In the international arena, social dynamics and shared identities are as important in shaping relationships as they are among individuals.
“We can think about identities as shared systems of meaning that we use to interpret the world because the world is very chaotic, very messy,” says Georgia Institute of Technology political scientist Jarrod Hayes.
These shared systems of meaning are not only important in how we interact on an individual level, but also have a significant impact in international relations.
“Policy makers are operating within relationships that they’re establishing with other individuals, but they’re also operating within these broader sociopolitical contexts,” Hayes said. “So this is part of what makes international relations so messy because we have all of these different dynamics playing out in different ways at different times.”
Hayes says while personal dynamics and certain aspects of national identity all influence inter-state relationships, political identity – as opposed to economic or cultural, for example – is central to international diplomacy.
“It’s the content of the identity as much as the shared identity itself that matters… [and] political identity is fundamentally about how do conflicts of interest get resolved,” said Hayes.
An example of this is the democratic peace theory, which claims democracies are unlikely to go to war with other democracies. Hayes says one of the reasons this is true is because in democratic societies, “the use of force is not a legitimate means for resolving a dispute with a fellow democrat” and therefore would run contrary to the democratic political identity.
However, this does not mean the best way to foster peace is for established democracies to overthrow non-democratic regimes and impose a democratic system – as the U.S. did in Iraq – because this is not the same as the developing a genuine democratic political identity.
“Identity is fundamentally something ‘we’ own, and if it’s imposed from the outside, you actually set up identity dynamics that are counterproductive. So we have to facilitate the development of democracy around the world, but we cannot impose it,” said Hayes.
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Interview Highlights
On How Identity Shapes Our World View
Academics, we like to think that we think everything through, but humans are not capable of doing that, so we rely on a range of heuristics, a range of shortcuts to make our worlds intelligible, and identity is one of these really important ways that we do so. So when we meet somebody on the street, we automatically begin to assess who they are in relation to us in this social context, and those are all questions of identity. What social psychologists have found is that, depending on which identities are activated, our interpretation of the world changes and our interests, our ideas align with those of our identity group, the activated identity group. So it's very, very important for understanding how humans interact with the broader world. There are sort of cognitive elements of this, but there are also strong emotional elements of this. So social psychologists have found in intergroup emotions theory that actually not just our thinking about the world tends towards the group median, but also our emotional responses to the world tend towards the group. So for example, if you're French-American and your American identity is activated, then the period around the Gulf War is one in which you share the American anger towards the French for their refusal to support the United States at the Security Council. But if this individual's French identity is activated, then they share the French sense of resentment or imposition by the Americans or perhaps a sense of shared French pride at resisting the Americans. The only difference – it's the same individual – the only difference is which identity is active and the emotional response that attends to that. So it's very substantial the ways in which identity shapes our interactions with the world.
On The Social Dynamics Of International Relations
So we can think about international relations dynamics as occurring at multiple levels, obviously. So at one level of analysis we can look at the relationships between diplomats, between specific policy makers. And you can see this: the president of the United States has a rapport with one individual but does not have a rapport with another individual. George [W.] Bush, for example, claimed he had seen into Vladimir Putin's soul. And so those kinds of relationships have an impact on international relations in the broader sense. But we can also think about the collective level. And there, identities operate different ways. So we can think about identities at the societal level – so particular political identities might operate in some places differently than they do in other places. And so policy makers, diplomats – the individuals, the agents in the system – are operating within relationships that they're establishing with other individuals, but they're also operating within these broader sociopolitical contexts that put constraints on what they can and can't do because – at least in many democratic states – the policy makers, the politicians, the diplomats, are operating within boundaries of legitimacy that are established by the social collective. So, for example, if President Barack Obama wanted to make a claim that Canada is an existential threat to the United States, it's unlikely to succeed for a range of reasons regardless of how Obama sees Stephen Harper, who politically and ideologically is not on the same wavelength as the President. So there's that one level, but then there's a bigger level as well. And so this is part of what makes international relations so messy, right, because we have all of these different dynamics playing out in different ways at different times, and so we have to have to be very aware of contingency and how that plays out in specific times and places.
On Economic Vs. Political Identity
Economic identity, political economic identity, is different from the kind of political identity that democracy is because the political identity is fundamentally about how do conflicts of interest get resolved, and the economic identity is different. So for example, in the capitalist economic system it is perfectly acceptable for entities to disappear. So you're not allowed to use force against other entities, but you can out-compete them to the point that they disappear. And so there is a much more zero-sum nature to capitalism than there is democracy, because in the end nobody disappears. They may lose office, but they could return to office again, so on and so forth. So shared economic identity is there, but it doesn't have the same kind of effect. So this raises a very important point, which is that shared identity by itself doesn't assure any kind of relationship. It's the content of the identity as much as the shared identity itself that matters. So when we look at the content of the identity, then we can see different patterns of behavior arising. So in the case of the United States and China, that shared economic identity is actually stronger than it is with India because India maintains a much more social democratic orientation; but because this is an economic identity that doesn't provide for non-zero-sum conflict resolution or doesn't require non-zero-sum conflict resolution, then that relationship is far more unstable than the shared democratic identity with India.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
SUZETTE GRILLOT, HOST: Jarrod Hayes, welcome to World Views.
