But understand me: It is impossible to defend people with tanks.” He continued: “It is necessary to put our relations with those republics on a juridical foundation, one of international rights, which we are presently doing” (quoted in Dunlop, 1993–1994: 615). The economic circumstances of ethnic Russians in the successor states have declined since the breakup of the Soviet Union, and in some cases they find themselves to be disliked minorities, a difficult change for them and for Russians in the Russian Federation. In some cases, more than onethird want to be repatriated to Russia (Dunlop, 1993–1994: 631). In addition, there are some territorial conflicts mixed in with the Russian concerns for ethnic Russians in successor states. Crimea, for example, has a majority ethnic Russian population, and many Russians in the Federation consider Crimea to be Russian territory. Overall, in most cases there is net outmigration of Russians from the successor states, most particularly so in the Central Asian states (Aasland, 1996). The existence of this diaspora clearly has the potential to become a major foreign policy issue for Russians, particularly if ethnic Russians are mistreated in their new states. There are many historical examples of the power of diasporas to inflame nationalistic sentiments in their ethnic homeland, not least of which is the foreign policy of Weimar Germany and Nazi Germany’s expansion.1 In many ways, however, this is more a problem of the newly independent states that now have significant minority populations. They are faced with the task of state-building in a multiethnic context, with one ethnic group having the option of moving to join the homeland. In some cases, such as Belarus, they do have one important advantage, however, in the malleability of the identities of ethnic Russians. If their primary identity during the Soviet era was with the Soviet Union, it may be possible to reshape their identities toward the new state. Many issues will affect this, such as nondiscrimination in the workplace, linguistic policies, and citizenship policies. At the heart of the future identities of Russians in the newly independent states, and their significance for Russians in Russia, is the process of social-group comparison. Opportunities for social mobility and creativity are essential if conflict is to be avoided. Finally, post-Soviet Russian foreign policy is deeply affected by the evolution of Russian political identity and the nature of its multiethnic

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state. Russian nationalist values placing high importance on national prestige, dignity, and the well-being of the citizens are central in the Russian insistence that Russia inherited the power and status that the Soviet Union had. Yeltsin, for example, proclaimed in 1992 that “Russia is rightfully a great power by virtue of its history, its place in the world and its material and spiritual potential” (quoted in Webber, 1996: 120). Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov echoed this view: “Russia was and remains a great power. And like any great power, its policy must be many-vectored and multifaceted” (quoted in Garnett, 1997: 66). Russia’s dismay at being unable to act in an important decisionmaking role in response to the violence in Kosovo in 1999; its insistence on being a mediator and broker in arranging an end to the conflict and in having peacekeeping forces in Kosovo; and its warning to the United States that the United States cannot play the role of international policeman (New York Times, July 26, 1999: A8)—all point to the importance of nationalist prestige in Russian foreign policy. At the same time, the Russian Federation has not developed a coherent foreign policy. In part this is due to factional disagreement as to what is the appropriate policy for the Russian nation. This disagreement involves disputes concerning how Western-oriented the country should be, how trustworthy the West is (i.e., whether it had designs to turn Russian into a natural-resources colony, as some radical nationalists suggest), and what is necessary for the territorial integrity and security of the country, particularly in light of NATO expansion (Chafetz, 1996–1997; Webber, 1996). In short, foreign policy has not become captured by any rendition of the specific policies necessary for the enhancement of Russian nationalist values. The development of a coherent policy has been thwarted by two other factors, both of which will diminish over time. First, of necessity most attention has been devoted to domestic affairs, economic problems, and restructuring of the state and economy. Second, the bureaucratic machinery responsible for foreign policy is in chaos, with no one in particular in control. Issues such as selling nuclear reactors to Iran, or engaging in conflicts in bordering successor states such as Moldova and Tajikistan, are decided upon by cabinet officers and local commanders (Garnett, 1997: 65). Once these factors disappear, the nature of Russian foreign policy will be determined by the evolution of Russian nationalism and political identity in the Russian Federation. Russian nationalist symbols and associated policies can easily be captured by the radical nationalist chauvinists such as Vladimir Zhirinovskii or the national Bolsheviks, particularly if the West takes actions widely seen as threatening (such as the continued expansion of NATO with Russia’s exclusion or draconian requirements for economic reforms in exchange for aid). Whether Russian foreign policy is truly a na-

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tionalistic one in the future, however, depends upon its transformation to a core-community nation state. Foreign Policy and Core-Community Non–Nation States It was argued earlier that in many respects core-community non–nation states act nationalistically in the context of international politics. But the existence of conflicting identities does produce some different foreign policy issues and problems for these states. The category is most interesting when the capability base of one or more of the minorities of a state is judged by the core community and by interested external governments to give the minority a marginal ability to achieve its secessionist objectives. Such a judgment most commonly reflects a perception that a change in the external environment toward an improvement in the minority bargaining position could alter significantly the overall core community–minority capability equation. Most commonly, such a change occurs when the core community–based government is involved, directly or indirectly, in a serious international conflict. However, the mere occurrence of increased international awareness of the political situation in another country may enhance the minority’s perception of its bargaining power. These foreign policy trends may be more likely in Third World countries because of the relative weakness of the state to control its territory and make concessions due to lack of resources, as well as to the relative power of the more industrialized world in affecting the internal politics of Third World countries. The existence of a minority with strong secessionist ambitions in a state’s boundaries grants its enemy a major opportunity. The enemy can form an alliance with leaders of the secessionist minority, especially if it has the ability to secrete weaponry to the minority, thereby improving its own and the minority’s bargaining positions. This often becomes a highrisk strategy, however, especially for the minority. The risk is omnipresent that the external power will view the alliance as a bargaining chip that would have no utility once the objective has been achieved or the conclusion has been drawn that the objective is unattainable. At either point, the alliance could be abandoned, and the minority, having demonstrated its disloyalty to the state, would be left alone to defend itself against inevitable punishment. The risk for the external power would materialize should state prestige become inextricably involved in a perceived moral obligation to defend the minority against retaliation from the core-community government. Such a development could involve that power in a prolonged, resource-draining effort to defend and sustain the minority government. Turkey, with its large and restive Kurdish minority, offers a good example. The Turkish-speaking population meets the criteria of a core com-

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munity as developed here. It clearly has the capability base to insist on state independence and the resource base to provide an acceptable standard of living for the population. Turkish core-community nationalism conforms closely to the model we have advanced. As expected, the Turkish core community has embarked on an integration strategy for the non-Turkish elements of the territorial community and with some considerable success (Gürbey, 1996). Significant numbers of the one large minority, the Kurdish community, have integrated fully in the economic, professional, and political life of Turkey and frequently have intermarried with Turks. The Turkish national concept encourages assimilation and provides equal rights for all ethnic groups, but it prohibits the development of ethnic culture and language. Not surprisingly, therefore, within the Kurdish community demands for political separation ranging from full independence to broad political autonomy have been advanced persistently from the early months of Turkish independent statehood to the present. The Kurds of Turkey, like the Kurds of the three other states in which they are a significant minority, have explored regularly the opportunities for achieving their objective afforded by conflict within the external environment. Moreover, the governments of Turkey have repeatedly accused European and other countries of aiding and abetting the Kurdish independence movement (Gunter, 1990). To date, however, external powers have resisted the temptation of a full alliance with the Kurds of Turkey in order to gain some strategic advantage, a reflection of the capability strength of the core community–based Turkish government. Nevertheless, some external powers, namely Syria, Iran, and Iraq, have flirted with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is the center of Kurdish rebellion in Turkey today, by offering support and sanctuary. Meanwhile, according to Henri Barkey (1996: 68), hardly a week goes by that a foreign [Western] power is not accused of meddling in Turkish domestic affairs or inciting the Kurds to rebel in order to carve up Turkey. Such discourse, which brands any criticism coming from abroad as a threat to the integrity of the state, has resulted in alienating the Turkish public from its allies and has hamstrung the foreign policy professionals in their dealings with them.

While Turkey has not been the victim of serious efforts by other states to ally with the Kurds for strategic purposes, there has been no such international restraint with regard to the Kurds of Iraq. Israel, the United States, and Iran have all attempted to use the Kurds to destabilize Iraqi regimes. The existence of a separatist-minded Kurdish minority remains a prime source of vulnerability for the Turkish government, and although the Turkish Kurds have not been explicitly targeted by other powers, they have certainly affected Turkey’s general foreign policies. The Turkish government’s

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foreign policy also reflects concern about the ability of other powers to affect Turkey’s stability through the Kurds. In that regard it has insisted that Syria foreswear any support for the PKK in exchange for water agreements and improved trade. Turkish concerns about Russian permissiveness regarding Kurdish solidarity has also strained Turkey-Russia relations. Iran and Turkey are more in sync, but U.S. support for de facto Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq is threatening to Turkey and a potential source of conflict between the United States and Turkey (Olson, 1996). Additional examples of this pattern appear in Latin America. Cos teños, the coastal Indians of Nicaragua, most notably the Miskitos, used the U.S. conflict with the Sandinistas to obtain U.S. support for Miskito autonomy. Spanish-speaking Nicaragua certainly had the characteristics of core-community nationalism during the 1980s, even as civil war raged. The Caribbean coastal area, however, is quite different, having a mixed population of indigenous people, English-speaking blacks, and other Nicaraguans. Costeños make up about 10 percent of the Nicaraguan population and are composed of six different ethnic and linguistic groups. Their effort to organize and resist governmental efforts to assimilate the Indian population has a long history. During the 1970s, for example, the indigenous communities formed an organization that crossed Central American borders and that was granted consultative status by the United Nations. This organization, the Regional Council of Central American, Mexican, and Panamanian Indian Peoples, formed ties with North American Indian groups as well. By the early 1980s another organization, Miskito Sumo Rama Sandinista Asla Takanka (MISURASATA), became the central organization for all Costeños. Costeños received little attention from the Nicaraguan government before the Sandinistas and identified more strongly with their villages than with Nicaragua as a nation. Historically, they had more intimate contact with British and American economic interests than with Managua. This interaction had a strong impact on language and social structure. Their religious attachment to the Moravian Church was also different from the majority Roman Catholicism. The Atlantic provinces were deeply underdeveloped. Moreover, as time went on a class structure based on race emerged, and the Indians were subservient to lighter-skinned Creoles economically. By the time of the revolution the Costeños were highly suspicious of the Nicaraguan government and strongly influenced by the Moravian Church’s anticommunism. The Sandinista government’s approach was to try to improve the living conditions on the coast and to integrate the region into the national economy and polity. In the process they blundered badly, running headlong into deep suspicion and animosity on the part of the Miskitos with little information and experience to prepare them to counteract such feelings. The Miskitos had long demanded autonomy and land

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rights. The Sandinistas initially responded to these demands by arresting Miskito leaders and imposing their political integration plan upon the population. Although the Sandinistas recognized their mistakes by 1982 and began considering structural methods for ensuring regional autonomy within the Nicaraguan state, by that time the United States under the Reagan administration had taken advantage of the situation and recruited antiSandinista counterrevolutionaries—the contras—from the Miskito population. The reaction of the Sandinista government was to relocate thousands of Miskitos, which further increased indigenous peoples’ hostility. Thousands more Miskitos fled into Honduras, and the Sandinistas faced the difficulty of securing the territory of the state while trying not to further alienate the Miskito population. In 1984 the Sandinistas and MISURASATA, then led by Brooklyn Rivera, began negotiations. The differences in their preferred solution lay squarely in different views of what constituted a nation, the Nicaraguan nation, and the Nicaraguan state. The Sandinistas were prepared to grant greater latitude for the preservation and advancement of indigenous cultural identity whereas MISURASATA wanted greater political autonomy. Talks broke down by 1985, but the government did incorporate the notion of special autonomy in its Atlantic coast policy and in the 1987 constitution. These provisions provided regional autonomy in the election of legislative assemblies. Despite its objections to this settlement, which still left many demands unanswered, MISURASATA participated in the 1990 elections in a new organization, YATAMA (Mother Land Indian Communities), and did well. The Sandinistas thus exited office having left unanswered the question of whether Costeños would remain an ethnic group or become a nation. Without the participation of the United States as an external supporter, however, and given the continued opposition of the Nicaraguan government to complete independence for the Atlantic coast, they are likely to remain an ethnic group for the foreseeable future.

Multinational States The state governments of all multinational states can be expected to confront some similar problems. All, for example, must deal with the possibility of disintegration. Since some of the component communities of the state territorial community have the capability in most circumstances to establish and maintain independent statehood and the resource base to provide material viability, governmental leaders must assume that elements in each of the national communities will seek to persuade their community to join them in exercising that option. What, then, explains their failure to separate? The answers to that question can range from governmental co-

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ercion, to vested interest ties, to having a second-intensity identity attachment to the multinational territorial community. Proximity to nationalistic behavior vis-à-vis the multinational state could be expected to prevail least where membership in the state is maintained mainly through coercion, as was essentially the case with the Soviet Union, and most when there is something more than a tertiary-intensity identification with the allembracing territorial community, as may be the case in India and Pakistan. It follows that all governments of multinational states must have adopted a control strategy to preserve the union. Such a strategy is likely to consist of a mix of coercion, utilitarian satisfaction (both in terms of material interest and career aspirations), and a presentation of the union in widely appealing, symbolic terms. The government’s ability to maintain control largely through symbol manipulation would be much enhanced if the citizens identified strongly with the territorial community. It can be expected that governments will have an implicit strategy at least to achieve this objective. Central to such a strategy would be the creation of a vested interest on the part of a large section of the political elite in the perpetuation of the union. Military officers, high-level bureaucrats, politicians interested in state office, and commercial elements profiting from the existence of a large, often semiprotected market would be early candidates for developing a vested interest in the union’s perpetuation. But as government and private institutions developed and could be utilized by individuals throughout the territorial community, the vested-interest factor could become a primary focus of an integration strategy. This process was well under way in the Soviet Union at the time of its disintegration and the territorial community upon which it rested. But events demonstrated that this element was no more than a veneer of the population, and even within it there was little sign of a developing Soviet nationalism, that is, a predisposition to nationalistic behavior that had come to focus on the Soviet Union. There are two other important factors that affect the ability of a government of a multinational state to exercise control. The first is an inevitable capability asymmetry of the component national communities and the associated likelihood of an overrepresentation of the most powerful communities in the political leadership and in the bureaucracy. This leads to unfavorable social comparisons of the component nations. If the capability disparity is great, as was the case in the Soviet Union, there could develop a tendency toward core-community nationalism. Preservation of the union as a true multinational state would necessitate a strategy as draconian as that of the Soviet leaders in their assault on nationalistic chauvinism. Even with such a strategy, less powerful national communities are likely to perceive the most powerful community as the beneficiary of governmental favoritism and as exercising excessive influence in governmental policy. In

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other words, they will see the nationalism of the most powerful community giving definition to governmental policy. To counter such perceptions, governmental leaders must make the effort to demonstrate that their policy line is designed to further the interests of the multinational state, not those of its most powerful national-community component. A second factor relates to the cultural disparity and comparison process within the territorial community. There is a high probability that the citizenry of one or more national communities in the multinational state will judge the culture of other national communities as inferior to, similar to, or in certain respects superior to their own. These judgments, in turn, are likely to associate with different stereotyping tendencies, and the emerging stereotypical views will exacerbate the difficulties of maintaining internal tranquility. Governmental leaders, seeking to maintain the internal security of the multinational state, will be compelled to construct a range of strategies for defusing intercommunity conflict. The problems and patterns discussed above are well illustrated in the cases of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, multinational states that survived for a long time but ultimately disintegrated. The Soviet Union In the early years of the new governmental system following the October Revolution, Soviet leaders were consciously ideological in their search for a design for preserving the union. Nationalism was viewed in dialectical terms, and was associated with the bourgeois stage of development; hence, for some leaders, if not all, the Soviet Union was a progressive historical force (Lenin, 1914). Nevertheless, the Communist Party was to be the political representative of all citizens. There was explicit recognition of the potential of that nationalism to undermine the establishment and maintenance of the Soviet state, however, and a complex strategy evolved in response. Over the years, Soviet leaders balanced appeasement and coercive repression of the nationalities’ nationalism. There were more than a hundred linguistically distinct nationalities in the Soviet Union. Fifty had either union republics (fifteen), autonomous republics (twenty-one), or local political organizations, and the federal structure of the Soviet state was a structural device developed in part to assuage minority nationalism (Duncan, 1990; Tishkov, 1997). Technically, the union republics had the right to secede from the Soviet Union. Education and publication in national languages were permitted, although education in the Russian language was made compulsory in 1938. But the republics were never meant to be capable of autonomy, and their ethnicity was not, and was not meant to be, pure. In several cases the indigenous national group was the numerical minority.

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Soviet leaders quickly recognized the dangers of what they came to see as excessive tolerance. The Stalin years involved extraordinary repression of the minorities (along with everyone else, just more so), and Stalin regarded nationalism as bourgeois. He strove for the Russification of the smaller nationalities, which he regarded as backward (Hansen, 1992). Stalin also deported eight nations from their homelands, including a total of 1.5 million people from the Volga German, Crimean Tartar, Meskhetian Turk, Chechen, Ingushi, Karachai, Balkar, and Kalmyk peoples. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, although very different from Stalin, was also hostile toward nationalism (including Russian nationalism) and called for the people of the Soviet Union to “merge” culturally, ideologically, and biologically (Dunlop, 1983: 136), a prospect quite threatening to nationalists. The years under Premier Leonid Brezhnev witnessed a variety of efforts to appease nationalism while continuing to promote a Soviet identity. Brezhnev followed a kind of affirmative-action policy wherein indigenous elites were granted greater political and economic decisionmaking authority, and their number in upper governmental positions was purposefully increased. Other opportunities for national self-expression emerged in a proliferation of local-language press and television shows, as well as in the recognition of local history and culture (Duncan, 1990). Nevertheless, important positions in the republics were allotted to Russians, and nationalistic tendencies among local elites and the public were punished (Lieven and McGarry, 1993). Soviet leaders understood in particular the possibility that the Soviet Union could come to be characterized by core-community nationalism, with Russians constituting the core community. Were such a development to occur, the problem of maintaining a union of states would surely have been exacerbated, and the union might well have disintegrated in response to competing nationalistic demands of the component republics. As Mark Beissinger (1993: 101) notes, The thorny question of “whose state?” plagued the Soviet Union from the time of its founding. The answer given was always ambiguous and varied considerably over time. Even at the height of glorification of things Russian in the late 1940s, the Russians were portrayed merely as “elder brothers,” not conquerors. Yet, the widespread perception that the Soviet state was fundamentally a Russian state was ever-present.

They also knew that a Soviet identity was essential to the survival of the Soviet Union’s legitimacy. Efforts to create this identity were continuous and in particular involved the party, which was centralized and, in theory, denationalized. Soviet identity would hinge on ideology and control of the state, but its culture and history were Russian. Ultimately, therefore, Soviet leaders failed to create a Soviet identity embedded in a Soviet civil so-

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ciety (Szporluk, 1990, 1994; Beissinger, 1993; Brubaker, 1996). There is much evidence to support the argument that a Soviet identity, where it did emerge, was weak. First, note that Stalin, in his appeal to the public to make great sacrifices in World War II, called upon Russian nationalism as the mobilizing set of symbols and attachments. Second, public-opinion polls show that once people of non-Russian nationality perceived a genuine alternative—that is, that they could extract themselves from the Soviet Union, become independent, and not all die trying—the percentage of those populations supporting self-determination skyrocketed (for example, from 20.6 percent in the Ukraine in 1989 to 90.3 percent in 1991; Beissinger, 1993: 106). Russians also proved unwilling to sacrifice for the maintenance of the Soviet Union, as is evident in the decline in support for military repression of the revolt against Soviet control in Azerbaijan, from 56 percent in 1990 to 23 percent in 1991 in a Leningrad survey (p. 106). The patterns of Soviet foreign policy described in Chapter 5 were characteristic of multinational states and fit the foreign policy predisposition profile set forth in Table 5.1. Willingness to sacrifice for the Soviet Union as it mobilized for World War II was lower than that found in nation states such as the United States or Germany. When Stalin called upon a true nationalist sentiment to mobilize the country to resist the Nazis, that sentiment was Russian, not Soviet. Stereotyping of the United States during the Cold War appeared to have been less intense among Soviet leaders compared to the imagery in the United States of the Soviets. It was Mikhail Gorbachev, for example, who decided to end the Cold War arms race, which he could not have done had an extreme enemy image of the United States dominated Soviet leadership, regardless of Soviet economic difficulties. In the end, the Soviet Union simply ceased to exist, dying with a whimper, not a bang. Few stood up to defend it. Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika played a major role in that they opened an opportunity for nationalism to flourish throughout the Soviet republics. In addition, Gorbachev’s own identity as a Russian, his belief in the legitimacy of the Soviet state, and, implicitly, his belief in the existence of a Soviet identity led him to make several mistakes that antagonized minority sensitivities in the republics (Lieven and McGarry, 1993; Beissinger, 1993). On the one hand, his top leadership positions were filled mainly by Russians, and his insensitivity to nationalism in the republics was evident in decisions such as his appointment of a Russian to replace the first secretary of Kazakhstan, a decision that resulted in riots in the Kazakh capital Alma-Ata. On the other hand, glasnost, which allowed freer discussion and tolerance of dissent, provided an opportunity for the expression and increased salience of nationalistic sentiments in the republics.

