As a nation and as individuals, we tend to view the world through the prism of our own experiences. Over the last few weeks, Russians, Georgians, Abkhazians and South Ossetians have reminded us that ethnic nationalism and secessionism are on the rise around the globe. I worry that the American experience leaves the United States and its citizens unprepared to confront it.<\/p>\n
Not long ago, I had dinner with a conservative media figure who seemed perplexed that I’m a student of “identity.” “What made you do that?” he asked. “I think the world would be better without it.”<\/p>\n
I tried to explain that it wasn’t something I was either for or against but that exists and needs to be understood. And just because one may not want to “believe” in identities — ethnic groups and ethno-religious groups — that doesn’t mean that they somehow disappear from the world. Absurd as it sounds, we have a collective blind spot on the topic. And our refusal to take the issue of ethnic and ethno-religious identity seriously has helped to undermine our foreign policy initiatives.<\/p>\n
Just look at Iraq. The Bush administration — and all the “experts,” both Americans and exiled Iraqis, who guided its policy — made a fundamental error by relying on the assumption that Iraqis were nonsectarian nationalists, more concerned with preserving a nationalism that had been imposed on them by Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party than with the position and fate of their own tribes and mullahs. As plenty of critics have observed, even the faintest acknowledgment of the social cleavages on the ground could have helped the U.S. war effort.<\/p>\n