On April 10, 1938, German nationalists conducted a sham referendum in German-occupied portions of Austria and in Germany itself to determine whether there should be Anschluss, union, between Germany and Austria. With the Nazis reporting over 99 percent support in both countries, Germany annexed Austria. Germany leader Adolf Hitler was not assuaged. All Germans should unite, he argued, which meant Germany also should control the Sudetenland, the border regions of Czechoslovakia historically populated by Germans.
The Munich Agreement, in which European countries chose to appease Hitler, did not start World War II, but they accelerated it and encouraged Hitler to believe he could invade Poland without consequence. Ethnic nationalists seldom stop their quest for expansion when they rule all their co-ethnicists; the next step is always to use their perceived needs to seize more resources or living space.
Today, the same pattern remains, even if policymakers forget history.
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein both invaded Kuwait and used chemical weapons against Iraq’s own Kurds under the flag of Arab nationalism.
In 1952, Egyptian Army Officer Gamal Abdul Nasser seized power in Cairo. He promoted Arab nationalism—the belief that all Arab states should unite to form a single entity. At the time of Nasser’s coup, there were nine independent Arab states. Within a decade, there would be 16. Nasser was impatient. He sponsored revolutions and coups to oust Arab monarchs, sparking wars and conflicts that killed tens of thousands of Arabs. He refused to accept national identity that did not rest on Arabism, even as his actions and assumptions promoted Egyptian supremacism.
Other Arab nationalist dictators would take Nasser’s ideology to an even greater extreme. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein both invaded Kuwait and used chemical weapons against Iraq’s own Kurds under the flag of Arab nationalism. Nor was Iraq alone. Ethnic supremacism repeatedly twisted into the idea that non-Arabs did not belong and unpinned, for example, Sudan’s genocide in Darfur. Algerian Kabyles also have faced discrimination as an outgrowth of the regime’s Arab nationalism.
National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger endorsed Mao Zedong’s “One China” demands as part of his initiative to peel China away from the Soviet Union. While mainland Chinese have controlled Taiwan for only four years out of the last 500, and while even Mao considered Taiwan a different country, Kissinger endorsed a policy that essentially mirrored British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s approach to unification of German lands. Today, policymakers worry that a Chinese attempt to annex Taiwan could spark a world war. Likewise, if the West defaults to China’s claim that it is the natural protector of all ethnic Chinese, does that mean that Beijing one day will demand control over Chinese in Vancouver or even San Francisco? It is not as farfetched as it might sound.
Somali nationalism is likewise destructive. Somalia’s appointed leaders prioritize the fantasy of a greater Somalia over the diligence of fixing Somalia itself. As a result, Al-Shabaab expands its safe-haven and now controls large swaths of the country and capital. Pan-Turanism in Turkey threatens broaden instability from the Balkans into Central Asia and lies at the root of Turkey’s ongoing land grab in Cyprus.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, too, cites ethnic nationalism as a justification for his current war in Ukraine. For a former KGB officer, Putin’s intelligence fell flat. His assumption that Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine would rather joint Russia than remain part of Ukraine was false, yet Putin continues to justify ethnic Russian unity not only to make claims on Ukraine, but also potentially to annex portions of Kazakhstan and the Baltics.
The danger, of course, grows in proportion to the diversity of the target population. In Iraq, then-Senator Joe Biden and Council on Foreign Relations President Les Gelb proposed ethnic and sectarian division of the country, without understanding there were no clear dividing lines since many towns and cities had Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmen, Sunnis, Shi‘a, and Christians living in close proximity, if not side by side. Their proposal, done in the name of ethnic unity, would have transformed Iraq into a second Yugoslavia.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many new states coalesced around ethnicity. Germany unified dozens of German states, and Italy consolidated a mosaic of smaller principalities and states. Ethnic groups organized across the Balkans to shed Ottoman domination. There is a difference, however, between a state organized around ethnicity, and blind adherence to ethnic nationalism.
To flirt with ethnic unity, however, is akin to dumping gasoline into a forest fire. It will not end well.
While the United States thrives on a compact of citizenship based on ideas rather than ethnicity, too many U.S. policymakers default to the notion that seeking transborder ethnic unity is legitimate, if not desirable. While today, everyone in the State Department acknowledges that Germany’s pre-World War II land grabs were wrong, and most also would condemn Russia’s more contemporary ambitions and actions, too many within the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs still harbor a romantic notion of pan-Arabism—while the State Department’s Africa Bureau endorses Mogadishu’s dreams of a greater Somalia, and many in the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs give credence to Turkish regional ambitions.
Frequent rotations and a preference for short-term solutions compound historical ignorance within the State Department, Pentagon, and even Central Intelligence Agency. To flirt with ethnic unity, however, is akin to dumping gasoline into a forest fire. It will not end well. Sometimes, doing the opposite is the key to peace: Today, there are essentially two Romanias, one of which is called Moldova. The same is true for Albania and Kosovo. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has done an admirable job forcing correction in how the State Department conducts diplomacy, but so long as U.S. diplomats treat as legitimate the ideologies that consistently lead to war, that job will not be complete.