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Gorbachev turned his attention more directly to the growing nationalistic movements in the republics in 1989. He warned against both nationalism and Russian chauvinism but dealt with demands for greater autonomy and even independence on an ad hoc basis (Hansen, 1992; Beissinger, 1993). His reforms included an effort to revamp the legitimacy of the Soviet state through structural changes, first by advocating a decentralized federalism, later by moving toward confederation. In the process, governmental institutions in the republics were taken over by local nationalists, although the degree of nationalism and desires for independence varied considerably across the republics. Although the final collapse of the Soviet Union is usually associated with the attempted coup in August 1991, the negotiations of April 1991, resulting in the Novo-Ogarevo Agreement, produced a confederation replacing the federation established by the Union Treaty of 1922 and thus heralded the end of the Soviet Union (Beissinger, 1993). The survival and ultimate demise of the Soviet Union provide an excellent example of the identity dynamics of a multinational state. For over seventy years Soviet leaders used a combination of repression to inhibit the manifestation of nationalism in the republics balanced with efforts to ameliorate threat to national identities. Although they were liberal in their use of repression to prevent the political awakening and mobilization of nationalist identity, they knew that threatening people with the extinction of those identities could cause rebellion. The perceptual properties were those of the imperial and colonial images, although the dominant group was a Soviet-Russian mixture in terms of identity. Russians were considered and considered themselves to be superior, the “elder brother,” but the chosen third identity promoted by the elite was Soviet. That third identity was necessary for the Soviet Union to survive, and it never was widely accepted as a replacement for long held national identities. Moreover, the social comparisons made were unsatisfactory, although Soviet leaders, through policies such as Brezhnev’s affirmative action, attempted to alter that. In the end, social comparisons were negative all around, with the minority nationalities believing that the Russians were using and exploiting their resources, the Russians believing that the minorities were being subsidized at their expense (Duncan, 1990). Thus, it is not surprising that dissolution of the Soviet Union was as peaceful as it was. Too few people identified with the Soviet Union with a first intensity—and too many identified with their own nationality with a first intensity—to risk sacrificing their lives to maintain the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia The next case, Yugoslavia, illustrates all of the characteristics of the multinational state. The number of nations was an issue of dispute when Yu-

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goslavia existed, but there were five that were generally accepted as nations: Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro. With the exception of Slovenia, each had been a medieval state. Their histories are replete with conquest by one another and incorporation by larger empires—the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian. But each nation’s people identified with a territory, and that primary identification was enhanced by differences in language, alphabet, culture, and, most importantly, religion. The formation of Yugoslavia as a single southern Slavic state involved a recognition and propagation of a common southern Slavic identity, but it did not replace the original national identities as primary. The state that emerged was a compromise among the strongest nations, particularly Serbia and Croatia, and was motivated primarily by political and security concerns (Crnobrnja, 1994: 50). The legacy of domination by the AustroHungarian and Ottoman empires, as well as suspicions about the ambitions of each other, made a southern Slavic state a reasonable alternative, particularly in light of support from the entente powers after World War I. The final agreement, the Corfu Declaration of 1918, acknowledged many of the national symbols of the component nations, including three national names, flags, and religions, as well as both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. The destruction of the Yugoslavian state during World War II and the atrocities committed against each other at that time added to the national consciousness of each group and the animosities toward one another. The partisan forces led by Josip Broz Tito were the only military forces that considered themselves real Yugoslavs and fought for the federation (Crnobrnja, 1994: 66). Tito was also the head of the Yugoslavian Communist Party. After the war Tito developed a strategy for national reconciliation that directly addressed the nationalities problem. His strategy included a “brotherhood and unity” campaign that promoted a Yugoslavian identity but not at the complete expense of the other national identities. Rather, it promoted ethnic identity, not national identities, with the aim of producing a multiethnic federation. The structure of the state also reflected an effort to create a multiethnic state with the influence of communist ideology as an overlay. The republics were nationally based in terms of territory, and the Yugoslavian state was abnormally decentralized for a communist state. Tito avoided any effort to base a common Yugoslavian identity on the largest nation, Serbia, and in fact sought to downgrade Serbian power derived from the size of the Serb population. Tito himself became a unifying symbol with which common identity could be forged, particularly in light of the presence of a common enemy—the Soviet Union. Socialism and the Yugoslavian Communist Party were additional antinationalist elements that could be and were used against periodic upsurges of nationalist sentiment as well as overly liberal reform movements. Communist ideology was to be the element that brought the country together as Yugoslavia and ultimately re-

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duced ethnicity to a cultural artifact rather than a political element in Yugoslavia (Schöpflin, 1993: 180). A common Yugoslavian identity could potentially develop over time, and, in fact, while Tito was alive the international behavior of Yugoslavia appeared to be quite nationalistic. This was enhanced by the existence of an external threat to Yugoslavian independence. Stalin was the first to threaten this, but Yugoslavia’s leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement shows both the threat perceived by the participants in the Cold War, bordering Yugoslavia, and the grandeur that could be achieved in a leadership role in an international movement. The great irony is that the successes of the strategy produced forces that would only bring the prospect of a unified state into greater question. As the country grew more unified economically with the reforms and constitutional changes of the early 1960s, increased calls for further economic liberalization ensued that would weaken the central state and lead to greater economic autonomy in the republics. In Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia nationalists recognized this and took advantage of the liberals’ desire for further reform. Tito and the Communist Party fought back, resulting in economic transformations designed to bypass both market and command economics. Nationalism was a crime, and those found guilty were punished with long prison terms. The nationalists in Croatia in particular were severely punished in the 1970s. By the time Tito died in 1980 the republics were arranged in a confederation in which each had veto power. The 1974 constitution had given each republic and the two provinces a central bank, police, and educational and judicial systems. The economy was on a downward spiral, and no single leader or set of leaders emerged who could fill Tito’s role as national unifier. The extent to which Yugoslavia depended upon that role is seen in the failure of the Federal Presidency, which rotated among the republics, to act as an effective Yugoslavian state presidency. Yugoslavia, like the Soviet Union, was a multinational state in which one group, the Serbs, was numerically dominant and dominant in the military officer corps (Silber and Little, 1996). As mentioned, Tito attempted to prevent the Serbs from becoming politically dominant, and this was furthered by the 1974 constitution. By giving Kosovo and Vojvodina more power and autonomy (their own assembly, representation in the Serbian assembly, and seats on the rotating presidency), Serbian power was reduced, and the other republics were reassured that Serbia would not be able to control the federal government. But with declining economic conditions in the 1980s and growing nationalism in the republics, pressures began to mount for constitutional change. Moreover, the constitution became the object of political and economic horse-trading. In 1986, for example, Slovenia gave its turn in the presidency to Bosnia in exchange for concessions on economic reforms (Woodward, 1995).

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After Tito’s death the situation became increasingly galling to Serbian nationalists. Not only were they deprived of what they considered their natural complete power base, which they believed included Kosovo and Vojvodina; they were also deprived of a central symbol of Serbian nationalism, Kosovo, regarded as the cradle of Serbian civilization. The symbolic importance of Kosovo made irrelevant the fact that only 10 percent of its residents were ethnic Serbs, the rest being Albanian. Other grievances were expressed, including, most importantly, the complaint that Serbia was the only Yugoslavian nation to be divided territorially. Ultimately, mobilized Serbian nationalists were then co-opted by the Communist Party under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic, who defeated party rivals less inclined toward radical nationalism (Silber and Little, 1996).2 Through a series of maneuvers and threats, and with the support of increasingly impassioned Serbian nationalists, Milosevic managed to gain de facto control of the votes of Kosovo, Vojvodina, and Montenegro in the federal government. In general, the upsurge of Serbian nationalism follows the patterns one should expect from a nationalistic people who believe they have the capability for autonomous statehood and who believe that they, in comparison with other groups, have been mistreated and deprived of natural rights. Whereas the rise of Serbian nationalism by 1988 is well known, less is said about the simultaneous rise in Slovenian nationalism. In fact, according to Laura Silber and Alan Little, “Slovene and Serb nationalist dissidents enjoyed regular and warm contacts, even though their visions of the future of Yugoslavia seemed to conflict” (1996: 49). The Slovenes considered themselves to be culturally superior to their fellow Yugoslavs, more Western European, and their economy was more advanced, enhancing their self-image. Pushed by organized youths, there was a desire to see increased decentralization and autonomy. The fact that initially this did not cause extreme conflict with Serbian nationalists, who wished for increased centralization, was due to two central facts: geographical distance and the absence of a Serb population in Slovenia. Over time, however, conflict between the two emerged and quickly escalated as Slovenian leaders moved for greater and greater autonomy by rejecting the legitimacy of federal control. But the emphasis on the federal government, and in particular the Yugoslavian army, as the obstacle to Slovenian rights turned in 1988 to the identification of Serbia as the problem, when the Slovenian government supported a strike by ethnic Albanian miners in Kosovo and condemned Serbian efforts to alter Kosovo’s status. In essence, Slovenian Communist Party leader Milan Kucan “portrayed Serbia as the enemy of Slovene democracy, as witnessed by its repression of Albanian rights” in Kosovo (Woodward, 1995: 98; Remington, 1996). The Serb nationalists were infuriated that the Slovenes would side with those who, they believed, prevented Serbs from having their own national territory.

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The flourishing character of two nationalisms in Yugoslavia, along with the weakness of the federal government and the Serbian successes in increasing Serb power therein, would necessarily have an impact on Croatian nationalists, but in this case the Serbs would take strong exception to efforts for autonomy and independence. Croats, too, viewed themselves as culturally superior to the Serbs (Silber and Little, 1996: 82–83). The Serbs were peasants whereas the Croats were civilized. Unfortunately, the Serbs were also powerful, having a strong presence in the military, thus laying the foundation of the barbarian image. This image could only have been reinforced by statements such as that by Milosevic regarding the breakup of Yugoslavia: “If we have to, we’ll fight. I hope they won’t be so crazy as to fight against us. Because if we don’t know how to work and do business, at least we know how to fight” (quoted in Silber and Little, 1996: 129). The rise of Croatian nationalism, and the eventual Croatian movement toward secession, would be much more difficult for Serbs to accept than that of Slovenia. Croatia had pockets of Serbs in Krajina who revolted from the newly forming Croatian state. Their rebellion spread to other Serb-dominant communities in Croatia in the first half of 1991. It was in reaction to the Croatian effort to crush these rebellions that the Yugoslavian army embarked down the path to become Serbia’s army. They intervened in the Croatian police effort to crush the rebellion, and, although the Yugoslavian army did not support the rebels, both Slovenia and Croatia took this as an ominous sign that the Yugoslavian army was a tool of the Serbs. It was the final straw in their decisions to secede from Yugoslavia. The presence of a substantial Serbian population in Croatia that refused to live in an independent Croatia explains why Yugoslavia, or what was left of it, was so much less resistant to Slovenia’s departure from the federation than it would be to Croatia’s. Milosevic’s official position was that both had the right to secede from Yugoslavia but that Serbs living in either one, meaning Croatia, had the right to live in Serbia. Hence, borders would have to be redrawn, which was unacceptable to Croatian nationalists. The impact of the Croatian barbarian image of Serbia on both the mobilization of Croatian nationalism and its movement toward secession can be seen in late 1990 and early 1991. It was argued in Chapter 4 (summarized in Tables 4.1 and 4.3) that the barbarian image is of a people stronger but culturally inferior and therefore that people will look for alliances rather than take on the barbarian directly. Croatian leaders under President Franjo Tudjman moved toward a confederation with the rest of Yugoslavia rather than complete independence, indicating that they did not want a direct confrontation with Serbia, which was not surprising given the loyalty of the Yugoslavian army to the federation, a goal shared by Serbia. In addition, Croatia’s political scene from 1988 through 1991 was mixed. There were nationalists, nonnationalists, pressures for multiparty competition,

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and those in favor of maintaining the status quo with Yugoslavia. The question of which political organizations would capture the nationalist momentum and in what direction it would go was open. As expected given the perceptual dynamics, Croatia looked for allies and found one in Slovenia. The two republics would not support Serbian efforts to reincorporate Kosovo, and both withdrew their portion of the security forces from there in 1989. As Slovenia moved toward secession, Croatia was faced with isolation in the federation along with a rebellious Serb population in the eastern regions or joining Slovenia in exiting and looking for international support as an independent sovereign state. Slovenia held its referendum on independence in December 1990; Croatia followed in May 1991. Both declared independence on June 25, 1991, although Croatia had not yet developed the institutional structures necessary for it. As violence escalated in the regions of Croatia where Serbs were in rebellion, perceptions of Serbs as barbarian became more extreme in Croatia. The Croatian media began to call Serbs Chetniks, a throwback to the mutual slaughter of Serbs and Croats during World War II, reflecting mounting fear and disgust. Wild conspiracies were suggested by the media to be operative, as were the torture and mutilation of Croats. Serbian nationalists meanwhile fed the flames by boasting that Serbia had helped the Croatian Serbs and accusing Croatia of attacking not only the Croatian Serbs but all of Serbia (Silber and Little, 1996: 142–143). The difference between Slovenia’s departure and Croatia’s departure is quantified in the numbers of dead and the extent of destruction. The Yugoslavian army tried to prevent Slovenia from leaving the federation in a brief “war” with few dead. The end of the hostilities was a result of an agreement between Serbian and Slovenian leaders to halt the fighting and, in fact, permit Slovenia to secede. This heralded the end of Yugoslavia as a federation and the Yugoslavian army as the military force of that federation. Hereafter it was the Serbian army, and it would be used in a much more destructive war to prevent Croatia from seceding with a large Serb population. The difference in these wars is attributable to several perceptual factors. Slovens and Serbs did not have the history of ethnic genocide that Croats and Serbs had. The Serbian sense that their own national kindred must be protected from potential annihilation and be included in the territory the nation deserved and had been denied for so long was not an issue with Slovenia. The Croats, meanwhile, followed the pattern anticipated when people hold the barbarian image of their opponent. After Slovenia successfully seceded, Tudjman was pushed by his advisers to declare war on the Yugoslavian army and get out, too. But Tudjman did not want to take on the Yugoslavian army and continued to hope that alliances—with international recognition—would provide him with the leverage needed to avoid war.

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Serbian leaders, in contrast, appeared to perceive Croatia and its international supporters through the degenerate image (see Tables 4.1 and 4.3). Croats themselves were perceived as relatively similar to Serbs in terms of cultural sophistication and, when the Yugoslavian army was truly that of Yugoslavia the country, capability. But the opportunity perceived to unite Serbs in a territory complementary to the nation; the enhancement of the nation’s grandeur (achieving what had been historically, and in their view unjustly, denied); and the perception that Croats and the international community attempting to negotiate a cease-fire were unwilling and unable to act decisively against Serbia led by 1991 to a degenerate image of Croatia. The power of their ugly history made this endeavor a perceived act of necessity to protect Serbian lives. By the fall of 1991 Serbia had control of the Yugoslavian army and de facto control or the federation, as neither Sloven nor Croatian members attended anymore. War was on in an effort to redefine the borders of Croatia and Serbia, whether Tudjman wanted it or not. The civil wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia and in the Soviet Union demonstrate the difficulties involved in breaking national identity. Strategies that seek to destroy national identities through coercion work only temporarily. Yet the other extreme—leaving national identities relatively unthreatened while offering an additional common identity, as in Yugoslavia—apparently needs generations as well as generations of prosperity to succeed. They also benefit greatly from, and may even require, charismatic or at least legitimate leadership and symbols. In short, people must want to live together as a state, if not as a nation. The case of Yugoslavia adds another example to the discussion of multinational states. Other countries played an important role in the breakup of Yugoslavia in their recognition of the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. Particularly important is Germany’s early recognition, because it could only heighten Serb sensitivities to and recollections of the alliance between Croatian fascist Ustashe and Hitler’s Germany. The difference in levels of violence in the breakup of the Soviet Union compared to that of Yugoslavia can be attributed to variations in the satisfaction of nationalist values. But Yugoslavia degenerated into war and the Soviet Union did not because of differences in Serbian and Russian nationalism–centered issues. Serbs had old grievances about the international denial of a territorially united Serb nation. They believed this was a promise made and unkept after World War I. For Russians the situation was different. The Russian nation had a republic in the Soviet Union, and Russians did not have the Serbian complaint that they of all nations within the state boundary had been denied a territory complementary to the nation. Moreover, Russia under the czars had been an empire with boundaries that fluctuated. Thus, it was unclear

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even for Russians where exactly Russia stopped at the periphery (Dixon, 1996). If there had been a broadly accepted territorial boundary, and that boundary had been violated in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the likelihood of violent resistance would have been great, but there was none. There are, of course, 25 million ethnic Russians living in the Soviet successor states, which may become an issue in future Russian foreign policy. As will be seen below, radical Russian nationalists have a different view of where Russia proper ends. They will clearly make an issue of the maintenance of the territorial integrity of what they perceive to be the nation’s land, and some desire a return to a Russian-controlled empire. The central point is that in neither case did full-scale war occur to preserve the multinational state. It did occur to achieve nationalist aims where thwarted, as in the case of Serbian goals as Yugoslavia disintegrated. But even though Russia and the Soviet Union were often considered coterminous, when the latter began to disintegrate the reality of Russian identity became clear. It not only was not coterminous with the Soviet Union; Russia itself, under Yeltsin’s leadership, left the Soviet Union in June 1990.

Multiethnic and Multisectarian States Like multinational states, multiethnic states must satisfy identity-based demands to avoid political conflict. They have different problems in resolving conflict, however, in that, by definition and in the ideal-typical form, no single ethnic group has the capacity to form a core community. Thus, for one ethnic group to dominate, the identity-based drives of others would have to be repressed. Common state structures devised to perform the function of controlling potential political conflict deriving from ethnic identity include consociationalism and federalism. These structures are particularly attractive when ethnic communities are territorially localized. Theoretically, ethnicgroup aspirations for autonomy can be satisfied with a significant degree of local political control that simultaneously permits acceptance of the national government structure.3 Federal or consociational structures also offer the advantages of geographical units that are economically more viable and strategically more secure than are the individual components. In addition, particularly in cases of colonially devised states, they maintain administrative units with which the local elite identifies and to which it is attached (McGarry and O’Leary, 1993). Despite these attractions, neither structure is a guaranteed solution to political conflict in multiethnic states, particularly those that are empires or the result of empire-building, that is, former colonies. Often the ethnic groups will have a vivid memory of lethal conflict with some other iden-

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tity communities that are component parts of the same territorial community. These memories serve as a serious obstacle to any effort to develop a sense of commonality among the communities. The process of identifying with the territorial-community underlay of the multiethnic state at an intensity level higher than tertiary in these circumstances is likely to be prolonged. This seems to be most clearly the case in sub-Saharan Africa, but it is apparent as well in the Philippines and Indonesia. Many multiethnic states are found in those parts of the world that have only recently entered or are just now in the process of entering the era of mass politics. The transformation of the societies from traditional systems has been remarkably rapid. Within a very few generations they have moved from systems in which the mass of the people largely acquiesced in the authority of traditional leaders and looked to a parochial community, such as the extended family or clan, as what we have been calling the “terminal community.” Today most are at least predisposed to participate in the political process and on occasion may participate directly in producing revolutionary change. The focus of their primary identity has shifted as well, and the shift has been generally in the direction of an ethnic or sectarian community. Like those who have followed this path earlier, their deep attachment to these identity communities predispose them to behaviors that reflect their concern with the independence, security, welfare, dignity, and even grandeur of those communities. These behaviors resemble nationalistic behavior in kind and, since they reflect a first-intensity identity attachment, sometimes in degree as well. The low probability that they could ever aspire to independent statehood, however, prevents the appearance of nationalistic behavior. As these newly participant peoples gained a conscious awareness of the international system of states, they came to see the great capability disparity of the component states of that system. Many also realized that their own ethnic or sectarian community was too small and lacking in resources to provide the basis for a state that could compete on terms of sovereign equality within the international system. Typically, they found difficulty identifying with the state in which they were citizens and that purported to speak for them. Those who lived in areas only recently under the imperial control of a European power often found themselves citizens of a pre existing state—a colonial power–imposed governmental system that exercised authority over a territorial community composed of many ethnic and/or sectarian communities or sections of those communities. Viewed in these basic terms, the dilemma of an emerging, assertive public is easily understood. The growth of a strong identity with an ethnic community was a natural process and a critical aspect of what has been called in Western literature “development” or “modernization.” Seeing oneself and others who spoke the same language and embraced the same culture as

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members of a community occurred in tandem with change in technology and communications. Progressive elements in the community focused their attention on the needs of the ethnic community and were less concerned with issues relating to the broad territorial community. Yet they did fight for greater freedom from external control and ultimately for the formal independence of the state. Traditional and conservative elements resisted the pace and direction of change, and, particularly in areas where colonial control was exercised indirectly through local elites, they were in de facto alliance with the colonial master. In many instances this situation continued to prevail even after the granting of formal independence. Even when progressive leadership did prevail in state government, that leadership found itself in control of a state organization that had been an imperial creation and continued to reflect these origins. It had been designed to serve a heterogeneous territorial community with which very few felt any identity. Yet these states survived. The component ethnic communities lacked the capability not only to gain independence but also to carry out a rectification of state boundaries so that at least ethnic communities that were split could be united. Thus, the integration process proceeded within states with externally imposed boundaries. Gradually, some low-intensity identification with the state and the territorial community upon which it rested embraced increasingly large sections of the public. Among those with a strong vested-interest tie with the state, identification increased in intensity. The slow rate with which this identification spread and intensified was a manifestation of the vested-interest base of the integration process. Only a veneer of the population, at best, was predisposed to nationalistic behavior focused on the multiethnic state. The behavior that most resembles the nationalistic was, as noted, focused largely on the ethnic communities. Internecine conflict in Mozambique and Angola, described in the Western press as civil war, is better seen as a contest of ethnic-group alliances for preeminence in the state. The cases of Nigeria, Bosnia, and Lebanon will be discussed to provide illustrations. Nigeria Nigeria is a classic example of the multiethnic state produced by colonialism. There was no precolonial Nigeria, and the territorial region occupied by the state encompasses 248 distinct ethnic groups (Diamond, 1988: 21). There are three dominant ethnic groups that encompass approximately two-thirds of the population: the Hausa Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the west, and the Ibo in the east. However, each region contains many other ethnic groups as well. In the north, the most ethnically diverse, the Hausa Fulani, represented only half of the total northern population at the time of independence. Many of these groups were politically active mi-

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norities. Moreover, even in the precolonial era the three dominant ethnic groups cannot be said to have been consolidated ethnic groups. The Fulani conquered the Hausa in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, settled in cities, and adopted the Hausa language and aspects of their culture as well; the Yoruba were organized as city-state kingdoms, some Christian and some Muslim, that engaged in frequent warfare and did not share a common language and identity until influenced by English missionaries in the nineteenth century; and the Ibo had multiple internal divisions. Thus, Nigeria was and is truly multiethnic, with even its largest ethnic groups far from being nations, all forced by colonialism to live together. Ethnicity was used by colonial and postcolonial elites as a basis for political organization. The British emphasized ethnic distinctions purposefully as a divide-and-conquer method of control. In the north the traditional Hausa Fulani elite provided the administrative representatives of British colonial rule. They were permitted to maintain their traditional class hierarchy and social organization, including the educational system. In the west and east, in contrast, English became the common language, and the colonial authorities established their own educational system. Postcolonial political figures have continued to use and be used by ethnicity as a political force. The federal structure of the country has been designed and redesigned to accommodate demands by ethnic groups for a state with which to protect themselves from domination by other ethnic groups. Yet within each new state are other ethnic minorities fearful of exploitation by the dominant groups. Nigeria is an interesting case in that it demonstrates the difficulty of first creating a common third identity, then transforming it into a dominant core community, and the potential consequences of the failure to do so. Upon independence Nigeria did have a nationalistic elite that sought Nigerian unity and identity, a federal structure offering assurance to ethnic groups, and democracy. These goals have not been achieved. The state itself did not achieve recognition by much of the country until the end of the civil war of 1967–1970. The civil war itself is instructive of the importance of images, group competition and comparison, and identification of opportunities to improve group status in igniting extreme political violence In colonial Nigeria the Ibo had achieved a socioeconomic role by the 1930s that was unrivaled by other ethnic groups. The stereotype of the Ibo, for example, had changed dramatically: “By this time, the early colonial images of Ibo as a backward, bush group had long since given way to the stereotype of the dynamic, aggressive, upwardly mobile Ibo” (Young: 1983: 206). They had also traveled, becoming a colonywide people who were the most educated and politically and economically important ethnic group, despite their smaller numbers in comparison with the Hausa Fulani. Moreover, the Ibo elite was strongly nationalistic in the 1950s, “a logical re-

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flection of a social situation in which they stood ready . . . to play a leading role in the emergent national institutions” (p. 206). This dominance, however, threatened the other ethnic groups, particularly after the coup of 1966 that was led by Ibo military officers. Ultimately, the Ibo were forced to retreat to the identification of southeastern Nigeria as their “country,” and the Biafran war of secession occurred. Thus, one can see the extent to which ethnicity and national identification can interfere with one another. In Nigeria, control of the state was associated with ethnicity so extensively that each of the three dominant ethnic groups was susceptible to ethnicity-based political parties and issues. None could accept the idea of a third identity as Nigerians distinct from ethnic identity. Resistance to a potential core community was very strong. Instead, it was the Biafran war that served as a catalyst for a struggling third identity to gain momentum. According to Samuel Oyovbaire (1984: 132–133): The quantum or quality of national consciousness generated by [federal efforts during the war] is impossible to assess, but there is no doubt that a new public consciousness of the role of the centre previously unknown in the politics, economics and management of the federation had been generated by the civil war. . . . If before the Biafran occupation, Nigeria was just a name—lacking meaning, attachment and symbolism to the literate and non-literate, the urban unemployed and rural dwellers—after that experience Nigeria became a fact of existence, the federal government being regarded as protector and benefactor.

