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Flinging the boomerang: locating instability and the threat potential of identity-bias in US national security policy

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Flinging the boomerang: locating instability and the threat potential of identity-bias in US national security policy

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FLINGING THE BOOMERANG:
LOCATING INSTABILITY AND THE THREAT POTENTIAL OF IDENTITY-BIAS IN US
NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY

by

Eboni “Nola” Haynes

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS)

August 2022

Copyright 2022 Eboni “Nola” Haynes

ii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my dissertation Chair, Dr. Ange-Marie Hancock-Alfaro, who pushed
and gave me space to create and heal. To my dissertation committee, Dr. Erroll Southers, Dr.
Geraldo (Gerry) Munck, and Ehsan Zaffar thank you for your guidance and lending your expertise
to this work. A very special thank you to my friends, squad and colleagues, Dr. Ifeoma Amah, Dr.
Cori Price-Tucker, Dr. Veri Chavarin, Dr. Sara Sadwani, Dr. Matt Mendez, Dr. Victoria Chonn-
Ching, Effie-Michelle Metallidis and Kensley Davis, thank you for your continuous support
through the years, offering advice and encouragement to keep going. To Exavier Pope, thank you
for helping with legal analysis and endless encouragement. To my organizations and affiliations,
International Studies Association (ISA), especially to the Women’s Council, American Political
Science Association (APSA), the foreign policy board, Women of Color Advancing Peace and
security (WCAPS), Black Professionals in International Affairs (BPIA), Diversity in National
Security Network (DINSN), Pacific Council on International Policy (PCIC), WestExec and
Evacuate Our Allies (EOA), thank you for the opportunities in policy and practitioner work as its
enriched my research and perspective in immeasurable ways. To my mentors—Michèle Flournoy,
Col. Chris Kolenda, PhD, and Asha Castleberry-Hernandez—thank you for helping me navigate
the practical space of national security. To Jeff Fields, thank you for your commitment to
diversifying national security and offering a practitioner perspective to my research. Thank you to
WCAPS founder and current Undersecretary to Arms Control and International Security, Dr.
Bonnie Jenkins for being a guiding light for women of color, and for both academics and
practitioners in national security and foreign policy.
To my aunt, Jennifer Haynes, thank you for always checking-in and providing
encouragement. To my parents, Cynthia Haynes, Earnest Haynes and stepmom Elaine Haynes for

iii
trusting my vision. Thank you to my mentors over the years, Dr. Edmond Keller (UCLA) and Dr.
Francis Schussler Fiorenza (Harvard Divinity School).

iv
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... ii
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ vi
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... vii
Chapter 1: National Security and Identity: A Path Towards a Dynamic Hybrid Model ................ 1
1.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1
2.1 Research Design, Question, and Hypothesis ........................................................................ 6
3.1 A Case for the Hybrid Model ................................................................................................ 7
4.1. Defining Threats ................................................................................................................ 12
4.1.2 Values and Material Threats ........................................................................................ 12
4.1.3 Ideational Threats ......................................................................................................... 17
5.1. Tracing Identity .................................................................................................................. 19
6.1 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 30
Chapter 2: Throwing the Boomerang: National Security Policy and Identity .............................. 33
1.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 33
2.1 Research Design .................................................................................................................. 36
3.1 The Evolution of Security and Identity ............................................................................... 36
4.1 The Boomerang Effect ........................................................................................................ 43
5.1 Postcolonialism and Critical Theory ................................................................................... 46
5.1.1. Criticizing Identity ...................................................................................................... 49

