Understanding global security - Peter Hough

SOCIAL IDENTITY AS A THREAT TO SECURITY
The subjective nature of nationality heightens the importance of perception in
this area of security politics. The perception that a minority nationality is a human
security threat to the majority nationality, such as in the association of certain
migrants or resident minorities with crime and terrorism, is a common trait. At a
lesser level, and more commonly, the minority nationality may be perceived as a
threat to the economic well-being of the dominant group. Minority nationalities may
even be perceived as threats to state security, as in the Nazi and neo-Nazi portrayal
of Jews, formerly as Communists and latterly as part of a global conspiracy to control
economic life.
The minority nationality may also perceive threats to their human or societal
security from the state or dominant nationality. When two or more national groups
each perceive that another threatens their lives or identities, a ‘societal security
dilemma’ (Waever et al. 1993) can be the cause of conflict. Such threats may be very
real but frequently they will not be, given the ambiguous yet compelling nature
of national identity. Roe describes how an escalation of misperceptions about ‘the
other’ led to the 1990 Tirgu Mures riots between Magyars and the dominant
nationality in Romania. A revival of demands by Transylvanian Magyars for linguistic
and educational rights was wrongly interpreted by Romanians as a bid for secession,
prompting violence in which six people were killed. Roe considers that the
misperception occurred because of the interplay of a number of factors. The Magyars
did not explain the true nature of their demands and the Romanians (both societally
and governmentally) could not comprehend that demands for reform could mean
anything less than secession and the destruction of the Romanian state. Underlying
all of this, of course, was the recent history of Romania as a brutal, authoritarian
political system where minority identities were stamped on and no mechanisms for
dealing with such issues existed (Roe 2000).
Religion as a basis for conflict or discriminatory violence is, of course, as old as religion
itself. Religious identity predates national identity by many centuries and was the
chief cause of wars and massacres within and between the rudimentary states of
the pre-Westphalian era, aside from the age-old and perennial motive of straight
territorial gain. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia marked the end of a major religious war
across much of Europe, the Thirty Years War between Catholicism and Protestantism,
and also the end of an era of religious domination over the kingdoms of Europe. From
1648 the sovereignty of kingly states began to supersede the supranationality of
the Pope and the loyalty and identity of citizens shifted accordingly from their religion
to their monarch and nation. In subsequent centuries the Westphalian system
spread beyond Europe to the rest of the world but nations have never entirely replaced
religions as a social identity for which individuals are prepared to kill and be killed.
In many cases national identity succeeded rather than superseded religious identity
and provided a framework for pre-Westphalian conflicts of faith to persist in a
sovereign, secular age. The Wars of the Reformation (which culminated in the Thirty
Years War) are still being fought in Northern Ireland today, although this is now very
much about national self-determination rather than papal authority.
Religion
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