Racism & Ontological Security in America by Theodore R. Johnson

Racism & Ontological Security in America

By Theodore R. Johnson

During the last two presidential elections in the United States, Russia employed focused influence operations to undermine our democracy. The general approach was quite straightforward: exacerbate existing animus between groups of Americans and exploit those anxieties so that election outcomes are called into question. Unsurprisingly, given our nation’s history, racial tensions featured prominently in Russia’s tactics, ranging from spreading disinformation on Black Lives Matter activism to amplifying white supremacist rhetoric in hopes of inciting violence.

Taking aim at our democracy, however, was not just an attempt to destabilize domestic politics; in fact, it wasn’t even the primary goal. The strategic objective was to deliver critical blows to America’s standing in the world. To put a finer point on it, race relations in the United States were weaponized to advertise democracy’s weaknesses and threaten our national interests. This episode in contemporary electoral politics reveals a longstanding truth: if America hopes to achieve its interests abroad, it must address the racism on its shores.

Closing the vulnerability that domestic race relations exposes requires a deeper engagement with the role ontological security plays in American foreign policy.

Political scientist Jennifer Mitzen, building on the work of sociologist Anthony Giddens, argues that in the same way an individual’s sense of agency is derived from security and stability in one’s identity, nation-states also seek this ontological security. They will go to great lengths—perhaps even engaging in activities that traditional assessments would deem unwise or irrational—to maintain national identity. Political scientist Brent Steele asserts that should a nation-state believe its identity has been radically unsettled, “such a disruption is just as important to states as threats to their physical security.” That is, a nation may go to war to protect its identity and place in the world, even if its physical and economic security are not similarly at risk.

To demonstrate ontological security threats and responses in action, consider the military conflict in Afghanistan, arguably our nation’s longest war. America’s great power identity is bound up in three primary elements it deems superior to other nations: its military, its economy, and its democracy. Seen through an ontological security lens , the September 11 terrorist attacks targeted the symbols of these units of power: the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, and either the U.S. Capitol or the White House (this third target failed when Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania because passengers fought for control of the plane). The principal reason the United States waged war in Afghanistan for two decades was because its national identity had been successfully struck and challenged in front of the watching world. Long after national security interests had been satisfied—the threat of physical attacks from Al-Qaeda were virtually eradicated in short order—we remained. The 20-year venture showcased the lengths to which the United States would go to reclaim its great power identity.

Within this frame, then, the stories a nation-state tells itself about itself become elemental to its security interests. Its public history and mythologies not only root the national identity, but they are the vehicles by which that identity is conveyed to its people and nations around the world.

For the United States, the defining story is clear: it is a nation-state created on the idea that we are created equal, that we have inherent rights the government is required to recognize, and that governing power is granted and constrained by us, the people. That is, we offer ourselves as evidence that a liberal democratic republic in a multiracial society cannot only be established and long endure, but that it can prosper and become a great power.

This characterization of the United States., of course, runs headlong into its actual history, replete with the enslavement and oppression of Black Americans, the dispossession of dozens of Native American nations, and the subjugation and disenfranchisement of women and immigrants from all corners of the world. To manage this quandary, America’s ontological security has integrated and foregrounded a story of progress, of employing democracy with a dogged insistence toward becoming a more perfect union that has confronted its shortcomings. Events contravening this conception can be interpreted as security threats. Our foreign policy must be attentive to the formation and maintenance of our national identity, and grapple with how it dictates who exactly it is crafted to benefit and to what end.

Now, through an exercise of soft power using traditional and social media, our democracy is the focus of an ontological security strike yet again, and race relations define the angle of attack. American foreign policy must account for the damage done to the country’s interests when racial tensions within its borders weaken its position abroad. A democratic society rife with racialized conflicts is more susceptible to electing leaders that feed disunity at home and diminish the nation-state’s stature internationally.

How is a racially and ethnically diverse world facing climate change, the reemergence of great power conflicts, global pandemics, cyberattacks, and the rise of authoritarianism to trust American leadership when our values are in question? Americans do not agree on whether or not structural racism exists. We watch xenophobia and hate crimes increase in response to a pandemic, and then we politicize public health responses. We permit our elected officials to entertain the idea that the participation of majority Black and Hispanic communities in elections leads to fraudulent outcomes. We excuse those who fuel a politics of white grievance in their quest to gain and hold onto influence and power. And we are so partisan and divided that half of the country views the other half as evil and an existential threat to the American way of life.

What about the brutal clashes between militarized police and Black Americans demanding racial justice following yet another public killing inspires faith in our systems of justice? What about the violent overrunning of the U.S. Capitol by a nearly all-white mob carrying Confederate battle flags and threatening to lynch members of Congress makes our systems of democracy appealing? How can we expect nations watching our disingenuous bickering and bitter conflicts to trust us?

These are the questions adversarial nations put to an anxious world. Indeed, there is more than a century of evidence that other nations have used information warfare to target America’s identity as a liberal democracy, seeking to create what international security scholar Derek Bolton calls ontological insecurity. Other nations’ foreign policy and national security strategies have often employed tactics to create instability in our national identity and narratives and inflame existing divisions among Americans. During World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, enemy forces often peppered segregated American troops with leaflets filled with racist caricatures and depicting racial violence back home. And in the early years of the Cold War, when the United States would trumpet the virtues of democracy, the Soviet Union would respond, “And you lynch Negroes.” More recently, after George Floyd’s murder in Minnesota, Russia leapt at the opportunity to call out hypocrisy in the United States, and Iran launched a video game where players have to save Floyd from racist American police.

Race relations in the United States—and, importantly, the persistence of structural racism in shaping life chances and socioeconomic outcomes—is not a thorn in the side of an otherwise functioning liberal democracy. Rather, race has a starring role in the American story, and thus, is central to the country’s ability to feel ontologically secure. A foreign policy that does not account for this reality and compel a reckoning with racism is one that is destined to fall short of meeting the interests that will secure liberal democracy for posterity.