After the war the federal government developed a very important approach to the defeated Ibo: reincorporation into the country, opportunities in education, and reconstruction. This type of policy is crucial to the future of any multiethnic state that contains a defeated breakaway group. And it worked in Nigeria. Despite the 1 million Biafran deaths, the war is not a topic of discussion or a cause for continued resentment in Iboland today. Ethnicity continues to be a dominant factor in Nigerian politics. To satisfy ethnic demands the country has been divided repeatedly into more and more states, beginning with four and currently standing at thirty-six. In the process, the three largest and dominant ethnic groups have been distributed among several states. Nevertheless, Nigeria remains a secondary or tertiary identity for most people. This is evident even among the most educated and, therefore, those most likely to identify with Nigeria strongly. After the civil war, Nigeria implemented a program to promote Nigerian identity and nation-building: the Nigerian Youth Service Corp (NYSC). Although the goals have shifted some in priority over the years, Nigerian college graduates are still sent to states other than their own to contribute their skills to local programs (Marenin, 1979). Yet a 1986 survey found that even after serving in the NYSC only 43.3 percent of respondents put Nigeria first

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in order of importance, whereas 35.8 percent put either their ethnic group or home community first (i.e., the village and its particular ethnicity, often an ethnic group within one of the largest three ethnic groups) (Marenin, 1989: 39).4 Thus, Nigerian identity remains low and is unlikely to be enhanced by the ongoing corruption, political instability, poverty, and repression of ethnic discontent such as the execution in 1995 of nine ethnic Ogoni leaders who protested government policies in Ogoniland. This leaves the glaring question of how Nigeria as a state survives, and the answer must be that no group sees an alternative. At first glance, Nigeria’s foreign policy appears to have many characteristics of the foreign policies of a nation state. By the 1970s Nigeria adopted an assertive foreign policy. It sought leadership in the region and international prominence. It opposed Western powers on important issues such as support for South Africa and the Arab-Israeli dispute; it established and paid for the infrastructure necessary to get the Economic Community of West African States up and running; joined OPEC and participated in the oil embargo; and took a prominent role in the Organization of African Unity. Nigeria’s policy was generally anti-imperialist and nonaligned, which could have provided an important ingredient in the development of a Nigerian identity of enhanced priority in the public’s identity profile. The policy stance provided a common enemy—international imperialism—and it was politically popular in Nigeria. Nevertheless, the policy and its popularity could not be sustained, thereby losing the identity-formation opportunity, because Nigeria is not a nation state. The policy of the 1970s was a costly one, but it came at a time of great oil wealth in Nigeria. Policies advancing the international prestige and dignity of the country did not, therefore, require great public sacrifices. By the oil boom-bust in the early 1980s, Nigeria had not used its oil wealth to develop a diversified economy, and economic hardships increased. Hereafter a prominent international role would require sacrifices from the Nigerian people, and whereas a nationalistic people would be willing to do so, Nigerians were not. The government did change its policy to some extent, but it still pursued a role of regional and international influence that was costly. The quest for international prestige required sacrifices in money (e.g., sponsoring the 1991 Organization of African Unity conference), material, and lives (interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone), and there were strong objections to these policies in Nigeria (Ihonvbere, 1994). Thus, as can be expected of non–nation states, the public is less willing to make sacrifices to achieve nationalistic values of prestige and dignity. The multiethnic impact on Nigeria’s foreign policies can also be seen in another important policy development. In 1987 Nigeria joined the Organization of Islamic Conference. This move was seen as highly threaten-

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ing by Nigeria’s Christian ethnic groups, and religious riots occurred in several cities. Christians also began to flee parts of northern Nigeria, which is mainly Islamic, fearing for their safety. The case demonstrates the extent to which Nigerian decisionmaking latitude is restricted by its multiethnic character. Certain foreign policy actions can be deeply disruptive domestically, and the converse is also evident; the Nigerian state is vulnerable to external actors who wish to meddle in Nigerian affairs by manipulating ethnic cleavages. Tanzania, in contrast, would appear to have offered a near ideal test case for the proposition that the multiethnic state in the Eastern Hemisphere can become the focus of an identity attachment similar in intensity to that of Western Hemisphere immigrant states with their base in a multiethnic community. The basis for such an expectation lies in the multiplicity of ethnic communities in Tanzania (120), none of which has either the population size or the capability base to permit it to think seriously in terms of separation. Given that component ethnic communities lack the option for independence, therefore, one might expect some of them to be willing to grant the central government of the multiethnic state broad policymaking discretion. One might expect as well the appearance of an ever-broadening, modernizing elite that had acquired a vested interest in regime longevity. This occurred in Tanzania in the early postindependence years with a popular leader, Julius Nyerere, and a very effective political machine that purposefully avoided appeals to ethnicity for support (Bienen, 1983). As a result, there has been little evidence of ethnic discrimination and/or conflict in Tanzania, even as recent political change introduced multiparty competition (Gurr, 1993; Glickman, 1997). The process is indeed under way in most if not all multiethnic states. Therefore, the governments of multiethnic states are in effect pursuing integration strategies comparable to those of the governments of immigrant states in the Western Hemisphere, only with much less effect. Tanzania’s lack of an ethnic community that could function as a core community and take the lead in pushing an integration strategy was probably not a liability. In fact, it was the lack of any such community that was one of the bases for the expectation that integration in Tanzania might proceed at a more rapid rate. Where an ethnic community has aspired to play the core role in a multiethnic state—for example, the Banganda community in Uganda—the objective followed seems to have been more one of gaining control of the instruments of the state to help establish core-community hegemony rather than to serve an integrative function. Bosnia When the focus of identity is on a sectarian community that often becomes synonymous with perceived ethnic identity, expected behavioral patterns

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are identical. Lebanon in the Cold War period and Bosnia in the immediate post–Cold War years offer good examples. Bosnia, which gained its independence in conjunction with the disintegration of Yugoslavia, was born a multisectarian-multiethnic state that attracted, at best, a very low intensity identity attachment. The case of Bosnia illustrates very well the difficulties of maintaining control in such a state. Yugoslavia was far more homogeneous than the speed with which the system disintegrated would suggest. A clear majority of the population was southern Slavic with relatively slight cultural differences and strong linguistic similarity. But that population was deeply split on sectarian grounds—Roman Catholic, Muslim, and Eastern Orthodox, each of which was the focus of a first-intensity identity attraction. Two communities, Croats and Serbs, and Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, respectively, obviously thought of themselves as distinct nations, a belief reinforced by selective historical memories and by their use of Latin and Cyrillic scripts. As discussed above, viewed within the larger context of Yugoslavia, both communities perceived themselves as nations and had capability bases sufficient to be more than marginally able to achieve independence and to provide their citizenry with a minimally acceptable standard of living. Within the context of Bosnia, however, none of the three communities had a capability base sufficient to establish and maintain independent statehood. Bosnia thus fits the model of the multiethnic-multisectarian state, and Bosnia could have survived as a state only if its structure as a state reflected the multiethnic identity of its component groups. Bosnia could and should have been the cradle of a common Yugoslavian identity. According to Raju Thomas (1996: 30): In Bosnia-Herzegovina, whether Muslim, Orthodox Christian or Roman Catholic, Serbs, Croats and Muslims were all comfortable being labeled “Bosnian” even if they believed themselves to be Bosnian Serb, Croat or Muslim. This was because Bosnia was a smaller and narrower representation of the larger concept of multi-ethnic Yugoslavia, a country voluntarily created in 1918 for the South Slav peoples. . . . Bosnia-Herzegovina, like Yugoslavia, denoted territorial space and not ethnic identity.

In the 1991 census the self-identification of Bosnians was 44 percent Muslim, 31.5 percent Serbian, 17 percent Croatian, and 5.5 percent Yugoslavian (Crnobrnja, 1994: 22). As a republic Bosnia-Herzegovina could and did provide these groups with opportunities for social mobilization and social creativity. The Yugoslavian state prevented one group from being dominant and provided opportunities for all ethnic groups. In fact, the state created the concept of Bosnian Muslims as a distinct ethnic identity in the 1960s, which was more preferable to the Muslims than their previous identities as Croatian or Serbian Muslims (Thomas, 1996).

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But as an independent multiethnic state Bosnia really never had a chance. Given the distribution of ethnic populations and the complexity of their intermixture (with significant intermarriage and mixed neighborhoods and municipalities), Bosnians could not simply be divided up with its Croatian and Serbian ethnic communities annexed into their respective national states. 5 The dilemma by 1991 therefore became whether to stay with Yugoslavia (i.e., Serbia), which would be threatening to the Muslim and Croatian populations, or to seek independence. Bosnian leaders quickly developed integration strategies in the patterns expected of such a state. They developed a power-sharing arrangement among the parties representing all three ethnic groups in an autonomous Bosnia. Those strategies were doomed to failure, however. The Croatian and Serbian communities in Bosnia each saw an option available for amalgamation in a nation state—Croatia and Serbia, respectively—in which the national community and the sectarian communities were coterminal. Nationalistic behavior quickly characterized both communities and destroyed the bases for the integration strategies of Bosnian leaders. The Bosnian Serbs allied with the Serbs in Croatia already fighting the Croatian state and declared themselves part of the Serb nation. The Croatian Bosnians insisted that they would not remain in Bosnia if Bosnia remained in Yugoslavia (Woodward, 1995: 193). Eventually, Bosnian Croats marked for themselves a Croat state in western Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Muslim community, recognizing its inability to maintain sovereign independence for long in this setting, was faced with the options of emigration or accepting minority status in Croatia or Serbia. The fact of strong ethnic commonalities with both Croats and Serbs seems to have done little to strengthen the attractiveness of the second option. Lebanon The case of Lebanon has many similarities to that of Bosnia. An even larger majority of Lebanese could be classified in terms of culture and language as ethnically similar. The attraction of Arab ethnicity appears to have been considerably stronger in Lebanon than that of southern Slavic ethnicity in Bosnia. The Lebanese were deeply divided on sectarian grounds, and for many, possibly most, Lebanese the sectarian community was a focus of primary-identity attachment (R. Cottam, 1984; Held, 1994). However, only one of these communities, that of the Maronite Christians, could be described in Emersonian terms as the terminal community for a majority of its members. Members of that majority typically rejected any assumption that Maronites were ethnically Arab. They saw the Maronite community in effect as an ethnic community. The parallel with the Serbs and Croats is therefore strong. A minority of Maronites accepted and

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looked with pride upon their Arab ethnicity. Some few looked to the broader, Arabic-speaking community as the terminal community. Indeed, Maronites are to be found in the leadership of Arab nationalist organizations, but the majority has focused on Lebanese nationalism, identifying Arab nationalism with Islamic rule. As Theodor Hanf (1993: 133) notes, “The main currents of Arab nationalism in Lebanon as well as Lebanese nationalism are not so much ‘Arab’ and ‘Lebanese’ as codewords for what is best termed a Sunni and a Maronite sense of community” (see also Phares, 1995). Viewed within the multisectarian Lebanese context alone, Maronite capability for establishing and maintaining independence should be rated as submarginal. However, the Maronites have behaved as if their capability rating was one of sufficiency either to act as the core community of Lebanon or to establish an independent state. They could adopt this reality view because of the existence for a brief period of an exceptionally favorable international environment. In this period the potential appeared to exist for establishing a set of alliances with external states that could give the Maronites the ability either to exercise dominance in the Lebanese milieu or to separate from Lebanon (Rabinovich, 1985; Randall, 1990; Hiro, 1993; Phares, 1995). Most important among these alliances was that with Israel. It was a natural alliance. Both peoples regarded the Arabs and Muslims as their primary enemy. But it was an asymmetrical alliance. Viewed in military terms alone, Israel was a regional superpower. The Maronites, in contrast, required assistance to hold their own militarily within the Lebanese milieu. An alliance could endure only if the Israelis were convinced that there were other utilities in the alliance that would compensate for the inevitable drain on Israeli resources in defending the Maronites. That appeared briefly to be the case in the period following the 1973 war, when Anwar Sadat broke with the militant Arab states and moved toward a separate peace with Israel (Hiro, 1993). He did so with the enthusiastic support of the United States and its European allies. At this point, Maronite nationalism characterized the Maronite majority (Rabinovich, 1985; Phares, 1995). They had an alliance system that operated directly with Israel, the conservative Arab states (now including Egypt and Iran), and indirectly with the United States and the Western European states, especially France, with its long history of close association with the Maronite community. A weak capability base was considerably strengthened by the addition of this alliance system. The negative targets of the Maronites, especially Syria and its Lebanese allies, had to understand that an assault on the Maronites opened wide the possibility of retaliation by Israel and possibly even by the United States and its allies. Maronite nationalistic behavior was well illustrated by the image held of Syria and its allies. Syria was seen in classical enemy stereotypical terms,

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and its Lebanese allies were seen as satellites lacking in both dignity and freedom of action. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was fully confirmatory of Maronite nationalist perceptions. The Maronite view of the situation now was as follows: Israeli forces had defeated Syria and its allies (to be sure, less quickly and less completely than expected) and had set the stage for Maronite domination in Lebanon. A Maronite nationalist president, Bashir Gemayel, was “elected,” and the United States and some of its allies, in an operation legitimized by the United Nations, sent forces to stabilize the new status quo. Syria, as is the wont of a diabolical enemy when confronted with will and determination, behaved passively and accepted the good offices of the United States—the mentor of its enemies—in an effort to define the parameters of the new status quo. Syria’s Lebanese allies, largely freed of their satellite status by the Syrian defeat, were now in a position to negotiate a new relationship with the Maronites reflecting the drastically altered balance of power. However, the Maronite-Israeli relationship failed to develop as the two sides expected. The expectational disagreements were rooted in differing assumptions regarding the capability equation in Lebanon. The Israelis saw a Maronite capability that was, given an open alliance with Israel, a tactic alliance with the United States, and a devastating defeat of both Syria and the PLO, more than equal to all other Lebanese actors combined. This, they felt, made possible a Maronite hegemonic control of all Lebanon (Hanf, 1993: 272; Winslow, 1996: 238–240). President Gemayel thus was in a position not only to make peace with Israel but to take Lebanon into formal alliance with the Jewish state. The Maronite leadership had a sharply different definition of the situation. They agreed that the relative capability of the Maronites was far greater than that of any other Lebanese community. Furthermore, they inclined toward the contemptuous stereotypical view of their two primary antagonists, the Druze and the Shiites. But they did not see the situation as allowing for hegemonic control. Rather, they began to follow a policy that fell into the pattern we have called “core-community behavior.” This called for an active effort to set into motion the integration of the largely sectarian communities in a Lebanon where political culture had been given definition by the Maronites. Over time, Lebanon, a multisectarian state to which the Lebanese people granted at most only low-intensity identification, could gradually become the focus of something more than a tertiary-intensity identification. Of course, for this process to occur, the political culture of Lebanon must increasingly reflect the input from all of the component identity communities. But the Maronite leadership appeared to be willing to accept what would be a long-term diminution of exclusive Maronite control.

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Confronted with this Maronite response, the Menachem Begin administration in Israel became disillusioned with the Maronites and skeptical of the advantages of a long-term alliance. The conclusion drawn was that a Maronite alliance would be much too serious a drain on limited Israeli resources. Israeli support for the Maronites declined; with that decline, the Maronite bargaining position deteriorated rapidly. By the summer of 1983 the militias drawn from the Druze and Shiite communities had begun challenging the Maronites. U.S. policy also began to change. The United States had taken the diplomatic lead in attempting to stabilize the new status quo, that is, Maronite dominance in the whole of Lebanon and the close cooperation of Israel with the Maronite-dominated government of Lebanon. The United Nations and Western Europe, especially France and Italy, had followed closely the American lead. Now, confronted with Israeli disengagement in most of Lebanon and the deterioration of the internal situation, the U.S. diplomatic task became much more complicated. It quickly became apparent that creating a new status quo would require military intervention on the part of the United States and its European allies. None were willing to do so. Maronite capability, which had derived great strength from developments within the external environment, suddenly was reduced to its pre–civil war level. This Maronite experience offers a good case study of a sectarian or ethnic community that, drawing upon its own resources alone, has a submarginal base for achieving and maintaining independence. Yet the intensity of the identity attachments to the community on the part of a majority of members leads to a yearning for sovereign independence, or at least broad autonomy. Since the only realistic hope for achieving such a goal lies with a capability improvement, and since the only short-term means of gaining such an improvement would be through an alliance system with significant external powers, the focus of policy for community leaders has to be that of gaining such an alliance. However, as this case illustrates, it is unlikely that community leaders can make a compelling case for the proposition that an alliance with them would serve an external power’s national interests for long. Thus, as in this case, what we would call “nationalistic behavior” does characterize the community during those moments when its capability enhancement has reached a point perceived to be sufficient for gaining and sustaining independence. But again, the Maronite case is illustrative of the retreat from nationalism once substantial capability decline has occurred. At this point, the Maronites had to accommodate their behavior to the interests of other communities represented in the Lebanese territorial community. Hereafter Maronite behavior could no longer be characterized as nationalistic; of course, neither could Lebanese behavior be so characterized.

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The Lebanon case also offers a good illustration of the power differences in comparing nation states with multiethnic or multinational states. Multinational and multiethnic non–nation states in particular are likely to have power disadvantages in comparison to nation states in terms of power instruments and their mobilizability. Balancing claims and distribution of resources among different ethnic and national communities coupled with intergroup suspicions are constant problems, particularly in the armed forces. Questions concerning the willingness of the personnel in the armed forces to sacrifice their lives for the state are considerable. The practice in the Soviet Union of assigning units drawn largely from Asian communities to support missions is an obvious manifestation of this problem. The armed forces of Lebanon offer an extreme illustration of the difficulties of constructing an effective military force in a non–nation state. The Lebanese territorial community was a compound of overlapping identity communities. Very few Lebanese identified with the territorial community at more than a tertiary level of intensity. Lebanon probably could be best characterized as a multisectarian non–nation state in which the majority of the population of one of the sects—the Maronite Christians—had aspirations for independent statehood. However, significant sections of the population of all Arabic-speaking sects, including the Maronites, identified at a primary intensity level with the pan-Arab national community and were attracted by the prospect of membership in a pan-Arab nation state. The core members of the Arab national community in the early years of Lebanon’s independence, however, were Orthodox Christian and Sunni Muslim. The search for a formula that could produce a consensual base for the functioning of the non–nation state system resulted in an acceptance of a division of power in which a Maronite would be president, a Sunni Muslim would be prime minister, and the other sects would be represented in the Cabinet and other official positions. Government bureaucrats, including military officers, would reflect this pattern as well. In practice, the result was a strong overrepresentation of Maronites in the military command, but with sufficient representation of individuals identifying with other sects and with the pan-Arab nation to ensure great difficulty in the definition of the appropriate military mission. Lebanon could not avoid deep involvement in regional and international politics. The conflict between the two Cold War superpowers evolved in the Arab world into a situation in which the United States became the ally of Israel as well as conservative Arab leaders who viewed pan-Arab nationalism as deeply threatening to their prerogatives. The Soviet Union accepted a close relationship with Arab leaders who espoused pan-Arab national goals but was careful to avoid allowing this alliance to risk creating a direct conflict with the United States. Lebanese could be found in both superpower camps: Most Maronites and most of the traditional leaders of

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all sects were U.S. allies; pan-Arab nationalist identifiers looked for support to the Soviet Union. Most disruptive for Lebanon, however, was the Palestine-Israel conflict. A quarter of a million Palestinians, mostly Sunni Muslim, took refuge in Lebanon, thereby upsetting the delicate sectarian balance of the country. This was compounded by Israeli retaliations in Lebanon for Palestinian cross-border raids. Many Lebanese were killed, and property damage was extensive. A polarization of the Lebanese population began to occur, with pan-Arab identifiers and Maronites here, too, occupying polar positions. In 1958 a civil war broke out involving, as the primary antagonists, Maronite sectarian identifiers and Sunni Muslim pan-Arab identifiers. Although this was a central pattern, the combatants on both sides represented a mix of sectarian and ideological groups, and a sharply crystallized picture did not develop. The military leadership in this first episode by and large were nonparticipant and, indeed, played a central role in bringing the two sides together. The Palestinian refugee community also by and large avoided participation. By 1975, however, when the second civil war broke out, the situation was far more crystallized. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) now operated mainly in southern Lebanon and had become an active actor in the Lebanese political scene. The alliance systems that operated reflected increasingly a sharp Christian-Muslim split. The Orthodox Christian primacy in Arab nationalist and ideologically leftist groups had atrophied below the leadership level (Phares, 1995). Christian and Muslim militias had become the focus of military action, and the Lebanese army was essentially paralyzed. Then it split, with Muslim officers and men establishing the Lebanese Arab Army in de facto alliance with the PLO and the Muslim militias. The Christian militias were soon in close alliance with the Israelis, and Lebanon, sans army, was a regional and international battleground. The Lebanese case, though admittedly extreme, is an instructive example of non–nation state behavior. Incorporated in its territorial community were two communities that aspired to nation statehood: the Maronite sectarian community, and the pan-Arab national community. For most of Lebanon’s history neither community believed it had the capability base to grant it the option of actively pursuing the goal of independence. Both therefore agreed to the coexistence formula for Lebanon described above. Both accepted a Lebanese military as part of that formula, but it was an inherently weak military incapable of defending the state in a period of severe crisis. When in the mid-1970s the leadership of the Maronite community came to the conclusion that it did have the option to pursue independence, the result was a disintegration of Lebanon, including its military, and, ultimately, a defeat for Maronite aspirations. The case is

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instructive of the fragility of the military power instrument in a non–nation state. It suggests that in the event of the perception of an option to pursue independence on the part of one or more identity communities in a territorialcommunity compound, the military power instrument would face a survival crisis.

