Military Review English Edition November December 2016

NATIONAL IDENTITY what distinguishes us from the “thems” who are not us? should be the primary goal of American foreign polRace, religion, ethnicity, values, culture, wealth, politics, icy. If, however, the United States is “exceptional,” the or what? Is the United States, as some have argued, a rationale for promoting human rights and democracy “universal nation,” based on values common to all huelsewhere disappears. If the United States is primarily manity and in principle embracing all peoples? Or are a collection of cultural and ethnic entities, its national we a Western nation with our identity defined by our interest is in the promotion of the goals of those entities European heritage and institutions? Or are we unique and we should have a “multicultural foreign policy.” If the with a distinctive civilization of United States is primarily defined our own, as the proponents of by its European cultural heritage as National interests “American exceptionalism” have a Western country, then it should derive from argued throughout our history? direct its attention to strengthening Are we basically a political commuits ties with Western Europe. If national identity. nity whose identity exists only in immigration is making the United We have to know a social contract embodied in the States a more Hispanic nation, we Declaration of Independence and should orient ourselves primarily who we are before other founding documents? Are we toward Latin America. If neither multicultural, bicultural, or uniculEuropean nor Hispanic culture is we can know what tural, a mosaic or a melting pot? Do central to American identity, then our interests are. we have any meaningful identity as presumably America should pursue a nation that transcends our subnaa foreign policy divorced from cultional ethnic, religious, racial identities? These questions tural ties to other countries. Other definitions of national remain for Americans in their post-September 11 era. identity generate different national interests and policy They are in part rhetorical questions, but they are also priorities. Conflicts over what we should do abroad are questions that have profound implications for American rooted in conflicts over who we are at home. society and American policy at home and abroad. In the The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern 1990s Americans engaged in intense debates over immiIreland was created in 1707, the United States of gration and assimilation, multiculturalism and diversity, America in 1776, and the Union of Soviet Socialist race relations and affirmative action, religion in the public Republics in 1918. As their names indicate, they were sphere, bilingual education, school and college curricula, all unions “of ” entities brought together through proschool prayer and abortion, the meaning of citizenship cesses of federation and conquest. In the early 1980s, and nationality, foreign involvement in American elecall three seemed like reasonably cohesive and successful tions, the extraterritorial application of American law, societies, whose governments were relatively effective and the increasing political role of diasporas here and and in varying degrees accepted as legitimate, and whose abroad. Underlying all these issues is the question of napeoples had strong senses of their British, American, and tional identity. Virtually any position on any one of these Soviet identities. By the early 1990s the Soviet Union issues implies certain assumptions about that identity. was no more. By the late 1990s, the United Kingdom So also with foreign policy. The 1990s saw inwas becoming less united, with a new regime struggling tense, wide-ranging, and rather confused debates over to be born in Northern Ireland, devolution well under American national interests after the Cold War. Much way in Scotland and Wales, many Scots looking forward of this confusion stemmed from the complexity and to eventual independence, and the English increasingly novelty of that world. Yet that was not the only source defining themselves as English rather than British. The of uncertainty about America’s role. National interests Union Jack was being disassembled into its separate derive from national identity. We have to know who we crosses, and it seemed possible that sometime in the first are before we can know what our interests are. part of the twenty-first century the United Kingdom If American identity is defined by a set of universal could follow the Soviet Union into history. principles of liberty and democracy, then presumably Few people anticipated the dissolution of the the promotion of those principles in other countries Soviet Union and the movement toward possible MILITARY REVIEW November-December 2016 15

Military Review English Edition November December 2016 | Page 17