v
5.1.2 Critical theory: Religion as Category of Identity ......................................................... 51
6.1 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 55
Chapter 3: Material Threats and the Hybrid Model: Was the 2017 Travel Ban Justified? ........... 59
1.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 59
2.1 Research design ................................................................................................................... 63
3.1 Defining Terrorism ............................................................................................................. 63
4.1. Defining State-Sponsored Terrorism ................................................................................. 67
5.1 The Case for Material Weapons: The Blacklist and Sanctions ........................................... 70
6.1 Tracing Phases of SST ........................................................................................................ 73
7.1 The Final Dot: the 2017 Travel Ban ................................................................................... 79
8.1 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 85
Bibliography .................................................................................................................................. 88
Appendices .................................................................................................................................... 96
Charts ........................................................................................................................................ 96

vi
List of Figures
Figure 1. Current list of states on US blacklist. ............................................................................ 66
Figure 2. Shows the amount of yearly global deaths caused by terrorist attacks from 1970
until 2001, then from 2002 to the present. ........................................................................ 76
Figure 3. Peak Phase: 10-year view of deaths caused by terrorism in Iran, Syria, and Libya. .... 96
Figure 4. Peak Phase: 20-year view of deaths caused by terrorism in Iran, Syria, and Libya. .... 96
Figure 5. Peak Phase: Expanded and isolated view of deaths in Libya. ...................................... 97
Figure 6. A 17-year view of death totals across states listed on the blacklist. North Korea
does not show up on the diagram because data is not available for North Korea
during this time period and the Our World in Data map does not extend pass 2017. ...... 97
Figure 7. Map of where global terrorism was focused before 9/11. ............................................. 98
Figure 8. Map of the impact of 9/11. ............................................................................................ 98
Figure 9. Map of global terrorism after 9/11. It reverted to 2000 levels. ..................................... 99
Figure 10. All three phases of terrorism from its peak in the 1970s, intermediate in the 90s
to the lowest in the late nineties to 2000. .......................................................................... 99
Figure 11. Graph of the impact 9/11 had on global death totals. Where G5’s N = 350, G6’s
N=3000 ........................................................................................................................... 100
Figure 12. Graph of a sharp decline in deaths in 2002. .............................................................. 100
Figure 13. A 57-year overview of deaths caused by terrorism. There are spikes in 2001 and
in Iraq and Afghanistan following US involvement. Salient for the paper, there was
not an immediate threat of terrorism leveled towards the US. Following 9/11, the
US remained flat up to the year the Travel Ban was enacted. ........................................ 101

vii
Abstract
Hypothesis: If identity is a useful empirical domain for Branch’s hybrid model, then
there’s an increased chance that it can help explain motivations and outcomes of national
security policymaking decisions that trigger a boomerang effect.
This dissertation is written as three separate papers that all address the threat potential of
identity. “Chapter 1: National Security and Identity: A Path Towards a Dynamic Hybrid Model”
discusses how realist-materialism has long since dominated national security discourses on
threats. Constructivism, a social theory, is a challenge to realism since its gained prominence
within security studies, the area that studies traditional and emerging threats. Constructivism
posits that ideational threats driven by ideas and ideology are as important as material threats
because ideas motivate actions or material responses. More realist leaning theorists privilege
material threats because military capacity, might and impact are measurable, visible and costly.
Nuanced perspectives align with solutions that grant both types of similar importance, this
approach is known as the hybrid model, Branch. To help resolve the problem of threat primacy,
I apply the hybrid model to identity from a national security angle to further test the viability of
the model. I achieve this by exploring the evolution of the national security material-ideational
debate along with tracing identity literature across Political Science, and International Relations,
mostly focusing on security studies. The overarching goal of this paper is to generate a pathway
that helps explain the threat-potential of decisionmakers weaponizing identity in policymaking,
for instance the 2017 and 2020 identity-focused Travel Bans.
“Chapter 2: Throwing the Boomerang: National Security Policy and Identity” qualitatively
synthesizes identity-focused security studies literature to highlight implications of the 2017 and
2020 Travel Bans. I argue identity is dynamic especially at a point of convergence. When identity