Conclusion The cases presented above illustrate many of the behaviors our theoretical framework anticipates for non–nation states. Leaders of these states understand the importance of forming a common national identity and devise strategies in pursuit of that end. They often fail. They also understand the importance of diminishing the importance of national identities while simultaneously not threatening those identities’ existence, thus provoking mobilization and movements toward autonomy. This is a much bigger problem for multinational states, because the component nations understand that they have the capability to exist as independent states. Multiethnic states contain groups that by definition do not have the capacity for viable autonomy, but that does not mean that they will not attempt to achieve that capacity if opportunities emerge. Often, as in the case of Biafra and Lebanon, they fail—but at great cost in lives. The cases demonstrate the tricky process of social comparisons. As the cases show, governments of multiethnic and multinational states have several difficult tasks, with contradictory goals, that must be undertaken simultaneously if the social-comparison process is to be controlled to the state’s advantage. They must provide opportunities for social mobility and creativity for all groups. This means, ideally, ethnic groups would mix, that is, social mobility. This can be promoted, as it was in Yugoslavia, but it can also threaten the integrity of those groups and therefore backfire. Social creativity options are essential. People must be able to see groups as different but equal in opportunities to achieve what they want (which may vary from group to group), which means nondiscrimination is essential. But this runs headlong into the political reality of asymmetries of power. How can a more powerful ethnic or national group be equal to others unless its power is broken—as in Yugoslavia’s Serbia, Nigeria’s three dominant ethnic groups, and the Soviet Union’s Russia—or unless weaker groups are given special advantages, such as autonomy in governance, as in the Soviet republics and Russian krais? But how would such a demotion ever be accepted by a superior group? Clearly, the cases discussed above demonstrate that this task, although essential, makes constantly shifting demands upon any state structure and leadership and can be exceptionally volatile. Groups can live together if they do not threaten each other—

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hence federal or consociational state structures—but the comparison process can lead to bubbling resentments of those who are considered superior and contempt for those considered inferior. Combine those resentments with threat or opportunity, and images are activated that can lead to extreme stereotyping, dehumanization, and grotesque acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing. It is possible that the depth of resentment is greater when people live together in a single state, interact on a daily basis with those who they believe unjustifiably have more (power, wealth, rights, respect, resources); this provides the opportunity to identity neighbors as scapegoats. The cases presented above also demonstrate the relative weakness of the multinational and multiethnic state in foreign policy compared to nation states. The former state governments do not have the ability to mobilize public support for missions to enhance the country’s prestige when those missions call for significant sacrifices. These states are also very vulnerable to outside interferences because of the weakness of identity with the territorial community’s state and the willingness of domestic groups to look for and use leverage gained by external actors. The difference is, once again, one of degree. In the discussion of core-community nation states in Chapter 6, it was noted that ethnic groups in those states can and do interact with their ancestral countries in some policy areas. But the limitations in the ability of external actors to use these groups, and their ability to promote the interests of external actors, is much less than in a multiethnic or multinational state. Although the cases above do not provide a direct opportunity to examine variations in identification of threats between nation states and non–nation states, it is difficult to imagine that the Soviet people would have been as concerned about a Soviet diaspora as the Russian people are about the Russian diaspora in the successor states.

Notes 1. The Weimar Germany parallel is discussed at length in Brubaker (1996). 2. Milosevic’s political coalition was complex. After defeating the liberal wing of the party, he used the party machinery to form a broad coalition of Serbs united by the common bond of nationalism. Thus, his coalition included communists and anticommunists, Serbian members of the military, the police, workers from all strata, and urban and rural residents alike (Woodward, 1995). 3. These state structures should not be confused with corporatist structures such as those found in Latin America, wherein the state institutionalizes interest groups and social sectors, some of which may be predominantly of one particular minority group. In the case of the corporatist state the strategy is designed to channel participation by economic and political sectors of the country, such as the military, the church, and labor (Wiarda and Kline, 1990: 41).

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4. It should be noted that 26.7 percent put “Africa” as first in importance, a reflection of the nature of the sample—educated Nigerian college students. 5. In fact, Muslims were the majority in thirty-two municipalities, few of which were territorially contiguous, Croats in fourteen, and Serbs in fourteen. In twenty-three no ethnic group had a majority of over 50 percent (Bugajski, 1996: 122).

8 Nationalism and Conflict in the Post–Cold War Era

Nationalism is likely to be an ubiquitous factor in all interstate conflict in the post–Cold War era. Inferring the degree and direction of the influence of nationalism in interstate conflict is difficult, but there are some easily identifiable situations in which the determining role of nationalism is of central importance. This chapter has two purposes: first, to suggest some of the conflict areas in which nationalistic behavior is likely to be a defining characteristic; and second, to identify some strategies that hold utility in producing conflict avoidance, amelioration, and resolution in those situations in which nationalist values are of central importance. The first area of conflict in which nationalist values are of critical importance is a category in which the values of national unity and grandeur—those nationalist values most likely to associate with aggressive behavior—already are being activated and could become highly determining of behavior. These situations have the potential to be very disruptive of world peace. The second is a large category of prospective national communities in multinational non–nation states that place a high value in national independence and are making some effort to achieve that objective.

National Unity and Grandeur China In the first category the premier example is that of the People’s Republic of China. In Chapter 2, China was placed in a cluster of East Asian states, the cluster of states most likely to be characterized by intensely nationalistic behavior in the post–Cold War era. An application of the nationalism checklist to the states in that cluster—Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam, and 241

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China—suggests that the constituent states are likely to be particularly strongly predisposed toward nationalist behavior. Indeed, the one major anomaly in that application is the unexpectedly prolonged predisposition to intense nationalistic behavior of the highly attentive and changeoriented elite public. More to be expected, given the size and importance of that elite, would be a move in the direction of more universal values and identities. One important explanation for this unexpected persistence is the grievances the people of the region hold at what they see as a tenacious and arrogant Western imperial attitude. The highly attentive, changeoriented public tends in particular to be resentful of such an attitude. How nationalistic will China become in the post–Cold War era? For anyone concerned with estimating the future impact of nationalism on world conflict, probably no question is more important than this one. There is a very visible upsurge in nationalistic attitudes in China (Bernstein and Munro, 1997; Shambaugh, 1997). The communist regime has made clear its intention to engage in a reunification of China with what is seen as its Taiwanese province as well as with Macao and Hong Kong, the latter having been finalized in 1997. It has also expressed on many occasions its annoyance with U.S. interference in China’s internal affairs, especially with regard to the issues of human rights, trade, and unification. Nationalistic behavior thus can be discerned, and increasingly so, in official Chinese rhetoric and policies. It is even more apparent among the intelligentsia and the highly attentive public. The sense within this population of the exceptional quality of the Chinese culture and the extraordinary role played by Chinese leaders historically must be a profoundly important element in any examination of Chinese nationalism. Will the same consciousness of a historical and cultural preeminence that pervades the intelligentsia come to characterize the mass population? When the communists achieved power in China following the 1949 revolution, there was already a strong trend in the direction of a broadening mass participation. Nationalistic attitudes characterized much of the politically participant elements, and major nationalistic political figures had appeared on the scene. Indeed, developmental patterns appeared in China that paralleled those of other societies moving in the direction of mass politics and that soon would emerge as nation states with a broadly participant and intensely nationalistic mass public. However, at a critical moment in this process the Chinese people came under the control of an elite that subscribed to Marxism and could be assumed to oppose nationalism doctrinally. This aspect of Chinese communist doctrine may have been less important to the Chinese leaders than it was for their Soviet counterparts, because China was not the multinational, multiethnic empire that was the Soviet Union. Hence, nationalism was not a threat to the Chinese state. Nevertheless, they did avoid manipulating national symbols as central

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aspects of a political-control strategy. But in the elite’s own rhetoric there sometimes appeared to be an attraction to Chinese nationalism (Shih, 1992). The trend toward a predisposition to participate in politics continued in this period, but the conclusion is problematic as to whether the newly participant public would identify at a first-intensity level with a Chinese national community approaching 1.25 billion people. The logic of the case for the competing expectation of the emergence of regional national communities is strong on grounds of manageability and economic interests. But evidence of the emergence of an intense mass identification with regional national communities is weak. As seen above, however, today there is evidence of a strong Chinese nationalist trend, one that is encouraged by elements within the governing elite. The answer to the question of the direction of national-community identity development in territorial China no doubt will emerge before long. Furthermore, the developmental direction certainly will be a reflection of the interaction of strong-identity predispositional factors embedded in Chinese society. It is unlikely to be influenced more than marginally by policies pursued by external governments. The increasingly active efforts of governmental leaders to appeal to a broad Chinese nationalism, focusing in particular on the issues of reunification and national prestige and dignity, thus should be viewed as an early test of the strength of a predisposition toward an identity with a huge Chinese territorial community. The test of the potential for a first-intensity identification with regional national communities would be the appearance of counterelites who are able to make comparably strong appeals to regional identities. Even though the policies of external governments are unlikely to have much influence on the determination of the nature of Chinese identitycommunity attachments, those policies can be very influential at a lower and decisional level. They can be instrumental in determining both the intensity and the direction of Chinese nationalistic responses. The values of independence, dignity, prestige, and unity are certain to be highly salient among those Chinese who can be classified as nationalists. An understanding of the importance of these values to the Chinese is the sine qua non of establishing good relations with a Chinese nationalist leadership. It is within this context that the efforts of the Bush and Clinton administrations in the immediate post–Cold War era to pressure the Chinese on the subject of human rights must be examined. Not unexpectedly, those efforts were perceived as examples of gratuitous diplomacy that were offensive to the values of national dignity and prestige. Why, then, were such seemingly serious diplomatic efforts made, especially in the area of human rights? In Chapter 5, human rights were listed as an element in the American normative system. But a messianic

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interest in working for the observation of human rights elsewhere is not so clearly an aspect of the American normative system. The relative weakness of ideological interest groups dedicated to the purpose of advancing the norm of human rights elsewhere suggests a low level of public concern. Likewise, the relative ease with which U.S. officials retreat on human rights issues in bargaining situations indicates a lack of strong public commitment. What appears to be a messianic concern with advancing human rights in China and elsewhere may better be seen as a manifestation of American nationalism. The contention that the United States, as the only superpower, has the obligation to exercise leadership in the post–Cold War era is broadly articulated and only rarely challenged among the citizenry. That exercise of leadership should be in matters of security, economics, and a range of normative affairs, including human rights. What is the underlying basis of this leadership obligation? It lies in the nationalist value of grandeur and the accompanying concern with maintaining or expanding the level of influence exercised in world affairs. However, even here there is reason to question the intensity of public concern. There has been policy ambivalence regarding the role of U.S. leadership in world affairs and grandeur interests. The occasional willingness to retreat on such issues indicates that national grandeur may be far less a driving force behind U.S. policy than the rhetoric would suggest. Viewed through Chinese eyes, what is painfully apparent in this policy, however, is a lack of sensitivity to Chinese nationalistic sensibilities (Bermé, 1996: 187). Americans failed to anticipate a strong negative reaction among the nationalistically inclined Chinese population to perceived affronts to national dignity, prestige, and grandeur and opposition to national unity. This failure is best explained by an atavistically persisting, if declining, view of China and the Chinese through the imperial-colonial image. It reflects a serious underestimation of the extent to which China is moving toward becoming a mass-politics society strongly inclined toward intensely nationalistic behavior. The response of Chinese nationalists to this brand of diplomacy is decreasingly ambiguous. A consensual view has been developing that U.S. policy is a modern-day manifestation of nineteenth-century Western imperial arrogance and an accurate reflection of the hegemonic intentions of the one remaining superpower. The real danger in attributing hegemonic intentions to the U.S. government is that it promotes an increasingly nationalistic response from the Chinese nationalist elite. The U.S. brand of diplomacy is seen as a threat to Chinese efforts to proceed with the full unification of the Chinese people, the dignity and prestige of the Chinese nation, the full expression of Chinese sovereignty, and the sense of national grandeur as manifest in the level of Chinese influence in world affairs. Should the entire Chinese

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national community begin to behave nationalistically, questions of national grandeur could generate conflict, with exceptionally dangerous potential. For example, a decision to move toward forceful unification with Taiwan would lead to a clash with the United States and could lead to a willingness to challenge the U.S. presence throughout Asia, introducing an era of Chinese imperialism replacing U.S. imperialism. The inadvertent tendency of U.S. diplomacy toward China has been to activate Chinese national grandeur. The End of the Cold War Russia is a second example in the category of situations in which the values of national grandeur and national unity were already being activated and could be highly determining of behavior. The rise of Russian nationalism was not confined to elements of the population that simply acquiesced to the Soviet regime; it swept up former Soviet elites as well. In a short period of time the Russian state had returned to the world stage and was making a claim to great-power status. Having suffered the humiliation of a sudden loss of influence by a Soviet Union in which Russians played a leading role, compounded by the extraordinary distress associated with the disintegration of the Soviet socioeconomic system, the yearning for a return to greatness was palpable. The ability of the Soviet leadership to accept affronts to national dignity, such as the Cuban missile crisis, would not exist for the new Russian leadership. However, as noted in Chapter 7, this restored Russia remains a non– nation state with rebellious minority national communities. Russia’s efforts to repress them in the case of Chechnya only compounded the humiliation of a Russian people struggling to recover from the disintegration of the Soviet system. Recovery requires nothing less than a redefinition of Russian identity. What are the parameters of the Russian national community? Do they embrace only the Russian community living in the Russian Federation? Do they include non-Russian communities of the Federation who could be expected to assimilate into the Russian core community? Do they include all, most, or only some of the ethnic Russian communities living outside of the Federation but within the boundaries of the old Soviet Union? Is the Russian national community likely to strive to re-create a great Russian empire? Answers to these questions will appear over a long period of time and, as in the Chinese case, will reflect the interactions of deeply embedded predispositional factors. But far more than in the Chinese case, they reflect the impact of relationships with external powers. Here, too, of particular concern is the impact of those relationships on the nationalist values of unity, dignity, and grandeur.

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The collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the most momentous and dramatic events in human history, but it was not so perceived by its contemporaries. Like the French Revolution, an event of equal moment, complexity, and implications, it may require the perspective of history to be comprehended. Thus far there has been little serious public (as opposed to academic) exploration of the implications of the Soviet collapse. Instead, there has been a widespread refusal by Western publics and political leaders to recognize the importance of the collapse of the Soviet totalitarian system in bringing an end to the Cold War or to recognize that the initiator of the dynamics that would result in system collapse was the Soviet Union’s own top leadership. The accepted mythology is that the Soviet Union was somehow defeated by its superpower opponent and the Western allies of that superpower. There appears to be an operating assumption that the Soviet Union, like Nazi Germany, suffered a defeat that could only be described as “total,” as was the military defeat of the Nazis. The Cold War, which had given basic definition to world affairs for more than a generation, suddenly ceased to exist. But at the policymaking level there was remarkably little inquiry as to why it disappeared and what the implications of that disappearance are. One would have expected, at the very least, some fundamental reconsideration of the adequacy of the institutions and norms that should serve to reduce conflict in the next era, as was done at the end of World War II. At that time, with the defeat of Hitler and Japanese militarists, the international community recognized the need to create a radically altered institutional basis for a new and peaceful world order. The unease in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union was generally apparent, as was the certainty that the process of decolonization would accelerate. International conferences were held; as well, institutional formulas were advanced, developed, and then adopted, viewed as reflecting political and power realities and as having the potential for resolving interstate conflict. No case was made at that time that the United States was in fact the world’s sole superpower. Yet such a case could have been made far better in 1945 than in 1990. In 1945 the world’s industrial base, except for that of the United States, had been severely crippled. From the perspective of this most important of power indicators, the United States clearly was in a class by itself. In addition, the United States was then the only nuclear power. In 1990, in contrast, the reindustrialization of the world had proceeded to such a point that there was no comparable preeminence. Furthermore, although the U.S. technical-military lead was unbridgeable in the short term, the nuclear monopoly had long before been lost, and several countries had the technological expertise to engage the United States in a technological-military arms race. In 1945 there was no suggestion of

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an institutionalization of a role of preeminence for the United States despite its exceptional power advantage. But in 1990 President George Bush was able to assert the right of the United States to give direction to the creation of a new world order, without the appearance of major international dissent. Clearly, a central reality as perceived by much of the world was that the United States was indeed the world’s sole superpower and as such would, and was entitled to, play the major role in the development of a new world order. In summary, there was a remarkable lack of parallelism in the responses to the end of World War II and the end of the Cold War. At the end of World War II there was widespread understanding that international institutions were needed to manage an environment that had a serious conflict potential. Furthermore, despite the ease with which a case for an impressive U.S. capability superiority could be made, there was little to indicate that the value of national grandeur, with its associated insistence on a broadening of influence exercised in world affairs, had become a significant concern for the U.S. polity. On the contrary, that polity moved only reluctantly to assume a leadership role. It did so only as the conclusion was generally accepted that the Soviet Union was highly aggressive and constituted a major world threat. The response thus was to an intensely perceived threat to the interests of the American national community. At the end of the Cold War, in contrast, there was little to suggest a persistently serious conflict potential. The eminence of the United States was judged as unchallengeable, and the problems that did appear—chaos in Somalia, tyranny in Haiti, the breakup of Yugoslavia, instability in North Korea, as well as Saddam Hussein and a politically resurgent Islam—were of relatively minor importance and easily handled. Nevertheless, unlike after World War II, U.S. policy reflected the willingness to assume the responsibilities of world leadership. Almost imperceptibly the thrust of U.S. foreign policy motivation shifted from one of national defense to one of national grandeur. In the political mainstream there was no real consideration given to a return to an isolationist tradition. How, then, would existing international institutions, especially the United Nations and others charged with aspects of conflict resolution, adapt to the emerging realities of this new world order? This question was addressed more implicitly than explicitly and in a similarly informal manner. Its defining characteristics appeared primarily in the form of crisismanagement responses. That which gave definition to functional alterations was the response to the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990. The United States, and in particular President Bush, quickly demonstrated the extraordinary importance of the role assumed by the “one remaining superpower.” In Operation Desert Shield, the containment phase of the Gulf War, Bush set into motion the orchestration of an operation that included

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over thirty governments and most relevant international institutions. But the latter were permitted to exercise little leadership. The United Nations was reduced to little more than a support group. The Arab League and individual Arab governments that chose to cooperate were denied even an expression of an Arab solution to an essentially Arab crisis. Those Arab and regional governments that refused to cooperate were isolated and openly scorned. Members of NATO and the government of a Soviet Union striving for some continued relevance were dealt with far more respectfully. Maintaining their support was important for Bush, thereby giving them some leverage. But U.S. preeminence was the essential feature of the operation. This dramatic post–Cold War response of the international community to the task of conflict resolution established a pattern for dealing with disputes that continued to prevail for some time. U.S. leadership essentially was unchallenged and for the most part supported. The United Nations and other international institutions acquiesced, albeit occasionally under protest, to playing a subsidiary role. The formula for confronting emerging crises had crystallized: it consisted of a strongly asserted U.S. leadership, a willingness of the European Cold War allies of the United States to grant their support, an acquiescence in this leadership by Russia and China, and an acquiescence in a subordinate support role from the United Nations and other international institutions. The central argument made here is that the lack of concern with the collapse of the Soviet system was a function of the smooth effectiveness of the U.S. and European governments’ move to take the lead in dealing with developing crises. But these governments did so with little awareness of the extent to which they were driven by a concern with defending their own national-grandeur interests. Neither did they understand that the assertion of their right to leadership was viewed with alarm in China, Russia, and much of the Third World, where the prevailing assumption was that the Americans, with full European support, were driven by the goal of a European-supported, U.S. insistence on establishing hegemonic control over much of the world. How intense the national-grandeur commitment is remains unclear in the absence of a serious challenge to these policies. For example, Operation Desert Storm, the coalition’s Gulf War offensive, was not broadly supported by either the public or the political leadership in the United States until the attacks actually occurred, at which point a nationalistic spirit of considerable intensity overtook both the public and officials. Measured in terms of willingness to sacrifice, there was a first-intensity concern for national grandeur during the brief period of actual combat. However, once Iraqi troops had left Kuwait and the Iraqi army was viewed as incapable of avoiding total military defeat, public enthusiasm rapidly waned. The Bush

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administration chose not to pursue the defeated army, and that decision was quietly accepted by the American public. There was, in fact, no strong evidence of any sentiment favoring the pursuit of a more forward policy in Iraq. This was a reflection of the waning of national-grandeur interests after the period in which U.S. forces were actively involved. Following the limited victory, the behavior of the American public indicated that grandeur interests had fallen in intensity and, therefore, would not lead to a further expansion of influence. The way in which Desert Storm could have been perceived in the Third World and among nationalist segments of the Chinese and Russian populations apparently received little consideration by the United States and its European allies. Another central indication of this lack of understanding of how the United States and its European allies are perceived in much of the world appears in the one serious post–Cold War U.S. institutionalizing effort. The difficulties George Bush had in orchestrating the activities of European allies in the Gulf crisis were instructive and called for improved institutionalization of U.S. and European cooperation for the purpose of dealing with conflict situations. The answer found was a redefined NATO, a redefinition that completely ignored Russian sensitivities. Russia was treated as a supplicant state, still dangerous because of its stock of nuclear weaponry and its instability—but hardly as a suitable partner. NATO, on the other hand, could serve as the locus of an alliance system that could not only redefine a post–Cold War Europe but also serve as a major institutional base for establishing a new world order. The resemblance to the nineteenth-century Concert of Europe (the agreement among the great powers of Europe to maintain peace and order) went largely unnoticed. The fact that erstwhile Soviet-captive allies in Eastern Europe should wish to become full NATO members was understandable, especially given the precipitous rise in nationalistic sentiment in Russia. However weakened, Russia presented a formidable threat to these states. The main focus in the institutional adjustment of NATO was on an institutionalization of a European force capable of dealing with serious regional crises and even some extraregional crises. It appeared as well to be focused on evolving a relationship with the United Nations in which NATO could provide military and technical forces that could work in tandem with the United Nations to execute decisions with which NATO was in agreement. But is was manifest in most of these reinstitutionalization explorations that Russia would be denied formal membership in NATO. All of the preceding chapters point to the inevitable outcome of these policies: an increase in Russian nationalism. This will lead to the conviction that U.S. intentions will translate into a policy designed to achieve and perpetuate American world hegemony. For the immediate future Russia’s leaders, unhappily but fully aware of the limited capabilities they

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could draw on, had few options for resisting this perceived American-European design. But as the capability balance shifts in the direction of parity, the available options should increase and the determination to resist the imposition of American hegemonic control should intensify. Here, too, as in China, the dangers of a conflict developing and spiraling out of control before being fully recognized are serious. Korea, like Germany and Vietnam, suffered a division of its territory after World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. In all three, regimes on opposite sides of the Cold War emerged. In all three, the people considered themselves as constituting indivisible national communities and saw reunification as an enduring nationalist goal. Over the years, however, vested interests developed among the citizenry of each of these countries that resulted in a growing identity ambivalence, especially among those individuals who exercised power and achieved satisfactory levels of prosperity. Nevertheless, as events would demonstrate in Germany and Vietnam, the nationalist imperative toward reunification could not be denied once the option for reunification became available. The German and Vietnamese patterns suggest intriguing possibilities for Korean unification now that the external obstacles have disappeared. The primary remaining obstacles were the realization by the North Korean regime that any serious relaxation of internal political control could lead to an unstoppable nationalist dynamic resulting in full reunification under the aegis of the Seoul regime; and the realization by the South Korean regime that reunification would present extraordinary budgetary demands. Korea, therefore, presents another case in which nationalism is likely to play a determining role in conflict behavior. However, there is no inevitability that the outcome would be reunification. The external obstacles did diminish with the end of the Cold War, but the United States reversed that trend when it branded North Korea a so-called rogue state and maintained a hostile relationship with it. Like other states so classified by U.S. policymakers, North Korea had few available options other than to develop alliances that could enable it to withstand U.S. pressures. Also, as with the other rogue states, the only major-power candidates for such an alliance were Russia and China. While the capability differential by the end of the 1990s continued to prevent a serious alliance between North Korea and either China or Russia, a change in that differential, coupled with the motivating drive of a shared perception of the United States as intending to maintain global hegemony, could produce such an alliance in the future.

