Military Review English Edition November December 2016 | Page 21

NATIONAL IDENTITY

de Dieu,” as Gilles Kepel termed it, is in full swing.10
Violence between religious groups is proliferating
around the world. People are increasingly concerned
with the fate of geographically remote co-religionists.
In many countries powerful movements have appeared
attempting to redefine the identity of their country in
religious terms. In a very different way, movements
in the United States are recalling America’s religious
origins and the extraordinary commitment to religion
of the American people. Evangelical Christianity has

people cannot decide until someone decides who are the
people.”11 The decision as to who are the people may be
the result of long-standing tradition, war and conquest,
pl ebiscite or referendum, constitutional provision, or other causes, but it cannot be avoided. Debates over how to
define that identity, who is a citizen and who is not, come
to the fore when autocracies democratize and when democracies confront many new claimants on citizenship.
Historically, the emergence of nation-states in Europe
was the result of several centuries of recurring wars. “War

become an important force, and Americans generally
may be returning to the self-image prevalent for three
centuries that they are a Christian people.
The last quarter of the twentieth century saw transitions from authoritarian to democratic regimes in more
than fifty countries scattered throughout the world. It
also witnessed efforts to broaden and deepen democracy in the United States and other developed countries.
Individual authoritarian governments may rule and
often have ruled over people of diverse nationalities
and cultures. Democracy, on the other hand, means
that at a minimum people choose their rulers and that
more broadly they participate in government in other
ways. The question of identity thus becomes central:
Who are the people? As Ivor Jennings observed, “the

Muslims socialize after Eid al-Adha prayers 21 October 2013 at Valley
Stream Park, Long Island, New York. (Time-lapse photo courtesy of
Wikimedia Commons)

MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2016

made the state, and the state made war,” as Charles Tilly
said.12 These wars also made it possible and necessary for
states to generate national consciousness among their
peoples. The primary function of the state was to create
and defend the nation, and the need to perform that
function justified the expansion of state authority and
the establishment of military forces, bureaucracies, and
effective tax systems. Two world wars and a cold war
reinforced these trends in the twentieth century. By the
end of that century, however, the Cold War was over, and
interstate wars had become rare; in one estimate only
seven of one hundred and ten wars between 1989 and
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