JARROD HAYES: Thank you very much for having me.
GRILLOT: So, really interesting work you've always done on issues of identity and security and a recent book you've published on constructing national security, and I want to start with what you refer to as "identity issues" and how that influences our international relations. So from what I gather, we're talking about using notions of identity, personal identity, and kind of extrapolating that to the international level, but a sense of how we feel about one another, how we understand ourselves, how we understand others, and how that affects our relationships. Is this what you're talking about? And how can that sense of identity influence what we do at the international level?
HAYES: What we see in social psychology is that humans are fundamentally social creatures. We think about ourselves in social terms. It's how we make sense of our place in the world. It's how we make sense of ourselves. We're constantly positioning ourselves in the context of whatever social group. These identities, then – this sense of "we-ness" – changes how we understand the world. So in a sense, we can think about identities as systems of shared meaning or shared systems of meaning that we use to interpret the world, because the world is very chaotic, very messy. And another finding from neuroscience is that our cognitive abilities are actually much more limited than we like to think. Academics, we like to think that we think everything through, but humans are not capable of doing that, so we rely on a range of heuristics, a range of shortcuts to make our worlds intelligible, and identity is one of these really important ways that we do so. So when we meet somebody on the street, we automatically begin to assess who they are in relation to us in this social context, and those are all questions of identity. What social psychologists have found is that, depending on which identities are activated, our interpretation of the world changes and our interests, our ideas align with those of our identity group, the activated identity group. So it's very, very important for understanding how humans interact with the broader world. There are sort of cognitive elements of this, but there are also strong emotional elements of this. So social psychologists have found in intergroup emotions theory that actually not just our thinking about the world tends towards the group median, but also our emotional responses to the world tend towards the group. So for example, if you're French-American and your American identity is activated, then the period around the Gulf War is one in which you share the American anger towards the French for their refusal to support the United States at the Security Council. But if this individual's French identity is activated, then they share the French sense of resentment or imposition by the Americans or perhaps a sense of shared French pride at resisting the Americans. The only difference – it's the same individual – the only difference is which identity is active and the emotional response that attends to that. So it's very substantial the ways in which identity shapes our interactions with the world.
GRILLOT: So as we go out to interact – so let's say states and governments. You talked about how humans are social creatures, but states and governments are made up of humans, humans that are making decisions on behalf of their governments and their nations and states. As they're interacting with one another, these same types of levels of feeling and sense of belonging and "you're my friend" or "you're not," those kinds of things are activated, I guess, in that social context in that the international arena is a social arena. There's something not just political about it; it's social in nature. Is this kind of, by extension, a thing you might argue?
HAYES: Yeah. I think that's right. So we can think about international relations dynamics as occurring at multiple levels, obviously. So at one level of analysis we can look at the relationships between diplomats, between specific policy makers. And you can see this: the president of the United States has a rapport with one individual but does not have a rapport with another individual. George [W.] Bush, for example, claimed he had seen into Vladimir Putin's soul. And so those kinds of relationships have an impact on international relations in the broader sense. But we can also think about the collective level. And there, identities operate different ways. So we can think about identities at the societal level – so particular political identities might operate in some places differently than they do in other places. And so policy makers, diplomats – the individuals, the agents in the system – are operating within relationships that they're establishing with other individuals, but they're also operating within these broader sociopolitical contexts that put constraints on what they can and can't do because – at least in many democratic states – the policy makers, the politicians, the diplomats, are operating within boundaries of legitimacy that are established by the social collective. So, for example, if President Barack Obama wanted to make a claim that Canada is an existential threat to the United States, it's unlikely to succeed for a range of reasons regardless of how Obama sees Stephen Harper, who politically and ideologically is not on the same wavelength as the President. So there's that one level, but then there's a bigger level as well. And so this is part of what makes international relations so messy, right, because we have all of these different dynamics playing out in different ways at different times, and so we have to have to be very aware of contingency and how that plays out in specific times and places.
GRILLOT: So this interaction, then, might help us understand why some actors in the international arena are threatening and some aren't even though they have the same capability, for example, right? So Iran having a nuclear weapon or Iraq having a nuclear weapon or North Korea having a nuclear weapon is very different to us than Israel having a nuclear weapon or France or the U.K. – so our friends versus our enemies. So that dynamic of engaging one another on a social level and whether we're friends or not has an impact on how we relate to each other about specific capabilities.
HAYES: Precisely, yeah.
GRILLOT: Well your work has gone even further into some of the factors that help us identify our friends, and you focus in particular on democracy and how a democratic form of governance has an impact on our identity and our shared understanding of one another – that democracies tend to see each other as "we," and therefore they know what to expect from each other as opposed to non-democracies are in that "other" category, that we don't consider them part of "us." It's "us versus them" in some cases – the democracies and non-democracies. Well you've written an interesting book about how the U.S. relates, for example, with China and India: China, a non-democracy; India, a democracy. Tell us a little bit about that relationship and how the United States relates with China differently than with India because of that common identity as democratic or non-democratic countries.