National Communities in Search of Nation Statehood The second major locus of nationalistic behavior certain to lead to conflict in the post–Cold War era is the aspiration of communities, seeing themselves

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as national communities living within multinational non–nation states, to achieve national self-determination. These aspirations are likely to be resisted by the governments of the concerned multinational states, and a conflict situation is likely to develop. The number and seriousness of these situations increased greatly during the Cold War for two reasons. First, the Cold War was a period in which the growth in the level of political participation or a predisposition to participate on the part of the citizenry of the Third World reached the mass-politics level. Typically, in the days of the Cold War era, the politically participant section of a population constituted only a veneer of that population, often heavily weighted with elements of the middle class and the intelligentsia. At the end of the Cold War, however, the overwhelming majority of the world population was predisposed to participate. This process amounted to a change of revolutionary importance. In its early stages the modal Third World citizen identified most intensely with parochial communities that were integral features of a traditional society. There was little comprehension of what constituted a national community and no receptivity to the appeal of its advocates. But by the end of the Cold War era the modal citizen could be mobilized in support of national aspirations. The capability base of aspiring national communities that had become politically participant during this period was thus much enhanced. Second, as discussed above, the passing of the Cold War was characterized by a thaw in a long-frozen status quo within the spheres of influence of the Soviet Union and the United States. The peoples of Eastern Europe and Central Asia became free to explore new options relating to the expression of their national identities. The process proceeded far less rapidly in the U.S. Cold War sphere of influence, which embraced much of the Third World. This was particularly the case in the Middle East, a region in which American influence was very persistent. But in lacking a compelling interest that dictated an effort to maintain the old level of influence, the U.S. resolve to maintain a favorable status quo, even in the Middle East, inevitably diminished. Therefore, the option to seek independence could be available to a number of nascent national communities, including a pan-Arab community. Note should be taken, however, of a category of would-be national communities whose capability to seek self-determination was actually weakened by the passing of the Cold War. The leaders of these communities attempted to play on the U.S.-Soviet conflict in order to gain the backing of one of the superpowers for their drive for greater independence. One such community was examined earlier: the Maronite sectarian community in Lebanon in 1982. The Kurds in Iraq made a similar effort in 1974 to take advantage of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War to move in the direction of greater control of their own destiny vis-à-vis the Iraqi Arab regime in which Saddam Hus-

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sein was already the strongman. In this case the initiative was taken by the shah of Iran, and it led to an alliance of Iran, the United States, Israel, and the Kurds of Iraq. Each of the allies had its own interest in weakening Iraq. The United States sought to destabilize a perceived Soviet satellite. Israel hoped to reduce the relative strength among Arab states by weakening Iraq, to gain an intelligence presence in Kurdistan, and to develop an alliance with the Kurdish people. Iran’s goal was to develop a bargaining position with Iraq sufficient to stop Iraqi support for Iranian opposition to the shah, to effect the formal acceptance of the Thalweg of the Shatt al Arab channel as the Iran-Iraq border, and to do so without strengthening the prospects for an independent Kurdistan, which could only add to the shah’s internal security difficulties with Iranian Kurdistan (R. W. Cottam, 1988). In any event, the Iraqis were fully aware of the conspiracy and had no difficulty in defeating the Kurdish insurgency. They did so even though the Soviet Union, also aware of the conspiracy, failed to give its supposedly dependent ally, Iraq, significant assistance. Iran chose not to come to the support of the Kurds with a military operation capable of achieving victory. Instead, they agreed at Algiers in 1975 on a peace settlement with Iraq. In that agreement they gained their objective concerning the Iran-Iraq border. They also gained Iraq’s agreement to a reciprocal pledge to halt interventions in each other’s domestic political affairs. These two cases, the Maronites and the Kurds, are illustrative of several important characteristics of identity-based conflicts during the Cold War, characteristics now gone. The U.S.-Soviet Cold War was the first, and thus far only, example of an irreconcilable conflict, in effect a real war, between nuclear powers. In the prenuclear era that conflict may well have led to all-out war on the order of World Wars I and II. But all-out warfare in the nuclear era would involve a level of destruction that would be unthinkable. Deterrence at the nuclear level did not prevent the antagonists from playing out their conflict in other arenas, however, and those arenas were conflict situations in which the probabilities of uncontrolled escalation were low; therefore, it was conflict at a level in which defeat, though costly and deplorable, ultimately could be accepted. Early in the Cold War era there was an assumption that subversion would be a probable major path for Soviet expansionism in the nuclear realm. The subversion of governments of lesser allies of the West and of neutral regimes would involve little risk of escalation if successful, and failures would be tolerable. A countersubversion program was developed in the West to counter such a strategy, but as it evolved it frequently was indistinguishable from a program of subversion directed against the Soviet Union and its allies. However, if the subversion arena involved low risk of uncontrolled escalation, it also offered very modest opportunities for besting an absolute

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enemy. It was inevitable, therefore, that other conflict arenas that offered a far greater payoff would be explored. Covert operations designed to replace regimes viewed as obstacles to the task of containing the enemy were proposed and executed fairly early in the Cold War era. The U.S. targeting of the governments of Mossadeq in Iran in 1953, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, and Castro in Cuba in 1961 were early examples. The great danger in climbing the conflict ladder to reach greater payoffs is that of miscalculating the willingness of the antagonist to accept defeat. The Soviet Union twice so miscalculated and in doing so risked escalation of the conflict to the nuclear level. The first and most serious miscalculation was discussed earlier: the assumption that the United States would acquiesce in the placement of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. The leaders of the multinational Soviet Union quickly discovered that the U.S. president, confronted with a threat to U.S. national defense, dignity, and grandeur, would risk escalation to the nuclear level rather than acquiesce. The second occurred in October 1973 at the conclusion of the Yom Kippur War. The Egyptian military, contrary to the expectations of Israel, the United States, and the Soviet Union, had crossed the Suez Canal and had forced Israel to retreat. The Americans and Soviets airlifted military supplies to their respective allies but also engaged in serious efforts to find an acceptable formula for a cease-fire. They were successful, but at the moment of success the Israelis made a major military breakthrough and were soon in a position to surround and to force the surrender of the Egyptian army. The temptation to consolidate their victory was too strong to resist, and the Israelis continued their offensive beyond the cease-fire deadline. The Soviet response was to send the Americans a message, interpreted negatively by the recipients, that asked for joint action to enforce the cease-fire but asserted their intention to proceed alone in that direction if the Americans failed to agree. At the same time, U.S. monitors observed Soviet military movements that could be interpreted as a prelude to a major Soviet military move. In response, the U.S. side placed its forces on nuclear alert, and the world waited anxiously to see if the dreaded escalation would occur. As it happened, the crisis was quickly defused by urgent diplomatic moves, especially by Europeans, that called for a UN force to be sent to the area and that gained the Israelis’ agreement to cease their advance. Evidence suggests the Americans, responding to an intensely perceived threat, had misinterpreted both the intent of the Soviet message and the purpose of the military movements (Lebow and Stein, 1993). But the Soviets clearly had not been sensitive to the inability of the U.S. leadership to acquiesce in a unilateral move by the Soviets that would be interpreted as grandeur-driven. Once again, the superpowers had demonstrated a tendency to project their own nationalism (the United States) or lack thereof (the Soviet Union) in explaining the responses of the other.

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The Maronite and Kurdish cases were presented as illustrations of the efforts of emerging national communities to take advantage of conflict between nuclear powers as a means for achieving their own nationalist aspirations. Both minorities saw the U.S.-Soviet conflict as clearly such a conflict in the Middle East. Each entered into a working relationship with a de facto alliance of state actors that included the United States as the cooperating superpower. Presumably the target in each case was a competing alliance that included the Soviet Union as the cooperating superpower. On the surface, the outcomes of the two cases fell nicely into expected patterns. In Lebanon, the U.S.-supported alliance was the easy victor, and the election of a Maronite president was maneuvered. The Soviet-supported alliance acquiesced in its defeat. In Iraq, the Soviet-supported alliance was easily victorious, and the U.S.-supported alliance acquiesced in an Iraqi suppression of the Kurds. But in fact, as our case studies illustrate, this parallelism was illusory. In neither case did Soviet support extend beyond the level of supportive rhetoric. The case studies point to two major puzzles—obvious but unnoticed and hence unexplored—of the Cold War era. The first puzzle rests on the fact that the nuclear superpower that exercised the most influence in the Middle East—the United States—was geographically far distant from the region. The other, exercising far less influence, was geographically adjacent to and partially within the Middle East. The second major puzzle is best seen in the form of a strange dichotomy to be found in the U.S. and allied definition of the situation. On the one hand, there was a full acceptance of an image of the Soviet Union that closely approximated that of the diabolical enemy stereotype: ineluctably aggressive and fully capable of orchestrating a diversity of conspiracies to achieve its purpose. On the other hand, there was also general consensus with regard to expectations of Soviet responses even to major allied moves made within what was arguably a core Soviet regional sphere of influence and designed to weaken Soviet-dependent allies. These expectations appeared to have reflected deeply embedded assumptions of a Soviet behavioral passivity that belied the diabolical-enemy image. Generally, and specifically in our two cases, these expectations of Soviet passivity were consistently realized. Indeed, U.S. and allied policy toward the Soviet Union came to be premised implicitly on the assumption of Soviet passivity. Nevertheless, the verbalized image of the Soviet Union remained unaltered: that of the diabolical enemy. The contrary dichotomy of image and expectations of Soviet policy responses persisted. These puzzles relate to important and poorly understood manifestations of behavior at the international level in the nuclear era. Although nationalism alone cannot explain these patterns, nationalism is an essential factor for understanding the puzzles.

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There are two characteristic features of the Cold War that should be kept in mind: First, it was the first irreconcilable conflict between nuclear powers; and second, it focused on the conflict of two superpowers, one of which was a nation state, the other a multinational non–nation state. The conflict had its immediate origins in the waning days of World War II, and the initiator of that conflict was clearly the Soviet Union. The imposition of Soviet control in much of Eastern Europe and Soviet political interventions in Greece and Iranian Azerbaijan threatened to destroy the basis of an always tenuous wartime cooperation. More important, it signaled to the Western allies the probability of a Soviet aggressive intent that had to be contained. However, a careful reading of the Soviet rationale for its openly forward policy in Europe and the Middle East suggests that a central feature of the Soviet worldview was an intensely perceived threat. The takeover of Eastern Europe was depicted as the acquisition of a buffer zone that could protect the Soviet Union from an expected assault from a coalition of capitalist powers. But the Soviet actions generated in the West an increasingly intense perception of threat that eventually evolved into the diabolical-enemy image. The two sides thus viewed each other with mirror imagery. That imagery was the perception of threat, not perception of opportunity. Thus, it reflected for each a defensive motivation. Neither side viewed the other with the imagery associated with regimes, such as Hitler’s, that are driven by the perceived opportunity to expand. The expectations of both sides at this point were in conformity with the imagery. Each expected the other to engage in aggressive expansion. But in both cases, these expectations were not fully realized. In apparent response to the nonrealization of their expectations, the Soviet view of the Western allies became more complex, less stereotypical, and less threatened. After Stalin’s death the intensity of the perceived threat seemed to decline precipitously until, at the end of the Cold War, it appeared to lack policy-determining force (Jackson, 1998–1999). Soviet leaders continued to verbalize a decreasingly stereotypical enemy image, but when confronted with clearly aggressive behavior, as in our two cases, they behaved, if not passively, at least with caution. There was no parallel movement in the Western imagery of the Soviet Union. Indeed, there appeared rather a further crystallizing of the diabolical-enemy stereotype. What explains this striking behavioral variance? It was argued early on in this book that members of nation states are predisposed to view threateners stereotypically when confronted with a strongly perceived threat. The view persists even when its expectations are consistently disconfirmed. This nonintuitive response suggests that the enemy image is surprisingly resistant to falsification for nationalistic communities with a strongly perceived threat. A disturbance to the image system in the form of strongly disconfirming evidence apparently can be neutralized

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by a systemic adjustment. Disconfirming evidence is accommodated in this case, and many others, as a product of the “paper tiger” component of the image. The paper-tiger component can be seen as a factor of one of the core underlying assumptions: that the diabolical enemy is highly rational. Thus, if a diabolical enemy is behaving with uncharacteristic caution and passivity, that is, a paper tiger, the conclusion will not be drawn that the enemy is no longer aggressive but that it has rationally determined that retreat is momentarily advisable. It need only wait until the perceiver’s state comes under the influence of weak leadership, at which point it will move again with expected aggressiveness. Therefore, the favored interpretation of those adhering to the diabolical-enemy image was that the failure of the Soviet Union to persist in its aggression was a direct consequence of the appearance of a newly determined U.S. leadership that had a full understanding of the aggressive purpose of the diabolical enemy. The Soviets, in response, returned to their lair and left the Americans free to carry out their defensive policy, as they had since Stalin’s death, often in the Soviets’ backyard. But there was certainty that the Soviet Union, still a diabolical enemy, would return to aggressive behavior with the first appearance of American weakness. The occupation of Afghanistan, it follows, could easily be explained in this context. Sensing uncertainty and naïveté in the Carter administration, the Soviets left their lair and moved aggressively southward. The primary explanation for the polar differences in the responses of the Soviet leadership and the Western leadership to unexpectedly nonaggressive behavior on the part of the other is a reflection of the differences in community identity. Western leaders were responding to the fact that their national community–based publics had come to perceive intensely a threat to central national values from the Soviet Union and, more generally, from international communism. They lacked the decisional latitude not to accept and operate on the basis of this worldview. The public imagery became the essential feature of the definition of the situation for Western leaders. The Soviet leaders, in sharp contrast, were responding to publics that lacked a common, national-community identity base. The intensity of attachment to the all-embracing Soviet Union territorial community was minimal, and, it follows, a concern with territorial community, dignity, prestige, and grandeur was likewise minimal. As would become very clear with the breakup of the Soviet Union, the first-intensity attachments of the peoples of the Soviet Union were to the various national communities that were effective prisoners within the Soviet structure. In such settings, there was little predisposition to view a threat to the state stereotypically. Thus, even though there was some manifestation of mirror imagery on the part of the United States and the Soviet Union, genuine parallel imagery to that of

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the United States was unlikely to be found in the mass public. It could really only be found in the Soviet elite, but even there the simplification tendency was weak relative to that in the West.

Implications for Future Irreconcilable Conflicts of Nuclear Powers Even though an entire generation of the world’s population has lived through the era of the first seemingly irreconcilable conflict of nuclear powers, the assumption persists that the world has yet to see warfare between nuclear powers. The lack of a hot war between the United States and the Soviet Union was a unique manifestation of nuclear-power conflict because both powers were essentially defensive in motivation and because one of the nuclear powers was a multinational non–nation state and hence not predisposed to behave nationalistically. Such a state would have great difficulty mobilizing popular enthusiasm for an adventurous foreign policy. There is a natural tendency to generalize from the experience of this first conflict in anticipating future conflict between nuclear powers. However, it is rather unlikely that one of the antagonists in a future conflict would resemble the Soviet Union in either motivation or behavioral style; therefore there is little likelihood that a future conflict between nuclear powers would follow the patterns of the Cold War. What if, for example, such a conflict involved an essentially status quo power like the United States, which perceived intensely a threat to its national survival, but this time its opponent is a nation state that is Hitlerian in motivation and has succeeded in mobilizing intense support from a major section of the public for its aggrandizement purposes? The notion that the Hitlerianmotivated state would acquiesce in a defeat deep within its own sphere of influence, as did the Soviet Union, would be absurd. To the contrary, the balance-of-power structure in such a nuclear conflict likely would conform much more closely to the expectations of realist thinkers. Presumably, though, both antagonists would accept the logic of the case for establishing a balance of terror and would be determined to avoid at all costs a loss of control of situational dynamics that could result in lethal escalation. In addition, they would look, as did the Soviets and Americans, for arenas in which they could engage without an excessive risk of escalation. However, the international political environment of the post–Cold War era is radically different from that of the early Cold War period. The spread of mass politics throughout the Third World is arguably the most significant of the changes and certainly alters the nature of the arenas in which engagement by nuclear-power enemies would be likely to occur. The focus on subversion and countersubversion and the focus on clandestine efforts to

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overturn regimes were natural foci in the pre–mass politics era. Prospects for significant success in both endeavors were sufficiently favorable to justify the efforts. But the prospects for weakening a regime by subversion or overturning a regime by a clandestine operation in societies with mass participation are extremely poor. An arena that became available for engagement by the nuclear-power enemies in the later stages of the Cold War, one likely to be available for the engagement of future nuclear-power enemies, would be the deep yearning among aspiring national communities in multinational, multiethnic, and multisectarian non–nation states for independent statehood. Situations resembling that of the Maronite and Kurdish examples clearly exist, in which an aspiring national community will see the opportunity to achieve its aspirations by soliciting the support of a nuclear power engaged in irreconcilable conflict with another nuclear power. But the response patterns of the nuclear powers would be very different in the hypothetical case in which one nuclear power was responding primarily to perceived threat and the other to perceived opportunity. The grandeur-driven regime would very likely see such situations as offering the prospect of low-risk advancement of its interest in expanding influence. Thus, rather than simply responding favorably to solicitations, it would play the role of initiating involvement in the struggles of an aspiring national community within a multinational non–nation state. The critical question to be asked is whether in such situations the nuclear powers could accept defeat for their limited purpose and hence could avoid risking escalation. If the hypothetical nation state viewed its adversary in the degenerate image, the acceptance of defeat would be unlikely. The degenerate image amounts to an extremely simplified view of the target wherein it is reasonable to conclude that the target will not resist a determined effort to expand influence at its—that is, the target’s—expense. The key assumption is that the target, regardless of its weaponry and capability rating, lacks the will and determination to stand up to a challenge. The individual analogue is that of an effete person, motivationally uncertain, confused, disorganized, and incapable of constructing a rational course of action. Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Saddam Hussein acted on such an imagery, and in the early stages of their aggressions the results coincided with expectations, thereby furnishing confirmation for the imagery. But in each case the aggression led to a reaction on the part of potential targets that belied the imagery. Nevertheless, all three persisted in the conviction that ultimately their resolve would prevail, and in each case that conviction brought disaster to his polity. Much of the population, and even major figures in the leadership in these three cases, did accept the evidence that contradicted the degenerate stereotypical view of the adversaries. But the highly nationalistic core support group followed the leader into catastrophic disaster.

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Based on these examples, the conclusion can be drawn that in the hypothesized situation the grandeur-driven polity would likely miscalculate similarly and that the crisis could spiral out of control. The argument for universal nuclear disarmament is both compelling and urgent.

