7 November 2011 –
Bumper Sticker of the Day – “If God had not wanted us to eat animals, He wouldn’t have made them out of meat!” You should try my black bean pork chile. It is good.
I have written a bunch on sovereignty. It isn’t a difficult concept. How much power does a sovereign have to maintain its sovereignty against the internal and external challenges it faces every day in this world? Does leadership use power correctly to maintain sovereignty or to increase the sovereign’s power? Today, I want to explore one of the basic characteristics of a society that creates durable sovereignty and the lack of which erodes sovereignty to a point of dissolution. Cohesion.
Cohesion in a group, organization, or state binds it together above the personal or family level. Also called Shared Identity, cohesion can exist on all levels of society. Cohesion in a country largely determines long-lasting sovereignty.
One type of cohesion is Racial Cohesion. A group of people who share common ancestors often pull together and call themselves by a particular name. Interestingly, when European settlers pushed through the North American continent, they often referred to Native American tribes by the names their enemies gave them. Many of these tribes’ names for themselves were simply “the people” or something similarly ego-centric. Indeed, a cohesive racial group usually has a name. As well, the name is applied to anyone who “looks like” or “sounds like”; he belongs to that particular tribe or race.
This look and sound alike test is durable. I once stood at a border post on the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda border. A Congolese border guard and I talked for some time about everything from football—soccer to Americans—to the price of a pair of boots in the U.S. vice in Goma, the nearby Congolese city. The guard’s most interesting comments were when I asked him how he could tell which people in the steady stream back and forth across the border should stopped and questioned about the legitimacy of their business. The guard was about 5’10” in height, about 200 pounds, and had a broad face with heavy set eyes and pronounced lips and broad nose. His French was heavily accented with Lingala, a language common among Congolese military and security forces, but not the language spoken in the Rift Valley area of Africa where we were standing. This guard’s eyes squinted in a serious way when he described one border crosser after another by his or her racial features. It was by racial features that the guard decided which person needed to be questioned.
One magnificent woman—to me, anyway—was a Tutsi, he said. She was tall, with a thin, angular build and cheeks bones that looked like they could cut through steel. She carried on her back a large bag and walked with long strides than added nobility to her movement. I was mesmerized; after all, I am an American who grew up on the millennia old mythology of the queens of Nubia invading Egypt and bringing their beauty with them. The guard said that this woman probably lived in a long-established Tutsi village further inland and was a Congolese citizen. The guard looked at her critically until she met his gaze and hesitated slightly. With a cock of the head, he assented to her passing unmolested. OK, I thought.
The guard then nodded at a man and three children who came through the border from the Rwanda pulling a Red Rider wagon full of bags of mangoes and yams. The family approached the guard, and the guard said something in a language that sounded like Kiswahili. The man responded in kind as the two men briefly touched foreheads. The family quickly went through the border with no inspection. The guard told me that the family was from a local tribe that also had land and family in Rwanda and was quite prominent in local politics. The family were Congolese citizens, he said. Hutus, I asked? The guard smiled and said yes. I asked if he, the guard, was Hutu as well. He quickly said that his mother was from the same local tribe as the family that just went through the border, but his father was from Kongo, in the far west of the Congo. His father was in the army and met his mother while serving there in the east. The guard was Kongo, he emphasized. He said that he spoke four languages, including French, but was Kongo. I then asked if he was Congolese. He said yes, but he was first Kongo. We talked a bit more, exchanged small gifts, as is the custom there, and I waved to him upon leaving, if only to show everybody there that I had his support if something went wrong later.
Racial cohesion, with common stories and mythology of origins, is a powerful unifying factor in all societies, even modern ones. The sense of exclusivity binds people together against outsiders, whorever that might be at the moment. Chinese are Chinese. Japanese are Japanese, no matter where they may live in the world at the moment. Kongo are Kongo. They look alike and sound alike. They may be nine hundred miles across the country from their ancestral origins, but they are Kongo. This guard and I exchanged gifts, but I will never be Kongo. I don’t look or sound the role. Are the Kongo sovereign because of this cohesion? Not much beyond the thoughts of this guard and in Kongo villages near the Atlantic slice of the country. But, does this racial cohesion influence the sovereignty of the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Absolutely, especially when there are at least three major racial groupings and over 200 recognized tribes in a country the size of the eastern United States.