viii
collides with itself, when the bias of a decisionmaker shapes policy that vilifies or others a specific
target population, a boomerang effect occurs, stretching normal politics to an extreme end. Using
the comparative method with critical theory analysis, theoretically this chapter is responding to
challenges within the broader fields of Political Science and International Relations regarding
identity-based scholarship. What’s at stake is, as anti-identity rhetoric increases in the US and
abroad, it is important to present a balanced representation of identity scholarship. Like critics of
race-based work or critical theories such as post-colonial studies, identity as a broader field of
study struggles to gain prominence within the larger cannon of IR.
“Chapter 3: Material Threats and the Hybrid Model: Was the 2017 Travel Ban Justified?”
is attempting to resolve the question, Why was there such urgency for the 2017 ban considering a
decrease in global terrorism while the real material threat is an increase in nuclear proliferation?
Fear of terrorists entering the US from mostly Muslim-majority states was the public-facing reason
the Trump Administration gave to justify the policy. I investigate the origins of the 2017 Travel
Ban, its relationship the to the terror watch list better known as the blacklist and sanctions.
Additionally, this chapter wrestles with claims that materialism functions independently from
ideationalism, thus challenging the hybrid model. Essential to the overall argument is the blacklist
and sanctions are material artifacts like the bans. A correlating question is, why did the Trump
Administration depart from the traditional use of the blacklist banning entire countries versus
individuals, banks or companies?
Refer to the appendix for charts and graphs depicting global terrorism from the 1970s to
corresponding years of the three phases depicting global death totals caused by terrorism. 2001,
2010, and 2014 are outlier years, showing heavy spikes in terrorist activity. This work is relevant

ix
for international relations, specifically national security, US foreign policy, arms control and
international security.

1
Chapter 1: National Security and Identity: A Path Towards a Dynamic Hybrid Model
1.1 Introduction
As the invasion of Ukraine by Russia rages on, much of the world is asking for the first
time, why is it happening? There are historical reasons rooted in the dispute between Russian,
versus Ukrainian culture and right to sovereignty, East versus West, democratic versus autocratic
identities. Inevitably, this war will reshape the international system thus International Relations
(IR) as a discipline will need to rethink its dogged commitment to post-World War II theories
and applications pertaining to traditional engagements of war and Westphalian sovereignty.
Prior to Ukraine and Russia, IR was undergoing a paradigm shift challenging realist and
neo-realist concepts that understands the international system as anarchic, ungovernable yet
rationale, in terms of state’s interests. When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine for the second time,
following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, on February 24, 2022, realist rationality was
embarrassed because his irrational invasion of a sovereign country defied any traditional thinking
in this area. What the invasion proved to more constructivist leaning IR thinkers was Putin’s
motivations were personal, not driven by rational acts. In other words, the invasion only drained
Russia of its resources, European allies and reputation as a global power and leading military
force. The autocrat is isolating Russia reminiscent of the Cold War era politics.
This paper is not about the Ukrainian, Russian war, however, as a constructivist leaning
IR political scientist intent on elevating identity beyond culture to a security matter, this current
world event that will undoubtedly reshape the international system provides a great example of
why it is crucial to understand what motivates decision-making beyond the material needs of the
state.

2
Turning to a broader theoretical view, security studies is an area within IR that focusses
on the role of decisionmakers mostly during a time of crisis. Much of the analysis is grounded in
testing the viability of democratic peace theory, balance of power, security dilemma, deterrence
and securitization.
1
There is also a robust debate around threats relating to types and importance.
This unsettled debate centers on the primacy of two threat types: 1) ideational; and 2)
material. Constructivist leaning theorists argue that ideational threats are as important as material
threats because ideas motivate actions. More realist leaning theorists privilege material threats
because military capacity, might and impact are measurable, visible and costly. Nuanced
perspectives align with solutions that grant both types similar importance, this approach is known
as the hybrid model. Jordan Branch in “Technology and Constructivism: Interrogating the
Material-Ideational Debate” argues that certain sectors of society such as the technology industry
serve as an example of how ideas that create technology matter as much as the physical
manifestation of weaponizing tech.
2