Encouraging National Self-Determination for Aspiring National Communities Given the virtual certainty that aspiring national communities will be the focus of much intrastate and interstate conflict in this era, and given the very real possibility that such conflicts could spiral out of control, a case can be made that the international community should encourage national self-determination for aspiring national communities when it is appropriate. But the answer to the question of what makes a situation “appropriate” for such interventions is anything but self-evident. Something of an answer can be given with regard to a particular aspiring national community. The internal measures of appropriateness here would be the capability to achieve and defend independence, the economic resources to provide an acceptable standard of living, and a territorial community that largely coincides with the national community. The external measure of appropriateness would be the willingness of the multinational non–nation state from which the new nation state would emerge to agree to or at least acquiesce in the secession of the aspiring national community. The diplomatic task for the international community with regard to both internal and external measures of appropriateness would be to ascertain whether these measures exist and, if not, whether a strategy could be designed for creating them. However, even should a determination of appropriateness be made with respect to a particular national community, the interstate environmental milieu within which national self-determination would occur may not be favorable for such a development. Environmental readiness for such a development occurs only rarely, and the strategic task of creating such readiness is far beyond the capabilities of irremediably incremental diplomacy. Yugoslavia provides an instructive case study of the diplomacy of the international community in attempting to confront the demands for national self-determination of several aspiring national communities. It is a case study that not only suggests the inability of collective diplomacy to carry out the diplomatic task suggested above but also raises the question as to whether the force of other peoples’ nationalism in determining behavior can even be understood. The multinational non–nation state of Yugoslavia contained national communities that aspired to independent nation statehood and could make the claim that their aspirations met the criteria of appropriateness. In the end, the intensity of their aspirations was sufficient to produce the external

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measure of appropriateness, but these successes were achieved in spite of rather than with the assistance of the international community. The most concerned element of that community was the European community, and the Europeans saw in the potential disintegration of Yugoslavia a serious threat to regional stability. Maintaining regional stability was a task the international diplomatic community could readily understand. The model of a democratizing multinational Yugoslavia was more appealing than that of an unavoidably conflictual group of successor states, only half of which really had the potential to become nation states. Success for the three aspiring national communities thus would require their maneuvering the Yugoslavian government and military into acquiescing in their secession despite the diplomatic support being given multinational Yugoslavia from the European community. This objective could be achieved only as a consequence of de facto cooperation for this purpose from the three aspiring communities, each of which viewed the others with deep suspicion. The internal measure of appropriateness of the three aspiring national communities differed sharply. Slovenia did well in terms of the availability of resources to provide the population with an acceptable standard of living, and its territorial community largely coincided with its national community. However, it lacked the capability to achieve independence against the wishes of the Yugoslavian military without critical external assistance. Croatia also had the available resources to provide the population with an acceptable standard of living. Its capability to achieve and defend independence was less problematic than that of Slovenia, but it, too, would require some active external assistance. More serious was the question of coincidence of the territorial and national community. The capability of Croatia to achieve and defend independence required assistance from Serbia, which sought to incorporate the Serbian minority in Croatia in a greater Serbia. The Serbs clearly had the capability to achieve and defend independence, the resources to provide an acceptable standard of living, and a national community that coincided with the territorial community of Serbia proper, as defined by the Serbs. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic sought not a unified Serbian nation state but rather a multiethnic Yugoslavian non–nation state in which the Serbian national community was the core community. Hence, Slovenian and Croatian independence were tolerable, since their presence in the Yugoslavian federation made Serbian dominance in the form of a core community impossible. Both Slovenian and Croatian nationalism was too strong for that, and Milosevic designed a strategy to prevent the army of the Yugoslavian federation from preventing their secession to pave the way for the state he sought. Milosevic achieved the minimally acceptable rendition of his optimal outcome early on. The Yugoslavian republic of Serbia gained tight control

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over multiethnic Vojvodina and largely Albanian Kosovo and a close association with Montenegro. Milosevic probably expected Slovenia and Croatia to gain recognition as independent states, and his interest in the multiethnic republic of Macedonia appeared to be low. His two remaining areas of intense concern were the Serb minorities in Croatia and in the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. With regard to the latter, he was very attracted to the proposition that the republic be partitioned between Serbia and Croatia. But when confronted with the increasing involvement of the international community, Milosevic lost control of the dynamics of the situation (D. Owen, 1995). Was there a comparable optimal outcome in the vision of policymakers in the international community? The Carrington Plan advanced in the fall of 1991 was a creative manifestation of the established preference of much of the international community for preserving a multinational Yugoslavia while also granting significant autonomy to the national and ethnic components. Regional stability remained the unstated but basic objective, and a refusal to recognize the determining force of nationalism was a persisting characteristic feature. Ironically, the plan was dealt a near fatal blow by the insistence of German diplomats that the independence of Croatia be recognized. The German interest in doing so reflected a historic affection for Croatia and, apparently, a nationalistic desire to project German influence into the equation. The focus of the crisis then came to rest on the future of the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. An application of the internal measures of appropriateness for national self-determination to that republic reveals immediately a profound lack of appropriateness. The republic lacked a capability to achieve and sustain independent nation statehood. The territorial community consisted of a segment of the Croatian and Serbian national communities, which each aspired to belong to their respective nation states, and a Muslim sectarian community that lacked the capability, even though it was the most populous of the three communities, to aspire to independent nation statehood. Two major options emerged: either accept the status quo and remain one of the republics of the Yugoslavian federation, an option attractive to the Serbian minority but not the other two; or go for independence, which was much more appealing to the Croats and Muslims. Under those circumstances the Muslims could hope to become the core community within an independent Bosnia, and the Croat minority would be in a position to take advantage of the opportunity to unite with Croatia in the not unlikely event of a serious disruption of internal control. However, the leaders of the Serbian community made it clear that they would go to war rather than submit to an Islamic-dominated government. The international community was thus placed on notice that the decision to encourage and then recognize

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independence for Bosnia would result in civil war. Moreover, the intensity with which the Serbs argued their case suggested the possibility of communal hatred developing to a genocidal level, just as it had in Croatia. In addition, the weakness of the military and security position of the Muslim community was obvious. Hence, it was predictable that the government of an independent Bosnia would end up making an urgent appeal for military support from the international community’s members who had argued for Bosnian independence. Just as predictable was the inability of the international community to give effective military support in the short term. Nevertheless, the international community agreed to a referendum on independence and, when the vote was favorable, recognized Bosnian independence. The Serbs, as they had promised, boycotted the vote and began military operations against the new government. Their strategic purpose quickly became obvious: the creation of a large territorial base incorporating well over half of the old Bosnia-Herzegovina and peopled by a homogeneous Serbian population. The latter was to be accomplished by ethnic cleansing. The newly constituted land base for the Serbian community would naturally border Serbia and would therefore be well situated for annexation. Lacking the ability to counter directly the Serbian strategy, the international community once again focused on restoring some stability to the region by constructing a formula for peaceful coexistence of the three communities in Bosnia. To the extent there was a long-term purpose, it was to generate situational dynamics that would move in the direction of developing cooperation of the three communities. Noticeably absent was any serious effort to construct a formula designed to reduce the very high potential for intensifying nationalistic conflict. Such a formula would have had to focus especially on the intensely held nationalistic objective of the Croats and Serbs for unification and of the Muslims to achieve subnational self-expression. Instead, there was inexorable movement in the direction of placing economic and military coercive pressure on the Milosevic regime in Serbia. After many months, the point was reached at which this pressure was sufficiently damaging to Serbia to persuade Milosevic to retreat from his optimal position. But the nationalistic hatreds and dreams persist, and there is no indication that constructing a long-term formula to deal with this situation is under consideration anywhere. What this case adds up to is a conclusion that an essentially disinterested international community is most unlikely to be able to construct strategies for reducing the potential for conflict that inheres in competing nationalistic aspirations. The pattern we identify in this case is that of an international community that sees a threat to environmental stability in such a situation but is strongly predisposed to look for an inexpensive and low-risk policy for dealing with that threat. Such a policy in this case was one in which nationalistic aspirations, seen as a disruptive disturbance,

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should be suppressed. The case, therefore, is not one in which the international community saw an advantage in exploiting nationalist aspirations.

Human Rights and Nationalism The Chinese reaction to U.S. pressure in the area of human rights was discussed earlier: First, there was nationalist indignation reflecting wounded national dignity; and second, there was an identification of U.S. motivation to maintain hegemonic influence on Chinese and world affairs. The conclusion in the Chinese case—that U.S. advocacy of human rights was a manifestation of the U.S. interest in exercising hegemonic control even in East Asia—is the type of response that should be anticipated. In the event of such a response, the victims of abuse—the immediate objects of the policy—might well be seen as instruments of U.S. policy and thus as flirting with treason. The risks to a human rights movement could be very high and the likelihood of favorable results with regard to advancing human rights remote. Stated more broadly, the messianic advocacy of human rights in a nation state by the government of another state risks generating an entirely counterproductive nationalist reaction in the target state. This reaction might well include an enhancement of the demagogic appeal of national symbols, a serious misreading of the intentions of the initiating government, and a negative targeting of the very groups the initiator hoped to support. In the worst case, it could strengthen the political prospects of elites who see the manipulation of national symbols as the road to power and who, should they gain power, would become advocates of a foreign policy based on the enhancement of national grandeur. The worst case, in other words, risks encouraging a fascist movement. Advocates of human rights diplomacy must take into account these major obstacles to success. There are two remedial requirements. The first is that pressure for human rights improvements by a target should not be administered unilaterally by a single government. Rather, the pressure should be applied by a number of governments acting in coordination. The bargaining position of the target in such an eventuality would be reduced seriously. The ability of the target to play one foreign office against another, for example, on questions of commercial advantage, would be diminished. Even more important, the target government and population would be less likely to attribute aggressive or hegemonic motivations to individual governments. The campaign would also be augmented if the United Nations and other international organizations became active participants. Care should be taken, however, that policy coordination not appear to be a well-orchestrated conspiracy. That conclusion might provoke a serious nationalist response.

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The second requirement would be even more difficult to achieve but ultimately is essential. The target government and people must come to see a situation in which the governments applying pressure are doing so in response to heavy public pressure in the area of human rights. That pressure must be sufficiently strong that the governments subject to the pressure will conclude that the price of abandoning the human rights campaign is greater than they can pay. Furthermore, the target government and people must understand that governments conducting the human rights campaign lack the decisional latitude to abandon that campaign. The central point is that success in the advocacy of human rights in international relations in the long run requires the existence of an international ideological pressure group capable of placing irresistible pressure on a number of states simultaneously. This is because the potential for conflict between the pursuit of nationalist values and the value of human rights is extraordinarily high, and when it occurs nationalistic concerns will prevail. External pressures regarding human rights threaten every aspect of nationalistic values—dignity, prestige, and independence—for they amount to a public claim by one polity that another is doing something barbaric, and usually to its own people. The issue of human rights must be separated from nationalistic values, and this can only be done if it is not associated with a particular country as advocate and if support for particular human rights stances is internal, external, and diffuse enough so that no single actor is targeted, all are expected to live up to certain expectations, and no single actor can be identified as interfering in another’s internal, and untouchable, affairs.

Human Rights and National Self-Determination The problems associated with an advocacy of the right to national selfdetermination parallel those of an advocacy of human rights in general but tend to be even more daunting. There is a major behavioral difference in the support generated for the human right of national self-determination and most other human rights. The nationalistic demands for self-determination when people perceive a serious possibility for achieving it will be at a higher intensity level and much more socially pervasive than those associated with other human rights. This is due to the intensity of psychological processes involved in trying to achieve important goals for the group to which people are strongly attached, as opposed to the intensity of the more abstract and individual-based goals of other forms of human rights, such as personal safety from abuse by state agents. An unwillingness of diplomacy to take the demand for national selfdetermination into account is not going to be received with acquiescence

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by an aspiring national community. On the contrary, ignoring those demands is likely to result in prolonging serious conflict, as the Yugoslavian case demonstrates. In the Yugoslavian case, U.S. policy and that of the international community generally reflected little serious concern with the right of self-determination per se. Italy, Austria, and Germany did support national self-determination for the Slovenes, and Germany supported Croatian national self-determination as well. But that support reflected historical friendships and, for Germany, uncertainty regarding its assuming a leadership role in regional diplomacy (Schloer, 1996). But these positions were exceptional. The policy toward which the international community generally inclined was a low-cost, low-risk effort to stabilize the regional situation. There was no attraction to formulas premised on the assumption that long-term stability required responses to the determining force of interactive nationalisms in the area. Neither was there much indication that the concerned community looked on the right to national self-determination as a human right. The dilemma in the Yugoslavian case with respect to human rights was typically complex. The aspiring national community with the best prospects for national independence was the Serbs. But of all the local actors, the Serbs were most guilty of the abuse of human rights of others. Developing a formula that would include a recognition of the right of Serbs to national self-determination but would require in turn Serbian respect for the human rights of others, including self-determination, could not be expected from the international community. Instead, the inter national community’s formula was designed to reinforce and preserve surviving multinational entities, in particular Bosnia-Herzegovina. What was missing was a strong voice, one that could not be ignored, arguing the case that a formula with a potential for long-term success must be based on the premise that the nationalist demands of the Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs be accommodated. An international human rights pressure group that was viewed as powerful and that had a strong sense of efficacy could play this role. The optimal role for such a pressure group would be to ensure that in the construction of possible formulas for peaceful settlement the intensely nationalistic concerns of critical actors not be ignored and the need to reconcile those concerns with other interests be recognized.

Integrationist Strategies: Conflict Resolution Through Identity Transformation The essential feature of a non–nation state is the unwillingness of a significant section of the territorial community to identify at first-intensity

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level with that community. An integration strategy, therefore, would be a plan of action for developing a population-wide first-intensity identity with the territorial community. When a non–nation state incorporates one or several aspiring national communities that have the capability to achieve independence, as in the cases above, the interests of conflict avoidance in cases wherein those national communities are territorially homogeneous are usually best served by granting those communities the right of national self-determination. As long as such communities perceive a real option for independence, they are unlikely to accommodate efforts to attract a first-intensity attachment to the territorial community. Other communities that do not identify intensely with the state territorial community but that either see no option for independence or lack the aspiration for independence are candidates for integration strategies. Such strategies would have to have political and psychological components. Politically, they would have to address the particular needs, demands, and alternatives regarding the various groups’ capability, power, and rewards accrued within the existing political system. Donald Horowitz (1985: 598–599) points to a number of common mechanisms used in this portion of integration strategies, including dispersing group conflict by producing multiple channels for acquiring power, as in efforts to distribute power across institutions; arrangements that promote intragroup rather than intergroup conflict; policies that promote intergroup cooperation; policies that encourage cross-group alignments based on interests rather than group identity; and policies that reduce various kinds of disparities between groups, thereby reducing dissatisfaction. Psychologically, integration strategies would have to provide options to different identity groups in a polity for social mobility and social creativity so that they need not rely on competition and conflict to satisfy identity needs and thus can move toward the development of a common third identity while not threatening the existence of the primary identity. There are several psychological and political dimensions that such strategies would have to address. First, identity groups in non–nation states vary greatly in terms of perceived capability. Those that see themselves as quite close to having the capability for independence would be satisfied only with institutional and social conditions offering broad sovereignty just short of independence. At the other end of the scale would be groups with very little prospective capability for independence for whom integration, in the form of assurances of equality with other groups rather than autonomy, would be satisfactory. A second dimension involves social-creativity options and appears in the form of distance between identity groups in culture, race, and religion. In states with core communities that are not yet nation states, the strategy would require reducing the importance of culture, religion, and physical

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characteristics as foci of comparison. The ongoing evolution of the characteristics of the core community—bringing in elements of non–core group culture—in these cases provides the opportunity to construct a commonly shared third identity. Integration, therefore, is largely a psychological process. If there is no core community, and if the cultural, religious, and racial disparity is great among the various communities, the problem is more complicated, and a multifaceted formula would be needed wherein differences are evaluated positively when emphasized as comparison standards. When social comparisons are different but equally positive, conflict can be avoided (Van den Heuvel and Meertens, 1989). A third dimension involves the complexity of social mobility. Breaking boundaries between groups, that is, promoting mobility opportunities, is an important technique in integration and, ultimately, in the formation of a common identity. However, if groups are mutually exclusive, and particularly if some are characterized by extreme cultural strength, including linguistic uniqueness, a detailed history, and institutional prerogatives in the society, then groups identities are paralyzed, and decreasing group identity by promoting mobility among groups cannot occur. Fourth, an possibly most important, is the extent to which groups perceive one another as superior or inferior. Such judgments are manifest in the form of stereotypical imagery. If that is the case, then breaking those images is central to a workable integration strategy. The objective should be the replacement of a highly simplified and implicitly judgmental view of the concerned community with a far more complex and nonjudgmental view. This process is related to the second dimension in that it requires acceptance of and respect for group differences and changed expectations about other group members’ behavior (Van den Heuvel and Meertens, 1989: 232; Hewstone, 1989).

Shared Sovereignty Integration Strategies The first type of integration strategy to be considered here is one in which a community is granted a degree of self-rule and thereby achieves recognition of its determination to maintain its integrity as an identity group of first intensity. The strategy involves a recognition that identities are not negotiable but that interests are (Burton, 1990: 143). These types of selfrule usually carry some degree of regional political autonomy, or statewide confederation or federation, that is, some form of a “shared homeland” (Rabie, 1994). Autonomy, confederation, and federation all involve the devolution of power. Whichever arrangement works best depends greatly on the specific characteristics of group interaction and settlement patterns (that is, whether ethnic and national groups are clearly divided territorially

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or dispersed and intermixed). Of central importance here are cases wherein devolution of power may be used to avert efforts to secede, that is, wherein the low capability of the group in question would predict terrible loss of life. When an identity group knows it lacks the necessary capability to become independent but also knows that there is some potential to try to acquire that capability if necessary—that is, if members feel their existence as a group is threatened—it is crucial that an acceptable integration strategy be formulated. Autonomy may be preferred by a group that understands that it lacks the capability to achieve and preserve independence but does not identify with the territorial community of the non–nation state at a first- or secondintensity level. In such a situation the option of autonomy best serves the purpose of setting into motion a gradually intensifying identification with the territorial community. Nevertheless, these efforts often fail. As Horowitz (1985: 623) notes, Most such agreements are concluded against a background of secessionist warfare or terrorist violence. Where central authority is secure, as in India, the appropriate decisions can be made and implemented by the center. But, where the very question is how far the writ of the center will run, devolution is a matter of bilateral agreement, and an enduring agreement is an elusive thing.

These forms of integration strategy address the political dimensions discussed above by providing groups increased capability and decisionmaking power in their region or state and competitive power in the broader country government. Federal efforts to promote economic integration and to maintain the country’s defensive capabilities, in part through a collective security arrangement among autonomous states or regions, produces incentives for cooperation. The psychological dimensions are often expected to change as an outgrowth of structural solutions to the demands of identity groups. Structural solutions may accommodate identity needs of groups, particularly when a group’s identity is threatened. But reductions in stereotyping and the promotion of different but equal thinking regarding group comparisons are very difficult to realize. Often a simple “contact hypothesis” is used: people will understand one another better and treat one another better the more they get to know one another. Thus, it is assumed, creating a structure in which the integrity of group identities is secure and groups can interact with one another will simultaneously satisfy group identity needs and eradicate intergroup stereotyping. The U.S. expectations regarding racial integration in public schools reflects this assumption, and it demonstrates its naïveté. A number of psychological studies cast serious doubt on the contact hypothesis, noting that increased contact may merely lead

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people to assume that the member of another group who appears to be different from the stereotypical member is simply atypical of the group (Brewer and Miller, 1984; Hewstone and Brown, 1986; Mackie and Hamilton, 1993). Moreover, failure to identify group variability increases with affect (Stroessner and Mackie, 1993); as noted, shared sovereignty integrative strategies often come into play after serious and violent clashes between ethnic or national groups have occurred. Thus, intense emotion is likely to prevail in these situations, making the breakdown of preexisting stereotyped images extremely difficult. Clearly, an integration strategy should explicitly address intergroup perceptions, particularly because (to the extent that increased contact does provide an opportunity for stereotype reductions) in a shared sovereignty strategy, group members are unlikely to interact frequently and naturally in a variety of social, economic, and political contexts. Some steps can be taken through federal-state policies, such as preventing systematic discrimination against ethnic or national groups, even in autonomous regions in which they are minorities, or ensuring that federal institutions, such as the military, are not dominated by one particular ethnic or national group. Although this may cause resentment, over time it becomes learned behavior, and learning nonstereotyped responses to others is crucial to a change in image. People change perceptions of others by acting differently, not just by thinking differently (Pettigrew and Martin, 1989: 190). Integration strategies would also have to include the explicit promotion of tasks that require intergroup cooperation to achieve goals and interdependence at equal status levels. This would be most useful at the elite level first, since equality of status in group-member interaction is important in breaking stereotypes (Allport, 1954; Bizman and Amir, 1984; Van Oudenhoven, 1989). However, it is important to note that status, too, is more than structurally determined. Perceptions that the elite of another group is inferior to the elite of one’s own group or vice versa are entirely possible and tend to generate anger among those considered inferior, as well as anger and guilt among those considered superior (Duckitt, 1994). That, as noted, would be counterproductive in that strong emotions tend to inhibit the identification of group variance and, therefore, the breakdown of stereotypes. As noted above, the Kurds represent an extreme example of an aspiring national community that meets the checklist requirements of nation statehood and yet is denied the option of independence because of an unfavorable external political environment. Kurds also represent one of the most egregious examples of a people whose national aspirations are exploited by outside powers for a temporary strategic purpose and then betrayed. The temptation to so use the Kurds persists in the post–Cold War era and is certain to remain so unless a formula for Kurdish integration in the region is advanced and put into effect. In the following paragraphs, an

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ideal integration strategy is suggested, although there is little likelihood of its being adopted. Kurdistan, the land of the Kurds, is for the most part a contiguous territorial base in which more that 20 million Kurds live. The territory is rich in oil and other mineral resources and is fully capable of supporting an economically viable national community. It is located in mountainous areas of western Iran, northeastern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and along a southwestern border strip of Armenia. A basic factor in explaining why Kurdistan, with a terrain that was highly defensible, was so easily divided into enclaves controlled by Turks, Iranians, Arabs, and Armenians was the pace of political development of the Kurdish people as compared with the other peoples in the region. At a time when their neighbors were beginning to embrace nationalism and to insist on political participation, most Kurds remained loyal to their traditional parochial identity groups and to their traditional clan and extended-family leaders. Thus, in a critical period in the movement toward nation statehood in the region, the Kurds were incapable of confronting their neighbors with anything approaching a national force. By the time Kurds had come to view themselves as a national community, the territory of Kurdistan had been divided into five enclaves, four of which were part of the territorial communities of core-community non–nation states. The fifth and smallest enclave was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Many of the most highly achieving Kurds, the very elements that in more normal circumstances would be taking the lead in a nationalist movement, took advantage of career opportunities in core community–dominated urban centers of the state. Intermarriage was common, and the process of acculturation was set into motion. In the four states in which they were a significant minority, acculturated Kurds engaged in the political process of the state and increasingly achieved high-level positions. Nevertheless, the intensity of identity with the Kurdish community remained at the first level for a majority of the Kurdish people. The appearance of a possibility for self-determination would surely excite that majority and produce an enthusiastic popular base for the struggle for independence. The “ideal” formula for optimal integration of the Kurds consists, first, of autonomy agreements for the Kurdish communities in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. The model for such agreements could be the autonomy agreement negotiated with the government of Iraq in 1970. That agreement granted the Kurds limited rights of sovereignty in areas in which the Kurds were a majority. They were guaranteed a specified percentage of state revenues and were permitted to establish limited self-governing institutions. They were also guaranteed cultural autonomy, including the right to use their own language in publications and in instruction. The autonomy plan was never put into effect, in large part because the Iraqi regime was dictatorial and was

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hardly likely to grant the kind of freedom the agreement seemed to offer. But the plan also was a victim of the efforts of external governments to take advantage of Kurdish aspirations for independence for their own temporary purposes. In this case, the external governments were Iran and the United States. As part of a campaign designed to destabilize the Baathist Iraqi regime, the Kurds were persuaded to rise in revolt. The Kurds were allowed to believe that they could hope to emerge from such a campaign with a far greater degree of independence than was offered by the autonomy plan. But, in fact, the U.S. government agreed secretly with Iran, which had its own Kurdish problem, that the Kurds would not be allowed to establish independence in the event of a defeat for the Iraqi government that led to collapse (R. W. Cottam, 1988: 149–151). Nevertheless, the autonomy proposal of the Iraqi government, despite its unhappy history, can stand as a model for the first step in an ideal integration strategy. It allows for a broad range of identity self-expression as well as for participation in the economic, social, cultural, and political life of Iraq. The pattern of the most achieving section of the Kurdish population choosing to take advantage of national opportunities would persist and strengthen. That, in turn, would lead to intermarriage and increasing social integration. Kurdish participation in Iraqi national politics could be expected to increase. A process of gradual integration into the national community should gain strength. However, the persistence of a first-intensity identity with a Kurdish national community that is part of the territorial communities of Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey would continue to stand as a major impediment to integration. Geostrategic power realities are sufficiently unfavorable to prevent the development of any significant pan-Kurdish independence movement, and the Kurdish communities of the four states have their own community interests that frequently defy easy reconciliation. Still, there is a deep attachment to the Kurdish national community and a conviction that the Kurdish nation is the victim of extreme external repression. So long as these attitudes persist, there will be receptivity to overtures from external powers that appear to offer some possibility of independence for a particular enclave or for a broader section of the Kurdish national community. A formula for the integration of the Kurds must, therefore, address this problem. A second major aspect of an ideal formula would be a policy of open borders for the Kurds of the four states. Assuming that the first part of the formula is put into effect, Kurdistan would consist of four contiguous autonomous zones. A policy of open borders would allow the Kurdish people easy access to the entire national community. The assumption here is that the dynamics of integration into the four states would produce the dominant trend, a trend leading ultimately to a first-intensity attachment to the

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territorial communities of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey on the part of the Kurdish communities of those states. A policy of open borders with all of Kurdistan would permit familial and cultural interactions within the national community. Hopefully, such a policy would lead to a reduction in the feelings of injustice and, in so doing, facilitate the Kurds’ integration into the four states. Obviously, however, such a formula could have little utility in the short term. It would be viewed by the core communities in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria as opening the door to a pan-Kurdish movement with aspirations for national independence that would be difficult to contain. As such, it would be more likely to generate rather than reduce conflict. Two preconditions would be necessary before it could be put into effect. First, the trend toward integration of the Kurdish population into the territorial community of each of the states must be well established. Second, the relationships of the four states must be cooperative at a level closely parallel to that of the members of the European Union in which an open-border policy can be supported.