Did the guard racially profile? Absolutely. And, it worked as the guard intended on that border post. After all, racial cohesion among groups, and the lack thereof, grinds with constant friction. The racial friction on that border is as dangerous—and inevitable—to the people in the region as is the friction between the tectonic plates that created Africa’s Rift Valley and its string of magnificent lakes, volcanoes, and mountains on the equator that sport glaciers. Ah yes, the friction. As I was wont to ask when I was teaching professional military classes to the Congolese military: Comment Créer un Congolais? How do you create a Congolese man or woman, a Congolese “tribe” or “race”, that draws strength from the peoples’ present cohesion but is first and foremost Conglese?
Cultural Cohesion accompanies and sits astride Racial Cohesion in most regions of the world. Its common religion, common mores, common language, common mythology, and a sense of exclusivity are almost as strong as Racial Cohesion. I posit that it is in developing a common cultural cohesion that diverse races can unite their sovereignty to create a stronger country.
Is it any surprise that Poland is a country that has fared well since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact? No, not for a country whose people had a cultural cohesion so strong that it survived being partitioned among other sovereign countries that invaded it. For generations it was not recognized as a country by other modern countries. But, it had a common language, Polish, with a rich history of literature. It had a common religion, Roman Catholicism, that helped create common mores as powerful as those that existed in any sovereign country in the 19th and 20th century. It had a common mythology of its latent strength that dated back to a Polish Empire in Eastern Europe that fought the Cossacks and Turks to a standstill. Indeed, Poland, as a cohesive people resisted the sovereignty of its overlords.
And, there was an exclusivity in being Polish that dominated my grandmother’s house as I remember it from my youth. She emigrated from Krakow to the U.S. in 1912, settled in Philadelphia, and then followed her brother and sister to eastern Montana to homestead where it looked a lot like the plains of Poland. I remember visiting her in Glendive, Montana, and listening to her talk in her funny accent. She was intensely proud of her four sons who served in World War Two. She was a four-star mother: one gold and three blue stars were in her front window for as long as I could remember. But, she also never talked about Germans or Russians without spitting first. The cohesion in her Polish culture, her strength, was refined by the forces trying to exploit or destroy it. She married a Lutheran and went to church with him from time to time. But, she was Catholic in her heart. Poles are Catholic, don’t you know?
Another example of how this cultural cohesion crosses borders occurred in the mid 1990s when I was stationed at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Command Europe (SHAPE), Mons, Belgium. This was the military headquarters for NATO. The political headquarters was 40 miles to the north in Brussels. The Soviet Union had collapsed only a few years earlier. The Warsaw Pact had collapsed with it. Countries like Poland were doing a diplomatic dance with NATO to get closer. NATO established a program called Partnership For Peace to accommodate the gradual rapprochement between former adversaries, and the eventual expansion of NATO to the East.
A Polish Army colonel was stationed at the Partnership For Peace building near SHAPE. One Christmas season, we were in another American’s home for dinner. This Polish colonel and his wife were guests as well. We were listening to Christmas music and talking politely about inconsequential things, as is the custom among the representatives of diverse, sovereign groups. Early in the evening, an obscure Christmas tune was played on the stereo. I started to hum the tune softly, and the Polish colonel’s eyes widened. He quickly asked how I knew that song. I told him that my grandmother emigrated from Poland and that I remember hearing that song as a young boy in her home. For the rest of the evening, there was a wonderful mood in the room. Our conversations became more intense, more specific, more searching for common answers. Finally, toward the end of the evening, this Polish colonel turned to me and grabbed my hand. He told me in a soft, clear voice, “You know, you were never the enemy.”
Where does cultural cohesion become too weak to have effect? I don’t know. I do know that the primary military and political organization that the Evil Empire used to threaten the West was not as cohesive as the Soviets would have hoped. Thank goodness we never had to find out on the battlefield how strong it really was.
Geographic Cohesion is another powerful force in determining a country’s sovereignty. If natural borders are clearly defined and adequately defended, then a gradual cohesion occurs among groups within the borders. This is especially true if the country is geographically isolated from other countries. Island countries such as Japan, The United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland have the advantage of oceans creating a buffer to allow internal cohesion to form with limited external pressures. Ask an Englishman when the last time anybody successfully invaded his homeland, and the year 1066 resounds with cohesive timbre in his voice. The Pyrenees that divide Spain from France on the Iberian Peninsula are a natural border. They were even more formidable than the Straits of Gibraltar in creating a geographically isolated cohesion sufficient enough to help form a modern, sovereign Spain. The ancient civilizations that coalesced in the Middle East and Egypt were isolated by the deserts and mountains of the region. Specific borders between countries were meaningless when an empire’s sovereignty usually derived from its control of cities—major centers of civilization and commerce in an otherwise rough environment.