To help resolve the problem of threat primacy, I apply the hybrid model to identity from
a national security angle to further test the viability of the model. One reason for this is technology
is often used in constructivist literature to capture everything from change over time to
developing nuclear weapons. While identity as an empirical domain differs significantly from the
materiality of technology, its impact on international politics is growing in importance. For

1
T. Balzacq, “A Theory of Securitization: Origins, Core Assumptions, and Variants,” Securitization
Theory, 15–44 (Routledge, 2010); J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (W. W. Norton
& Company, 2014); , J. S. Nye, “The Future of American Power: Dominance and Decline in
Perspective,” Foreign Affairs 89, no. 6 (2010): 2–12; K. N. Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold
War,” International Security 25, no. 1 (2000): 5–41; K. N. Waltz, “Realist Thought and Neorealist
Theory,” Journal of International Affairs 44, no. 1 (1990): 21–37.
2
B. Jordan, “Technology and Constructivism: Interrogating the Material-Ideational Debate” in
Constructivism Reconsidered: Past, Present, and Future (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2018); A. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

3
instance, identity intersects with various international problems such as war, immigration and
Great Powers rebalancing.
The current problems with viewing identity as an empirical domain within security studies
and political science writ large are 1) It is a catchall term, typically relegated to realm of culture;
2) When broken down into specific categories of race/ethnicity, gender/s, socio-economic status,
nationality or religion, it is treated as a statistical variable; and 3) It is challenging, but not
impossible to measure. In Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists, Sylvan and Metskas
discuss five approaches to measure identity: a) experiments; b) discourse; c) content analysis; d)
open-ended surveys; and e) closed surveys.
3
These approaches focus more on group identities
and non-elites, which run counter to the way security studies centers the decisionmaker. In IR the
dependent variable (DV) is usually the state, in security studies, the DV is typically the
decisionmaker. In this chapter, I explore the evolution of the national security material-ideational
debate along with tracing identity across Political Science, and IR, mostly focusing on security
studies.
Identity/ies of decisionmakers can affect decision-making, particularly policymaking.
4

This crucial point elevates identity beyond a problem for culture to grapple with, it is also a
security matter. To drive home this point, the violent insurrection on the United States (US)
Capitol on January 6, 2021 (1/6) was driven by ideologies rooted in white supremacy, which is
another expression of identity and motivating factor in ideational threats. Identity intersected with
national security on 1/6 because the attack was meant to destabilize democracy.

3
R. Abdelal et al., “Identity as a Variable” in Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Sylvan and Metskas, 2009.
4
Jarrod Hayes, “Securitization, Social Identity, and Democratic Security: Nixon, India, and the Ties That
Bind,” International Organization 66 (2012): 63–93.

4
National security is understood as a promise to safeguard American interests and
democratic values from threats domestically and abroad. That promise is reinforced by the
material reality of the United Stated military. As a category of study within security studies,
national security is assessed through the lens of 1) material and 2) ideational threats. These types
of threats are theoretically linked to the realist versus constructivism debate. Material threats, like
realism hold a supremacy of importance because real power as in military responses are tangible
and measurable. Whereas, ideational threats, such as ideology or assessing the impact identity
has on decision-making are less tangible and difficult to measure because ideas are invisible and
content analysis of public statements of decisionmakers can be performative. Plus, identity is a
catchall, describing everything from ascriptive, political to cultural identities.
5
This chapter will
wage into the existing material versus ideational debate, aligning with Branch’s hybrid model
using identity as an empirical domain explaining its hybrid function in both material and
ideational spheres.
6
The question motivating this, is, what is the threat potential of identity?
This question is motivated by real threats emerging and reemerging in the international
system. The rise of the dictator coupled with the fight to protect existing democracies is driven
by antidemocratic ideologies and ideas potentially resulting in material responses. The current
Russian threat to Ukrainian sovereignty and identity is a salient example. Spending years thinking
about identity attempting to shed light on its importance as both a threat and vulnerability, I thread
together what earlier national security thinkers and practitioners were trying to resolve. From
Morgenthau, Wolfers, McNamara, and Hermann to Katzenstein they comprehended that security