Utilitarian Integration Strategies For those minority communities that recognize that they lack the capability to make any claim for some share of sovereignty, a utilitarian strategy, that is, one that satisfies the needs and wants of ethnic groups, is usually, but not always, the most appropriate integration path. Perceived differences in terms of culture, race, and religion and, even more important, of achievement levels will be the major determinant of the appropriateness of a particular strategy. When the non–nation state has a core community, that group is the comparison referent for all groups and in terms of all relevant group characteristics. When the non–nation state is multiethnic, multisectarian, and multiracial, the factors of achievement levels and historical experience are likely to be even more important. Communities that have long exercised exceptional influence in the affairs of large sections of the territorial community and, in addition, have a well-established institutional base for maintaining that influence will see themselves as superior to other groups and as the rightful comparison referent. When there is no such community, there nevertheless will be ethnic-group comparison and some sense of one’s own community’s position on a prosperity and influence scale. Consequently, the same psychological conditions described above for the shared-sovereignty integration strategy apply here. However, it is more likely that the contact hypothesis will be relied upon to naturally reduce group-stereotype images, as contact is more likely to occur naturally and can be more easily promoted by government agencies as a solution to group stereotyping.

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The integration formula for groups or communities that generally compare themselves positively to other groups is self-evidently utilitarian. The view in such communities will be that members of that community are fully qualified to occupy positions in the economy, society, and political life of the state in the same proportion as that of other communities to which they are compared. This was the case, for example, with early German immigrants to the new United States in the immediate postcolonial years, as well as with other northern European ethnic immigrant groups during the 1800s, and it ultimately extended to all white European immigrant groups. The essential feature of an appropriate integration formula, therefore, would be to remove any obstacles to the realization of expectations of equality of access to such positions. This would necessitate as well unimpeded access to state educational institutions and the elimination of any state-sponsored social discrimination. Such a formula should serve to strengthen a trend toward an increasingly intense identification with the territorial community. But the speed with which integration develops varies with the cultural, racial, and religious distances between groups—particularly a dominant core group if there is one. Memories of historical relationships and the factor of institutional completeness may also affect the speed of integration. The integration formula for communities that are significantly underachieving and are regarded by others and by themselves as inferior must be primarily utilitarian. However, in this case the task is complicated by the likelihood that the prevailing self-imagery within the underachieving subordinate minority inclines toward a negative stereotype. Earlier it was suggested that the imagery to be found in imperial relationships appears to resemble generically that of both overachieving and underachieving groups. The image referred to as the “colonial image” of the subjects of the imperial power conformed to the child analogy: a population still immature and, as such, incapable of running its own affairs and lacking the understanding to give rise to a public opinion. As such, and lacking the ability to make use of modern weaponry, even were it available, this population was inherently incapable of exercising real power. Its members were, in this stereotypical view, easily manipulated by agitators, or those unprincipled individuals often open to overtures from enemies of the imperial power. Control nevertheless could be exercised through a collaborating elite that was capable of “responsible” behavior and could aid in the civilizing, or maturing, process of the colonial society. This stereotype was thus contemptuous of the subjects and implicitly characterized them as inferior. The accompanying image of the dominant group parallels closely the essential features of the imperial stereotype. As was discussed in Chapter 4, conquered people can, through years of repression, come to accept as just the conditions and position in which they live. The analogy in this case was that of the master, and indeed imperial officers and their compatriots were

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often referred to by some such appellation. The masters were superior in virtually every regard, and their dominating position was therefore a reflection of the natural order. This could be seen in their exercise of control. They were seen as capable of so-called hidden-hand operations, the ability to orchestrate elaborate schemes with such skill that the schemes could be inferred only after the event, never observed. Therefore, resistance was useless and the acceptance of a subservient relationship unavoidable. It was also argued earlier that with growth in political participation imperial control became unsustainably expensive and that with the termination of both direct and indirect imperial control both the imperial and colonial stereotypes atrophied. But in non–nation states where one or more of the identity communities is perceived and perceives itself as underachieving, there is likely to be a strongly persisting inclination toward these two stereotypes. As noted, this was the case with the African American community in the United States. Breaking these stereotypes requires making available opportunities for those in the underachieving community and persuading them that they can and should try to take advantage of those opportunities. This has been particularly difficult because the white racism often goes underground, that is, people know that racism is unacceptable and that the stereotypes are just that, stereotypes, but there remains a large gap between principled recognition of racial equality and inclination to implement those principles (Pettigrew and Martin, 1989: 173). Moreover, African Americans often reject opportunities designed to reduce the social and, particularly, the economic distance between them and whites. After a long history of exclusion, it is not surprising that many African Americans are skeptical when they hear of new opportunities suddenly open to them. They may assume that their chances of being accepted are low and thus avoid rejection. Even if it is clear that the chances of being accepted are high, they may still decide not to participate because they personally or vicariously know the performance difficulties and interpersonal stresses associated with being a minority in a majority-dominated context. This is not another victim-blaming explanation; it is instead yet another cost of U.S. conflict-ridden racial history that now makes remedial action more difficult (p. 175). Thus, diminishing and ultimately eliminating discrimination is essential but insufficient for these purposes. A key aspect of the utilitarian formula in this case must be that the effort be made to attract qualified individuals in the underachieving (i.e., “colonial”) community or communities into positions that exceed their expectations. The U.S. affirmative-action program could be viewed as a model both of such an integration formula and of the great difficulty in putting it into effect. Inevitably, those inclined toward the contemptuous image implicit in the colonial stereotype will make the case that the program is ideologically driven and ignores the certainty that many of the individuals so

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placed lack the requisite qualifications. The program, they argue, is damaging both in the placement of inherently unqualified individuals in positions where they will not perform adequately and in causing serious hardship among those in achieving communities who are qualified. Also, the stereotype of inferiority can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: people who are considered inferior are given fewer opportunities and are inferior in education, income, social standing, and so on—and they know so. Another parallel with imperial-colonial behavior is likely to emerge in this situation: the tendency to view emerging leaders of the underachieving community dichotomously. Those insisting on full equality in treatment may be seen in the mold of the agitator, irresponsibly manipulating their community, which, in this view, is seen as lacking the requisite maturity and sense of responsibility to lead the community in a direction of cooperation with the leaders of the achieving communities. The co-optation of leaders once viewed as the agitator is a common variant of this pattern and often an effective one for control purposes. But the purpose of integration is better served by dealing with a leadership that is viewed as fully legitimate within the identity community. Drawing again on the American experience, civil rights leaders, from the moderate Martin Luther King Jr. to the more radical Malcolm X in the 1960s, and from Jesse Jackson to Louis Farrakhan in the 1990s, were seen by segments of white America as irresponsible agitators; but it is obvious that any of the four—including Farrakhan, who frightens and offends white Americans— has (or had) legitimacy as a political leader of the African American community. Shelby Steele and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas may be much less threatening and therefore considered more “responsible” by white Americans, but they have no legitimacy in the African American community as leaders and therefore are useless in promoting an acceptable utilitarian integration strategy. In many respects, the problem of developing an integration strategy is most serious with regard to communities that are overachieving relative to the norm and take on superior social, economic, and political roles. The formula in this case cannot be primarily utilitarian. The problem, however, can be defined usefully in terms of images. The highly achieving superior minority will tend to see lesser-achieving minorities in patterns resembling the imperial-colonial imagery and will see integration as an unattractive prospect. The cases of the African states of South Africa, Burundi, and Rwanda offer extreme examples of this situation. In the cases of Burundi and Rwanda, the highly achieving Tutsi communities constituted about 15 percent of the population, the lesser-achieving Hutus 85 percent. Furthermore, the trend toward political participation has been precipitously sharp, and there has been an accompanying insistence on the part of the Hutus for political influence reflecting the demographics of the situation (Lemarchand,

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1993). Yet in both cases the Tutsis managed to win control of the armed forces and, thereby, the governments in the mid-1960s. The Tutsi leadership maintained its power through purges, periodic slaughtering of Hutus following Hutu uprisings and anti-Tutsi violence (in 1965, 1972, and 1988 in Burundi), and strategies of accommodation, that is, working with “responsible” elements of the Hutus; thus Tutsis were turning increasingly to co-optation as a means for hanging on to control. But the strategy of cooptation, given the speed of developmental change, was highly problematic. Co-opted leaders, under great pressure from Hutu elements that saw Tutsi control as vulnerable in Rwanda, seized governmental control and unleashed a genocidal frenzy that reflected the hatreds that this type of relationship—high-achieving superior versus low-achieving inferior—generates. South Africa, in contrast, offers an optimistic example wherein a dominant overachieving group actually divested itself of its superiority and its ironclad control of the political system. South African whites were never a single ethnic group, with clear divisions between those of British descent and the Afrikaners. There were sharp political divisions within the white community regarding the apartheid system and its gradual end. Moreover, dismantling apartheid was not a transfer of power but a utilitarian change wherein access to power became competitive. It did not occur peacefully, either; it was accompanied by repression, state-sponsored terror, and considerable interethnic violence. Nevertheless, it is a rare event for a dominant group to do such a thing, and this case is particularly striking given Afrikaners’ traditional religious belief that they were the chosen people destined by God to rule South Africa (Yinger, 1994). As Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley put it, “Few ruling groups in history have ever wriggled themselves out of a deadly predicament more elegantly” (1993: 228). The white supporters of apartheid did not give up without a struggle. But a number of factors, in addition to external pressures, combined to produce a willingness to dismantle the system. First, there was gradual perceptual change among many whites. A freer media, particularly television, showed the black opposition as reasonable and organized, thus pushing the “skeptical master-race to the necessity of negotiations as equals” (Adam and Moodley, 1993: 230). Gradual value changes among whites occurred with increased de facto integration in universities and churches. This change is illustrated by opinion polls. In 1985, 32 percent of white South Africans opposed apartheid; one year later 45 percent opposed apartheid (Yinger, 1994: 181). Finally, the strategy of the African National Congress (ANC)—inclusive nationalism—reduced the degree of threat posed to whites by the end of apartheid: they would not be punished for their years of dominance and discrimination but would be included in a new South Africa. Although common racial identity was promoted by the ANC to overcome ethnic divisions among black South Africans in order to mobilize opposition to apartheid, the ANC envisioned a nonracial

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postapartheid democratic South Africa (Marx, 1998). Thus, the ANC’s position was moderate, and probably comforting for whites to see, in comparison to that of more radical activists, Zulu nationalists, and organizations such as the Black Consciousness movement founded by Steven Biko. Moreover, the ANC’s position was not new, having been articulated as early as 1955, and therefore it was more easily seen as genuine (Marx, 1993). The same stance was assumed by the United Democratic Front, a coalition formed in 1983 of more than 600 groups opposed to apartheid. The case demonstrates that dominant, superior groups—superior both in tangible assets and in self-image—can change peacefully. The inherent difficulties of integrating overachieving minorities into a non–nation state can be illuminated by comparing the case of integrating underachieving minorities into such a state. In both cases the measure of success can be viewed in terms of a diminution or elimination of the stereotypical views of the minorities. In the case of the underachieving minorities, a strategy can be outlined involving the elimination of institutionally based discrimination as well as specific efforts to reduce perceptual patterns of stereotyping, discussed above. However, no effective parallel strategy can be described for the overachieving groups. Any effort to reduce opportunities for that group could hardly be expected to increase an interest in integration or to develop a sense that less-achieving community members are equal. Moreover, threats to a group that holds power often produce extreme violence and repression as the group tries to hold on to power. This can lead to the bloodbaths seen in Rwanda, where a disadvantaged group happened to be the numerical majority and, enraged at its continuous mistreatment and convinced there were no alternatives, set out to eliminate its persecutor through genocidal violence. Clearly, dominant groups that are numerical minorities can be pushed from power, but not all dominant groups are numerical minorities, as in the case of white Americans; and it would be hoped that any violence can be avoided. What is also clear is that for utilitarian strategies to occur and for violence to be avoided, dominant groups, whether numerical majorities or minorities, must choose to accept equality with underachieving subordinate groups. As both the U.S. and South African cases show, perceptual change must accompany internal and external pressures for structural change. Stereotypes are shaken when expectations are consistently disconfirmed. The utilitarian strategy applied to underachieving subordinate groups should, if successful, do this. As awareness develops within the underachieving community that they are being given access to opportunities previously denied and that they can achieve at an unexpectedly high level, their own self-image becomes one of equality with the dominant group or groups. Within the dominant group, then, expectations rooted in the colonial image would fail to be realized, and the image would be challenged. The impact of this discovery should be a decline in opposition to expanding access to

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opportunities and, gradually, a diminution of the colonial image of the disadvantaged groups. Image disconfirmation in this direction can also occur through the direct efforts of the subject of the colonial image to alter it by disconfirming it. This occurs through group mobilization and organization, demonstrating power and control unexpected of those perceived through the colonial image. Progress in this direction, however, would be very slow. Second, there is something to be said against the old adage that one cannot legislate morality. However, as psychological studies show, behavior does affect cognition, and as people are faced with the necessity of behaving in a nondiscriminatory, egalitarian fashion, they do change their thinking. Of course, the change may not be complete, but the point remains. Moreover, when emotions are kept fairly neutral, that is, when the legislation does not infuriate people, and when increased interaction includes interdependence for the achievement of goals, stereotypes are more likely to break down.

Conclusion The focus of this book has been the examination of the causes, patterns, and consequences of nationalistic behavior. In the process, we have stepped beyond the topic in comparing the behavior of nationalists and nation states with nonnationalists and non–nation states. The argument throughout has been that patterns of identity, political psychology, and state capability all vary depending upon the degree to which a society identifies strongly with the national community. Although many cases have been introduced as illustrations, this book is essentially a theoretical work. Much work remains. The construction of theory is an ongoing process, and the cases presented here, as well as the many important cases not mentioned, require in-depth empirical examination in order to test thoroughly the hypotheses suggested in this book. As this book underwent its final revisions, fighting raged in Kosovo in Yugoslavia, Chechnya in Russia, the Kashmir, and many other locations. These cases point to the importance of the topic of the final chapter in this book: going beyond an explanation of conflict to predict when and where it will occur and devise strategies to prevent its escalation. A central point made in the beginning of this project should be repeated. Nationalism and the other politically relevant identities discussed in this book are neither good nor bad; they simply are and will be factors of importance in determining political behavior. Although nationalism can produce acts of grotesque violence, it is not a pathology; it is a natural form of group identity. It can be manipulated by demagogues, but it can also be channeled. Thus, the understanding of the causes, patterns, and consequences of nationalistic political behavior is crucial for academics and policymakers alike.

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Index

Abrams, Dominic, 89 Adam, Heribert, 276 Affirmative action programs: in the United States, 274, under Brezhnev, 215 Africa: change-oriented elites, 37; in effect of colonialism, 36–37; linguistic diversity in, 59; nationalism, 37, 57–59; panAfricanism, 37 African Americans, 77–79; and Africa, 78; community identity patterns, 77–78; slavery legacy, 77–78 African National Congress (ANC), 276–277 Albanians: in Kosovo, 220 Ally image, 96, 97, 98, 100 ANC. See African National Congress Andean Initiative, 166–172; and Bolivia, 170; and Colombia, 170, 172–180; eradication vs. interdiction, 167; and Peru, 170; strategy, 171. See also War on drugs Anderson, Benedict, 8, 12, 13 Angola, 36 Anti-Semitism, 23, 81–82, 198. See also Stereotypes Apartheid, 276–277 Arab nationalism: 36, 41, 45, 126–127; and Arabic language, 43 Arafat, Yasser, 68, 69, 120 Argentina, 135; immigrants 62 Asian Americans, 74–75

Assad, Hafez, 115, 120 Azerbaijan, 41 Azzi, Assaad, 15 Baluchis, 200 Barbarian image, 96, 97, 98, 100, 107, 108–111, 121; Croatian of Serbia, 221–223 Barco, Virgilio, 174, 175, 176 Barkey, Henri, 210 Begin, Menachem, 235 Beissinger, Mark, 215 Belarus, 49 Belize, 51 Benz, Wolfgang, 134 Betancur, Belisario, 165, 175, 176 Bolivia, 46, 170 Bosnia, 26, 100, 132, 230–232; Carrington Plan, 261; ethnic identity patterns in, 231, Muslim sectarian community, 231, 261– 262; role of international recognition, 262; Serb minority, 261–262. See also Croatia; Serbia; Yugoslavia Brazil: immigrants, 62; indigenous people in, 64 Brezhnev, Leonid, 215, 217 British Guyana, 51 Brubaker, Rogers, 10–11 Bush, George: and China, 243; and drug war, 166–169, 171; and Gulf War, 247–249

295

296

Index

Canada, 40, 51 Carrington Plan, 261 Cassels, Alan, 135 Catalonia, 9 Change-oriented elites: and ascriptive values, 33; and the Cold War, 35–37; and colonialism, 33, 36–37; in Eastern Europe, 35–36; in European nationalism, 33, 35; in Latin America, 51–52; and nationalism, 32–37. See also Africa; Arab nationalism; country listings; Nationalism indicators Chechnya, 201, 204–206, 245; Dzhokar Dudayev, 205–206; sterotyping of Chechens in Russia, 204 Cheney, Richard, 167 Chile, 52; immigrants, 62 China. See People’s Republic of China CIA. See United States Central Intelligence Agency Cline, Raymond, 141 Clinton, William J.: and China, 243; and Mexico, 168–171, 186–189 Cognition. See Social categorization; Image theory Colombia, 52, 170, 172–180, 192–193; aid from United States, 172, 177; Barco administration, 174, 175, 176; Betancur administration, 165, 175, 176; Cali cartel, 173, 176; and Central America conflict, 165; and certification policy, 172, 178–179; Consejo Nacional de Estupifacientes, 173; and Cuba, 165; and DEA, 169, 176; and drug war, 165, 172–180; extradition policy, 173–175; Gaviria administration, 176; and guerrilla war, 173–174, 177; image of United States, 165–166, 176–180; Medellín, cartel, 173, 176; narcoterrorism, 175, 177; National Police, 164,173; nationalism in, 164–166, 175–180; negotiations with narcos, 176–177; Pastrana administration, 173; Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, 173, 176; Samper administration 173, 175, 178–180; Supreme Court, 174; war on drugs, 164, 172–180 Colonial/client image, 96, 97, 98, 100, 118–121, 273–275; in Rwanda,

275–276; in South Africa, 276–277; in the United States, 170–193, 275, 277 Compound-identity nation states, 31–32; and Egypt, 67–71; and China 19, 83–86 ; and the United States, 19, 61–62, 71–83 Connor, Walker, 15–16, 17, 18 Consociational states, 224 Constantine, Thomas 187, 189 Core-community non–nation states, 20–21, 199–212; defined, 20, 199; foreign policies of, 209–212; identity patterns in, 20–21; Iran, 200–201; Kurds, 209–211; Miskito Indians, 211–212; nationalism in, 199; Nicaragua, 211–212; Russia, 201–209; Turkey, 209–211. See also country listings Costa Rica, 52 Covert operations: in Cuba, 253; in Guatemala, 253; in Iran, 253 Croatia, 217, 260; Croatians in Bosnia, 231–232, 261; Franjo Tudman 221, 222, 223; German recognition, 223, 261; image of Serbs, 221–223; nationalism in, 219, 221, 260; self image, 221; Serb minority in 260, 261; Ustashe, 223 Cuban missile crisis, 155–158, 253 Czechoslovakia: dissolution of, 50; Prague Spring, 125 Dandeker, Christopher, 9, 26n de Gaulle, Charles, 151–152 DEA. See Drug Enforcement Administration Defense Department. See United States Department of Defense Degenerate image, 96, 98, 100, 117–118, 121, 258; and Hitler, 258; and Saddam Hussein, 258, Serb of Croatia, 222 Deutsch, Karl, 8 Diasporas, 23–24; and anti-Semitism, 23; defined, 23; examples, 23– 24 Drug war. See War on drugs Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), 169, 172, 176, 187, 188, 189; Director Constantine, 187;

Index murder of Enrique Camarena, 171, 183–185, 187 Dudayev, Dzhokar, 205–206 East Asia: nationalism in, 49 Eastern Europe: nationalism in, 49–50, 125 Ecuador, 46, 51 Egypt, 45, Camp David Agreement, 68, 70; as a compound community nation state, 67–71; Coptic Christian minority, 67, 71; Islamists’ perceptions, 69–71; Muslim Brotherhood in, 68; Nasserists’ perceptions, 68–69; nationalist values in, 126; nationalists’ perceptions, 68; and the United States, 120. See also Yasser Arafat; Husni Mubarak; Gamal Abdel Nasser; Anwar Sadat Emerson, Rupert, 1–2, 9, 45 Emotion, 99–102; and images, 105–121; and nationalism, 105–121; and political behavior, 102–105; types of 102–105 Enemy image, 96, 97, 98, 100, 106–108, 121; U.S.-Soviet, 108, 252–257 England, 10; and nationalism, 9. See also United Kingdom Estonia, 207 Ethnic communities, 14, 28–29; in China, 84–86; defined, 28; in multiethnic states, 21, 224–226; in nation states, 28–29; in Nigeria, 226–230; in the United States, 62, 63, 71–83. See also country listings; Indigenous communities; Multiethnic states; Political identities Etzioni, Amitai, 136 Farrakhan, Louis, 78 Fascism, 134–136 Federal Bureau of Investigation, 172 Federal states, 224 Feinstein, Diane, 181 France, 10, 11, 19; and evolution of nationalism, 9, 26n; and power loss, 151–152 Galan Sarmiento, Luis Carlos, 176