In China, a civilization that refers to itself as “the land between the rivers”, the rivers’ natural borders were replaced through expansion by an ocean on the East, vast deserts on the West, and huge mountains to the South. This explains why only one Great Wall was built, to defend against invaders from the North. Vast distances and mountain chains enable a cohesion among a people as much as fortifications do. Rivers, the Great Wall, and mountains are constantly portrayed in Chinese folk and modern art. China is a civilization that has been cohesive enough to survive numerous invasions, foreign control, and the ravages of Mao’s Communism. It has strong racial, cultural, and geographic cohesion. It will continue because being Chinese is as strong an exclusivity cohesion factor as there is on earth.
Exclusivity forms a powerful cohesion in other countries as well. Japan is full of Japanese. Korea, on the peninsula, is full of Koreans. Egypt, along a narrow river and between two deserts, is full of Egyptians.
Fortunately, the long-established De Jure border between Canada and the United States supports sovereignty more than the De Facto cultural cohesion that exists north and south among groups on both sides of the border. Geographic differences often run east and west in North America. Many similarities run North and South. I have heard many times from Canadians in Alberta and Saskatchewan on one side and Americans in Montana and North Dakota on the other that we (yes, I do this as well) have more in common with each other than we do with Canadians and Americans from Toronto and New York. But, at the end of the day, the exclusivity of being Canadian and being American still is more cohesive for both countries than are regional similarities. For now, that is. What will happen when the oil fields in Alberta want to join the United States in fact as well as economically? .
A relatively new cohesive factor is “Concept of Governance” cohesion. This cohesion creates a new identity for a country based on a form of government. Importantly, Concept of Governance Cohesion must become stronger than race, ethnicity, and location allegiances if the concept is to be durable enough to sustain a country’s sovereignty. National Socialism in Nazi Germany failed. So did Communism in Russia; Communism has failed in all but name in China. These countries’ leaders tried to create a new mythology to unite the people. The new “Soviet Man” failed to materialize. So did Mao’s happy peasant society. In fact, I heard it once said that Communists exist now only in North Korea, Cuba, and in Berkley’s student union building.
Where has Concept of Governance cohesion succeeded? Only in the United States. We are Americans, and our ultimate sovereignty is based on a cohesion formed by our common concept of governance. It is unique in the world. How long will it last? I don’t know. Our infatuation with Diversity creates narrow, competitive cohesive factors that set group freedoms and rights against individual freedoms and responsibilities. The limited cohesion of diversity divides into local groups; the Concept of Governance Cohesion unites on a national level. Where is our sovereignty? I contend that the question I asked Congolese military officers should be posed again in the United States: Comment Créer un Américain?
To help answer that question, ask yourself now which countries are the most cohesive. By race? By language? By location? By strong borders? By concept of identity? By power to exert sovereignty? Then ask yourself if the United States has the necessary Concept of Governance Cohesion to overcome the divisive factors of diversity that exist with our borders. Is our mythology vibrant enough to consistently create new Americans in each generation and in each wave of immigrants?
I wonder. If we continue to make an industry and a political strategy out of highlighting and exploiting our racial and ethnic differences then our Concept of Governance Cohesion, what defines us as Americans, will continue to erode. If we do not promote the language of the roots of our governance—English—as a national language, then the interpretation of our laws will diffuse to irrelevance and contention. Laws will be based on different roots of language and their accompanying cultures. If we do not reduce illegal border crossings into the United State to a minor criminal problem, then our sovereignty will be suspect. Heavy influence of extraterritorial pressures on our decision-making will erode even our internal, political instrument of national power.
If we do not return to a predominance of individual obligations and rights over group rights and entitlements then our country’s concept of who we, and the accompanying cohesion, will change dramatically. Tragically, the Constitution will lose relevance. Finally, if we do not focus again on the concept of individual rights and obligations and abandon the idea that the government must provide basic needs for all Americans, then the resulting debt will enable outside pressures—the Chinese and others—to dictate what we as a country do. Our sovereignty, the exclusive right to exercise supreme authority power over our country and its dealings will be exercised elsewhere. In sum, we will not be much different than, say, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Cohesion is durable, but not an absolute. Race, culture, language, location, extraterritorial interests, and borders all create or impede the cohesion necessary for consolidating or eroding sovereignty. Leadership with a focus on how to create and sustain an American is the mythology of our Founding Fathers. The cohesion that derives from our roots is worth nurturing. Our sovereignty depends on it.