5
Wendt, 1999
6
Branch, 2018

5
and defense were more than material, something else was involved.
7.
While these thinkers and
practitioners did not express this unknown specter as identity, they provided a pathway to take
seriously ideas and ideology. This work has a level of urgency considering the desire for an
autocrat leader is growing in the US.

The Trump Administration, much like Putin’s invasion of Ukraine this year, eschewed
normative security practices and policies that relied on rationale leaders acting in the interest of
the state. Rather policies like the 2017 and 2020 Travel Bans expressed bias against Muslims and
African states, an issue chapters two and three details. Personal grievance or identity-bias has no
place in policymaking, yet recent events 1/6, Russian invasion of Ukraine show how ideational
threats can result into a material threat.
This chapter will proceed in the following way. Section one puts forth that the hybrid
model can benefit from using identity as an empirical domain. Section two will present my overall
research questions and hypothesis. Section three has two functions: 1) to introduce Branch’s
hybrid model; and 2) to argue that identity can replace technology as a useful empirical domain.
Following the overall argument, section four traces how the valuation and definitions of
ideational and material threats evolved overtime. Section five offers an overview of Political
Science and IR’s treatment of identity agreed and clashed. Prevailing binary constructs of identity
positions it as being oppositional to broader, less complicated categories like American or
democrat or republican. However, other perspectives view identity as layered, multiple and
complicated. Throughout this chapter, I suggest that binary constructs such as rational versus

7
H. J. Morgenthau, “The Problem of Sovereignty Reconsidered,” Columbia Law Review 48, no. 3 (1948),
341–365; P. Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Arnold Wolfers, “National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol,”
in American Defense and Detente, ed. Eugene J. Rosi (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1952); Charles Hermann,
“Are the Dimensions and Implications of National Security Changing?” Mershon Center Quarterly Report
3, no 1. (1977); Robert S. McNamara, The Essence of Security (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).

6
irrational, Us versus Them does not capture the complexity of how identity can drive
decisionmakers to insert personal bias into their policymaking decisions.
2.1 Research Design, Question, and Hypothesis
In Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists, of the five approaches mentioned,
none of them focuses on elites. This makes sense considering N=1, which makes measuring how
the identity of decisionmaker impacts policymaking challenging. Content analysis is a potential
method for this type of inquiry, however, when I explored that option, the N was also small.
Chapter two is quantitively focused, whereas this chapter is focused on theory generation. I
achieve this by exploring the evolution of the national security material-ideational debate along
with tracing identity literature across Political Science, and IR, mostly focusing on security
studies. The reason for this is, after surveying security literature, what I found missing is a way
to explain the threat-potential of decisionmakers weaponizing identity through national security
policymaking.
Bearing in mind, the US’s long history of invoking national security to discriminate
against certain populations, Chinese Exclusion Act, Korematsu (1944), Patriot Act and as recent
as the 2017 and 2020 Travel Bans. As the US struggles with a growing population advocating
for autocratic rule, buoyed by an allegiance to neo-Christian, white supremacy ideology,
dismantling of women’s rights, restricting voting rights and revoking civil rights of Lesbian Gay
bisexual Transgender Questioning Intersex Asexual (LGBTQIA) members, polices are being
weaponized against vulnerable populations and at times exported through foreign policy, again
the Travel Bans are strong examples.
By merging threats and identities literatures, questions emerged, such as what threats are
valued? In other words, national security literature is focused on the idea of centering American