297

Gaviria, César, 176–177 Geertz, Clifford, 12 Gelbard, Robert, 178, 188 Gellner, Ernest, 6, 8, 10, 13, 26n Gemayel, Bashir, 234 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, 162 Germany, 124–126, 135–136; and degenerate image, 117–118; under Hitler, 30–31, 144–145, 157; Helmut Kohl, 128; nationalism and reunification, 125–126, 128, 250; nationalism and World War II, 144–145; and nationalist legitimacy, 144–146, 157–158; Weimar Republic, 144 239n Ghana, 36 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 201, 216; and glasnost, 216; and perestroika, 216 Gordon, Milton, 79 Greece: under Roman domination, 29 Group behavior, 87, 93–94; acceptance of inferiority, 91, 93; cohesion, 93; in-groups, 87, 89, 96, 100, 191; and nationalism, 94–95; out-groups, 87, 89, 96–97, 100, 102. See also Social identity theory Guatemala, 52, 64–66, 253; civil war, 65–66; Mayas, 64–66 Gutiérrez Rebollo, Jesús, 188 Haiti, 247 Hanf, Theodore, 233 Havel, Vaclav, 10 Hayes, Carlton, 5–6, 8, 11, 26n High Level Contact Group (HLCG), 186–187 Hispanic Americans, 75–77; and policies toward Latin America, 76–77 Hitler, Adolf, 6, 135, 156, 246; and Aryan race, 30–31, and German Americans, 72; and German public opinion, 157; symbol manipulation, World War II, 144–145 HLCG. See High Level Contact Group Hobsbawm, Eric, 8, 29 Hogg, Michael, 89 Honduras, 52 Horowitz, Donald, 196, 197, 266 Hroch, Miroslav, 14

298

Index

Human rights: and Chinese nationalism, 241, 243, 263; and effective diplomacy, 263–264; and national self-determination, 264–265 Hungary, 50, 125 Hussein, King of Jordan, 71, 120 Hussein, Saddam, 41, 247; and Arab nationalism, 41; and degenerate image, 118; and Egyptian views of Gulf War, 68–71; viewed through rogue image, 116 Hutus, 275–276 Iceland: as pure nation state, 18 Identity. See Political identities Image theory, 3, 88, 91, 96–99; and emotion, 105–121; explaining the war on drugs, 162, 165, 170–193; explaining Yugoslavia, 221–223; and nationalism, 105–121; and policy predispositions, 105–121. See also specific images Imperial image, 96, 97, 98, 100, 111–116, 121, 273–275; in Rwanda, 275–276; in South Africa, 276–277; in the United States, 275, 277; of the United States, 114–115, 163–166, 176–193 India, 41, 55–56; linguistic diversity in, 43–44 Indigenous communities: Andean Indians, 46, 51; in Latin America, 62, 63–64; Mayas, 64–66; in Nicaragua, 211–212 Indonesia: linguistic diversity in, 44 INL. See United States Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Integration strategies: in non–nation states, 267–278; shared sovereignty type, 267–269; utilitarian type, 273–275 Iran, 41, 47, 54, Assyrian community in, 39–40; Azeri Turkish speakers, 54, 200–201; as core community non–nation state, 150, 200–201; ethnic and sectarian minorities in, 200–201; image of United States, 114–115; and Iraq, 252; and Khomeini, 29, 41, 47, 114; and the

Kurds, 252; and nationalist legitimacy, 151; revolution in, 114–115; secular nationalists, 47, 54, 67, 115; umma nationalists, 54–55, 67, 151 Iran-Iraq War, 70 Iraq, 126; Assyrian community, 39–40; and the Bush administration, 247; and the Kurds, 42, 251–252; invasion of Kuwait, 41, 247; Operation Desert Shield, 247; and Operation Desert Storm, 95, 248–249 Islam: as identity group, 17, 54, 55; and Khomeini, 29; political resurgence, 46–47, 247; as panmovement, 22–23; umma, 29, 47, 54, 151 Islamic states: identity with the umma, 54; nationalism in, 53–55 Israel: and American Jewish community, 82; ancient, 29; image of Arabs, 109–111; in Lebanon, 234–235; and nuclear weapons, 110–111; and the United States, 110–111; Yom Kippur War, 45 Italy, 6, 135; and degenerate image, 117–118 Japan, 49, 135–136, 241; attack on Pearl Harbor, 143; defeat in World War II, 246; and degenerate image of West, 117–118; as pure nation state, 18, 46 Jewish communities: and antiSemitism, 23, 81–82, 198; comparison to other minorities, 80; and the Holocaust, 79; and Israel, 82; in the United States, 79–83 Kazakhstan, 207, 216 Kedourie, Elie, 8 Kellas, James, 7, 12 Kennedy, John F., 155 Kenya, 36 Kerry, John, 176 Khomeini, Ayatolla Ruhollah, 29, 47, 114 Kluckhohn, Clyde, 123 Kosovo, 100, 219–220, 222 Kucan, Milan, 220

Index Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), 210 Kurds, 41–43, 200; integration strategy for, 269–272; in Iran, 210; in Iraq, 210, 270–271; and Israel, 210; PKK, 210; in Syria, 210, 271; in Turkey, 209–211, 271; and the United States, 210 Kuwait, 41, 247 Kyrgyzstan, 207 Lake, Anthony, 116 Lara Bonilla, Rodrigo, 173, 176 Latin America. See Western Hemisphere; country listings Latvia, 207 Lebanon, 26, 232–238; compared to Bosnia, 232; Christian-Muslim conflict, 232–233, 236–237; Druze, 234; Israeli invasion, 234–235; Maronites 232–233; religious identities in, 29; 232–233; role of PLO in, 237; and pan-Arab national community, 232–233; 236–237; and Syria, 233–234; and superpower competition, 236–237 Liberia, 36 Linguistic nationalism, 27, 41 Little, Alan, 220 Llobera, Josep, 9 Lott, Senator Trent, 181 Macedonia, 217 Mao Tse-tung, 85 Maronite Christians: capability perceptions, 233; comparison with Kurds, 254; and conservative Arab states, 233; images of other actors, 109; and Israel, 233–235; nationalism, 233, 235; and Syria, 233–234; and the United States, 233–235 Maurras, Charles, 6 McCaffrey, Barry, 172, 177 Mexico: and Camarena murder, 183–185; and certification, 188–190; as compound-identity nation state, 19, 64, 161–164; corruption in 191; and the DEA, 169, 171, 181–185, 187, 188, 189; de la Madrid administration, 192; drug war policies, 181–193; extradiction

299

policies, 186; Federal Judicial Police, 182; HLCG, 186–187; image of the United States, 163–164, 165, 181–193; and Mexican Americans, 76–77, 190; narcotics industry in, 182–183; nationalism and foreign policy, 162–164, 184–193; political system, 162; and war on drugs, 168, 181–193; and weapons from United States, 186 Milosevic, Slobodan, 220, 221, 239n, 260–261; viewed through rogue image, 117 Minogue, K. R., 8 Miskito Indians, 210–211 Moldova, 208 Montenegro, 217, 220 Moodley, Kogila, 276 Morgenthau, Hans, 130, 141, 148–149, 151–152 Mossadeq, Mohammad, 47, 200 Mozambique, 36 Mubarak, Husni: and Egyptian nationalists, 68 Multiethnic Asian states: nationalism in, 55–57 Multiethnic states, 21, 195–199, 224–238; Bosnia, 230–232; capability factors, 236; defined, 21; identity patterns in, 21, 224–226; Lebanon, 232–238; Nigeria, 226–230; Tanzania, 230. See also Ethnic communities; individual countries; Political identity Multinational states, 21–22, 195–199, 212–224; defined, 21, 195–196; governance and secession movements, 212–213, 251; identity in, 21–22, 213–214; Soviet Union, 214–217; Soviet Union and Yugoslavia compared, 223–224; Yugoslavia, 217–223. See also individual countries Multisectarian states, 21, Lebanon, 232–238. See also Multiethnic states Mussolini, Benito, 6 NAFTA. See North American Free Trade Agreement Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 69, 126 Nation state capability, 147–159; leader

300

Index

decisional latitude, 156–158; mobilization base, 149–152; power instruments, 152–156; power potential base, 148–149. See also Nation states Nation state internal control system, 136–147; coercion 137, 139–140; normative active, 137–139; normative habitual, 137–138; and symbol manipulation, 137–140, 142; in the Third World, 137–138; in World War II, 142–147. See also Nation states Nation states: behavioral patterns, 3–4, 17–20; capabilities of, 4, 136–156; compound-identity type, 18–20, 61–67; defined, 2; identity patterns in, 2–3, 18–19, 31–32; internal control systems, 136–141; and nationalist legitimacy, 136–141; normative value systems, 130–136; pure, 18. See also country listings; Image theory; National identity; Nationalism; Nationalist values; Political identities National identity, 2–3, 18–19, 94–95, 26n; compound identities, 31–32; nationalist values, 124–130 Nationalism: behavior of nationalists, 3–4; biological arguments, 11–12; in China, 241–245; cognitive and emotional factors, 105–121; and Cold War superpower competition, 35–37; compound national communities, 31–32; defined, 2; and ethnicity, 28–29; and fascism, 134–136; geographical clusters, 47–59; in Germany, 250; as history, 8–11; identity patterns, 2–3, 18–19, 45–47; as an ideology, 6–7; and images, 105–121; indicators of and checklist, 32–48; and interstate conflict, 241–278; and John Locke, 9; and John Milton, 9; in Korea, 250; and nationalist legitimacy, 136–141; nationalist values, 124–133, 241; and nuclear weapons, 252–259; and perceptions of opportunity, 95, 117–121, 127–130, 257–259; and perceptions of threat, 95, 106–117, 127–130, 255–257; political

psychology of, 3, 13, 25, 32, 87–122; and primordialism, 5, 12, 26n; and the Puritan Revolution, 9; in Russia, 207–208; terminal loyalty and, 2, 26n; in the Third World, 36–37; in the United States 3, 165–170, 177, 183–193, 252–257; in Vietnam, 250. See also country listings; Image theory; Nation states; Nationalism indicators; Nationalist values; Normative value systems; Political identities; Social categorization; War on drugs Nationalism indicators, 32–48; common history, 44–45; culture, 44; defensibility/viability, 39–43; identity community complementarity, 45–47; language, 43–44; mass predisposition for political participation, 37–39; role of changeoriented elites, 32–37; uniqueness, 43–47 Nationalist legitimacy: in Communist Poland, 153; and control, 136–141; lack of, in Iran, 151; lack of, in Weimar Republic, 144; and Yugoslavia, 154 Nationalist values, 123–130; and fascism, 134–136; intensity and salience, 124–127; and normative values, 130–136; typology of, 127–130. See also Normative value systems National Socialism, 134 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization Nicaragua, 52; and the Miskito Indians, 211–212; Moravian Church, 211; and the Reagan administration, 212; Sandinista policies, 211–212. See also Indigenous communities Nigeria, 17, 25, 45, 196, 226–230; ethnic identity in, 226–230, 239n; foreign policy, 229–230; Ibos, 45, 228–229; impact of civil war, 227–228; linguistic diversity, 44; Nigerian Youth Service Corp (NYSC), 228; and Organization of Islamic Conference, 229 Nkruma, Kwame, 58 Non-Aligned Movement, 162, 179,

Index 180, 219 Non–nation states, 195–239; behavioral patterns, 17–18; capability compared to nation states, 136, 152, 153–159, 239; control systems in 145–147; core-community type, 199–212; defined, 195; disintegrative forces, 197–198; foreign policy patterns, 198–199; integration strategies, 265–278; multiethnic and multisectarian type, 224–238; multinational type, 212–224; social comparison patterns in, 196–199, 238–239. See also types of non–nation states Noriega, Manuel, 117 Normative value systems, 130–136; fascism, 134–136; in the United States, 131–132, and U.S. foreign policy, 132 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 132, 162 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): expansion of 249; in Gulf War, 248; and Rambouillet Accords, 117; and Russia, 208; U.S. role in, 132 North Korea, 49, 247; nationalism and unification, 250 Northern Ireland, 10, 53; religious identity in, 29 Norway: as pure nation state, 18 Nuclear nonproliferation, 132 Nuclear weapons: and nationalism, 252–259 Nyerere, Julius, 58 OAS. See Organization of American States OAU. See Organization of African Unity Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), 166, 168, 177 ONDCP. See Office of National Drug Control Policy OPEC. See Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Operation Desert Shield, 247 Operation Desert Storm, 95, 132, 248– 249; viewed by Egyptians, 69–71 Organization of Petroleum Exporting

301

Countries (OPEC), 162 Organization of American States (OAS), 163, 180, 187, 193 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 229 Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza Shah, 114– 115, 150; and the United States, 150 Pahlavi, Reza Shah, 150; and United Kingdom, 150 Pakistan, 56 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 234, 237 Palestinian-Israeli conflict, 115; viewed by Egyptians, 68–71 Pan-movements, 22–23, defined, 22, examples of, 22 Paraguay, 52 Pastrana, Andrés, 173 People’s Republic of China, 49, 241–245; as compound-identity nation state, 19, 83–86; Confucian philosophy, 83; Cultural Revolution, 85; Han identity, 19, 83–86; and Hong Kong, 241; human rights, 241, 243, 263; and Macao, 241; Mao Tsetung, 85; Marxist doctrine and nationalism, 85, 242–243; nationalism in, 86, 242–245; nationalist values in, 243; non-Han minorities, 84–85; and Taiwan, 242, 245; and the United States, 241, 243–245, 263 Peru, 46, 52, 170 Pfaff, William, 9, 10 PKK. See Kurdistan Workers’ Party PLO. See Palestine Liberation Organization Poland, 18, 49–50, 125; Germans in, 50; and nationalist legitimacy, 153–154 Political identities, 90–91; in China, 83–86; in core community non–nation states, 20–21; in Egypt, 67–71; in Guatemala, 64–66; identity community complementarity, 45–47; and Islam, 17; in multiethnic and multisectarian states, 21; in multinational states, 21–22; national identity, 2, 17, 18; in nation states 2–3, 94–95; in non–nation states,

302

Index

195–199; in non–nation state integration strategies, 265–267, 272–275; in the United States, 71–83. See also Ethnic communities; Image theory; Racial communities; Religious communities; Social categorization Portugal: and colonialism, 36; under Salazar, 10 Primakov, Yevgeny, 208 Putin, Vladimir, 203 Quebec, 40 Racial communities, 18, 30–31; in the United States, 74–79 Religious communities, 18, 21, 22, 29–30, 66–67. See also Multiethnic states; Multisectarian states; Political identities Reno, Janet, 176 Rhodesia, 36 Rivera, Brooklyn, 212 Rogue image, 96, 97, 98, 100, 116–117, 121 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 72; symbol manipulation by, 143–144, 151 Rothschild, Joseph, 28 RSFSR. See Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic Russia, 25, 49; Chechnya conflict, 203, 204–206, 245; and collapse of Soviet Union, 245; as core-community non–nation state, 20, 201–209; and Crimea, 207; Dzhokar Dudayev, 205–206; ethnic and national minorities in, 201, 204; foreign policy and national identity, 207–208; Mikhail Gorbachev, 201, 216; identity-related problems, 204; Aleksandr Lebed, 206; nationalism values in, 245; and NATO, 208, 249; role in Soviet Union, 202–203; Russian diaspora in successor states, 206–207, 239; Russian identity, 201–204; Russian Mafya, 204; Russian nationalism, 207–208, 245, 249–250; Russian Orthodox Church, 201; social causality, justification, and differentiation in, 203–204; Tatar resistance, 201, 204–205; Boris

Yeltsin, 201, 205, 207 Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR), 202–203 Rwanda, 100, 275–276, 277 Sadat, Anwar, 126, 233; and Camp David Agreement, 68; viewed by Islamists, 70–71; viewed by Nasserists, 69; viewed by nationalists, 68 Samper, Ernesto, 173, 175, 178–180 Saudi Arabia, 120 Schanpper, Dominique, 10 Schelling, Thomas, 155 Scotland, 9 SELA. See Sistema Económico LatinoAmericano Self-determination movements, 250–263, 265; alternatives to, 265–278; and human rights, 264–265 Serbia, 217; Chetniks, 222; image of Coratia, 222; in Krajina, 221; Slobodan Milosevic, 220, 221, 260–262; nationalism in, 219–220, 260; Serbs in Bosnia, 231–232, 261–262 Seton-Watson, Hugh, 7, 9 Shafer, Boyd, 8 Shiite Muslims, 29, 47, 114, 150; in Lebanon, 234 Sierra Leone, 229 Silber, Laura, 220 Sistema Económico Latino-Americano (SELA), 163 Slovenia, 217; nationalism in 219, 220, 260; self-image, 220 Smith, Anthony, 7, 13–14, 28 Smith, Eliot, 113 Social categorization, 88–89, 94; and images, 96–99, 100; and nationalism, 94–95; social causality, 90; social comparison, 89, 91–93; social competition; 92; social creativity, 92; social differentiation, 90; social justification, 90; social mobility, 92. See also Group behavior; Image theory; Political identities; Social comparison Social comparison, 89, 91–93; and images, 96–99 Social creativity, 92, and images 99;

Index and integration strategies, 266 Social distance, 196, 267; defined, 72 Social identity theory, 88–93, 122n Social mobility, 92; and images, 99; and integration strategies, 267 Somalia, 38, 100, 247; U.S. intervention, 132, 133 South Africa, 36, 276–277; Afrikaners, 276; ANC, 276–277; perceptual change in, 277 South Korea, 49, 241; nationalism and unification, 250 Soviet Union, 17, 25, 213, 214–217; Brezhnev era, 215; Cold War competition with United States, 35–37, 246, 252–257; control system in 145–146; Cuban missile crisis, 155, 253; disintegration of, 216–217, 246; and Eastern Europe, 35–36; Gorbachev era, 216; and Gulf War, 248; image of the United States, 108, 255–256; and Iraq, 252; Marxism and nationalism, 214–215; nationalities, 214–215; NovoOgarevo Agreement, 217; Russian nationalism in, 216; Russification, 215; social comparisons in, 217; Soviet identity, 215–216; Stalin era, 214; World War II mobilization, 145–147, 216; Yom Kippur War, 253 Spain: Basques, 10, 53; under Franco, 10, 135 Stalin, Joseph, 214 Stereotypes: anti-Semitic, 23, 81–82, 198; breakdown of, 269; contact hypothesis, 268, 272; importance in integration strategies, 267, 272; in nation states, 3, 18, 152; political stereotypes, 96; in Rwanda, 275–276; in South Africa, 276–277; in the United States, 275, 277. See also Image theory; Social categorization; War on drugs Sun Yat-sen, 83–84 Syria: Kurds in, 210; and Lebanon, 233–234 Taiwan, 242, 245 Tajfel, Henri, 88–89 Tajikistan, 208 Tanzania, 36, 230

303

Territorial communities, 30 Tibet, 84, 85 Tito, Jozip Broz, 154, 218–219 Traficant, James Turkey: and the Kurdish minority, 43, 209–211; nationalism in, 41 Tutsis, 275–276 Uganda, 230 Ukraine, 49, 50, 207 United Kingdom: and Reza Shah 150; and Somalia, 38. See also England UN. See United Nations United Nations (UN), 180; Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances, 172; and Gulf War, 248 United States: Bush administration, 166–169, 171, 243, 247–249; and China, 241, 243–245, 263; Clinton administration, 168–170, 171, 186–189, 243; Cold War competition with Soviet Union, 35–37, 246, 252–257; and Colombia, 25, 172–188; as compound-identity nation state, 19, 61–62, 71–83; Cuban missile crisis, 155–158, 253; drug war, 166–193; ethnicity in, 62, 63, 71–83; and Europe, post–Cold War, 249; Gulf War, 247–249; and human rights, 241, 243–245; image of Latin America, 170–193; image of North Korea, 250; image of Soviet Union, 108, 247, 253–256; immigrant assimilation, 73–74; and Iraq, 247, 251–252; and Israel, 110–111, 253; Kennedy administration, 155, 253; and the Kurds, 42–43, 251–252; and Mexico, 25, 181–193; national grandeur values, 247; nationalism in, 3, 165–170, 177, 183–193, 252–257; and NATO, 249; Operation Desert Shield, 247; Operation Desert Storm, 248–249; as perceived by China and Russia, post–Cold War, 248, 249; post–Cold War power and leadership, 246–248; post–World War II power and leadership, 247–251; Reagan administration, 170; Roosevelt administration, 143–144; and Russia,

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Index

249; and Somalia, 132, 133; and the Soviet Union, 252–257; and Taiwan, 245; World War II mobilization, 142–144; Yom Kippur War, 253. See also agency listings; Covert operations; Ethnic, Racial, and Religious community listings; War on drugs United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 167 United States Customs Service, 167 United States Department of Defense: and drug war, 167–168, SOUTHCOM, 168; United States Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), 166, 188; and Robert Gelbard, 188 Van Evera, Stephen, 16 Venezuela, 52; Uruguay, 52 Vietnam, 241; nationalism and unification, 250 Vojvodina, 219–220 Wales, 9 War on drugs: Andean Initiative, 166–172; certification requirement, 169, 191–192; Coast Guard, 167; and Colombia, 172–180; Customs Service, 167; Department of Defense, 167; INL, 166; and Mexico, 181–193; militarization of, 168; ONDCP, 166, 168, 177; Operations Intercept, 166, 181; role of images, 162, 165, 170–193; role of nationalism, 172–193; training programs for Latin Americans, 168; U.S. Congress role, 169, 181, 192; U.S. policies, 166–193 Waters, Mary, 73, 74 Watson, James, 84

Weimar Republic: and lack of nationalist legitimacy, 144 Weiner, Myron, 90 Western Europe: and colonialism, 111–112; nationalism in, 53, 124–126 Western Hemisphere: African slaves in, 62; change-oriented elites, 51–52; impact of Cold War, 52; indigenous communities, 46, 51, 62, 63–66, 211–212; nationalism in, 50–53 Yeltsin, Boris, 201, 205, 207 Young, Crawford, 26n Yugoslavia, 25, 217–223, 231–232, 259–263; and Austro-Hungarian empire, 218; Bosnia, 219; brotherhood and unity, 218; comparison with Soviet Union, 223–224; Corfu Declaration, 218; Croatia secession, 217–223, 260; ethnic Albanians, 220; Federal Presidency, 219; Kosovo, 219–220, 222; Milosevic role, 219–220; and nationalist legitimacy, 155; nations in, 217; Non-Aligned Movement, 219; and Ottoman empire, 218; religious identities in, 29; role of communist ideology, 218; Serbs in 219–220, 260; Slavic identity, 218; Slovenia secession, 217–222, 260; Josep Broz Tito, 154, 218–219; Tudjman role, 221, 222; Vojvodina, 219–220; Yugoslav army, 221– 222, 260; Yugoslav identity, 218. See also Bosnia; Croatia; Serbia; Kosovo Zedillo, Ernest, 168, 187 Zhirinovskii, Vladimir, 203 Zimbabwe, 36 Zulu nationalists, 277

About the Book

As nationalism increasingly captures our attention through its impact on intercommunal violence and even the stability of states, this fresh look at the phenomenon plumbs an important aspect of its power: how nationalism affects the domestic and foreign policy behavior of states. Systematically examining a range of states and societies, the Cottams draw on case studies from Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Their sophisticated discussion of nationalism, and the patterns of political behavior it gives rise to, is a critical bridge between the study of identity politics and theories of international relations. Martha Cottam is professor of political science at Washington State University. She is author of The Changing Agenda: World Politics Since 1945 and Images and Intervention: U.S. Policies in Latin America. The late Richard W. Cottam was professor of political science emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. His numerous publications focused on international relations and the Middle East.

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