HAYES: Sure. So it's actually, I think, very interesting. It might be going too far to say that the United States always views other democracies as friends because, just like in a democratic state there are a range of relationships – you can have friends; you can have enemies, but there are boundaries on appropriate patterns of behavior in terms of conflict resolution. So it is inappropriate, illegitimate, to use violence in the domestic context to resolve a political conflict. You can sue somebody, you can hate them, but you can't use violence against them; that's beyond the pale. So we can see similar kinds of dynamics play out in the international system. So the United States doesn't always get along with other democracies, and this has actually been the case with India. So the United States has had this very tumultuous relationship with India since its independence. Relations have been good or bad in periodic fashion, in some ways tied to the political ideology of who's sitting in White House. So relations with India tend to be better when Democrats are in the White House than when Republicans are; although obviously George W. Bush was the exception to that rule. But the United States has never seen India as a threat, and the reason for that is exactly the point that you just made. That it's a sense that India, as a fellow democracy, there are boundaries on the political behavior that can be seen as legitimate. And the key point here is that the use of force is not a legitimate means for resolving a dispute with a fellow democrat – small "d", not big "d." So that has shaped U.S. relations with India in very important ways. So situations that might have been seen as threatening if they were relations between the United States and a non-democratic state between the United States and India have not been seen as threatening. So you make this point about nuclear weapons, which is an excellent one. India has nuclear weapons and has had nuclear weapons since 1974, when they tested what they claimed to be a peaceful nuclear device. But the United States has never seen India's nuclear weapons as a threat – at least to the United States. There have been some discussions about India's nuclear program as a challenge to the nonproliferation regime, but in fact those discussions have never been very strong in the United States either – certainly not nearly as strong as proliferation by other actors. So we can see the ways in which shared sense of “democraticness” is channeling the U.S. relations with India in particular kinds of ways. And you can also see the lack of shared democratic identity in U.S. relations with China, where American politicians rely very heavily on the non-democratic nature of China to present it as a threat. You can look at situations like the 95-96 Taiwan Straits Crisis or the 2001 incident where an EP-3 U.S. spy plane was grounded on Hainan Island and see the ways in which American policy makers and public and pundits frame China as a non-democratic state. And what's really interesting in the Chinese case is that those who don't want China to be seen as a threat cannot rely on shared democratic identity to defuse that argument. So what they instead do is they borrow from potential future Chinese democracy. So this concept of engagement is actually a temporal shift. So the argument is that China will be a democracy in the future if we don't treat them as a threat now. This is the entire premise behind the concept of engagement. And so basically what's happening is they're saying, "if we don't treat China as a threat now, they will become a democracy in the future and therefore not a threat." So they're trying to borrow something from the future and move it into today in much the same way that commodities are financialized and then the future value for those commodities is brought into the present – same idea.
GRILLOT: So, obviously, the United States and China have a strong economic relationship as well, and so those ties are perhaps also contributing? Even though they're not a democratic government, they're a somewhat capitalist system. So at least they somewhat share a partial identity with the United States. Is that fair to claim in that regard?
HAYES: It is fair to claim in that regard. Economic identity, political economic identity, is different from the kind of political identity that democracy is because the political identity is fundamentally about how do conflicts of interest get resolved, and the economic identity is different. So for example, in the capitalist economic system it is perfectly acceptable for entities to disappear. So you're not allowed to use force against other entities, but you can out-compete them to the point that they disappear. And so there is a much more zero-sum nature to capitalism than there is democracy, because in the end nobody disappears. They may lose office, but they could return to office again, so on and so forth. So shared economic identity is there, but it doesn't have the same kind of effect. So this raises a very important point, which is that shared identity by itself doesn't assure any kind of relationship. It's the content of the identity as much as the shared identity itself that matters. So when we look at the content of the identity, then we can see different patterns of behavior arising. So in the case of the United States and China, that shared economic identity is actually stronger than it is with India because India maintains a much more social democratic orientation; but because this is an economic identity that doesn't provide for non-zero-sum conflict resolution or doesn't require non-zero-sum conflict resolution, then that relationship is far more unstable than the shared democratic identity with India.
GRILLOT: So just very quickly, then, this approach you've taken, would this indicate that we should promote democratic governance around the world as a way to improve security relations and promote peace, if you will? That whole democratic peace argument?
HAYES: That's a really, really great question, and we can see that the Bush administration and the Obama administration to a much lesser extent have tried to do this. But identity is fundamentally something we own and if it's imposed from the outside you actually set up identity dynamics that are counterproductive. So we have to facilitate the development of democracy around the world, but we cannot impose it.
GRILLOT: Alright, Jarrod, well thank you so much for being here today and giving us a lot to think about. Thank you.
HAYES: Thanks very much.
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