7
values, but those values are ambiguous at best. Another subsequent question is what degree can
a decision-maker, make objective choices when their own identity interests are involved and
informed by a binary, realist-based construct of US versus Them? Lastly, constructivism as a
social theory helps situate the ideational-material debate outside of realism, but does it go far
enough? Does constructivism alone explain the complicated role identity plays as both a threat
and vulnerability? From these questions, I generated a hypothesis focusing on identity and
causality.
8
Hypothesis: If identity is a useful empirical domain for Branch’s hybrid model, then
there’s an increased chance that it can help explain what causes threats.
The next section details Branch’s (2018) hybrid model and highlights existing tensions
between realism and constructivism.
3.1 A Case for the Hybrid Model
International Relations (IR) is an area within Political Science that looks at the structure
and motivations behind global politics and decision-making. It was born out of a western-centered
eagerness to understand decisions and strategies that motivated world wars. There was a
hierarchical norm that positioned IR in a class or category that seemed impossible for women and
persons of color to contribute to the existing body of literature, until recently. Prevailing
ideologies of sexism and racism ostracized those groups from contributing to IR because
traditional thinking intellectually discriminated against non-White, Euro or Anglo, male IR
academics, inferring that IR grappled with complicated theories about states, power and strategy,
concepts too difficult for outsiders to master. This meant IR was an exclusive club, devoid of
diverse thoughts, ideas and perspectives. Theories about the world were drawn from a position

8
Pearl, J. (2010). The Foundation of Causal Inference. Sociological Methodology, 40, 75–149. See also
Sober, E., & Papineau, D. (1986). Causal Factors, Causal Inference, Causal Explanation. Proceedings of
the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 60, 97–136.

8
of dominance and ignored how the international structure created the Other, subaltern or the
binary structure of Us versus Them.
9

As IR progressed beyond World War II, Vietnam and the Cold War and to lesser degree
September 11, 2001, IR scholars began rethinking about the chokehold the dominant theory of
realism and its relative, neo-realism had on the field. Wendt, Guzzini, and others began
incorporating more of a social view regarding the construct of the international system and less
of a pessimistic, Machiavellian, anarchic world view.
8
Couched in the middle of the harsh and
cold realist perspective and the social view is the institutional driven theory, liberalism.
9
As
constructivism began informing IR work in the 1990s, the three approaches began battling for
scholarly dominance. In as much as IR is undergoing a paradigm shift, a move from realism and
neo-realism to asking questions about diverse phenomena impacting the international system,
such as global health crisis, emerging technology to human security and insecurities, there is an
ongoing conversation about the epistemological favored constructivism’s ability to situate
identity and explain causality, the empirical bedrock of IR.
10

Within the broader field of IR, research on the intersection of identity and decision-
making stems largely from the Copenhagen School (CS) and security studies. The Copenhagen
School’s contribution to security studies is attributed to the seminal constructivist work, Identity,

9
Rivera-Rivera, M. Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire. St Louis: Chalice Press.;
RiveraRivera, M. 2007 The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God. Westminster: John
Knox Press.; Salter, M. 2007. Barbarians and Civilizations in International Relations. Pluto Press.; S.
Huntington, Who are We? Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon and Schuster,
20050; S. Guzzini, “A Reconstruction of Constructivism in International Relations,” European Journal of
International Relations 6, no. 2 (2000): 147–82; A. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
10
Jarmon, 2014; Caldwell and Williams, 2016; Gueldry, Gokcek and Hebron, 2019.

9
Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe.
11
CS approaches security from a more
constructivists approach, which nuanced more traditional, realist, neo-realist views of security.
Constructivism essentially argues that society, culture and people—chiefly decision-makers and
stake holders have a direct impact on the way states respond to other states.
12
Existing debates
between realism, neorealism also described as rational-structural approaches positions
constructivism as a social theory versus a substitutive theory. This view is motivated by the belief
that constructivism lacks predicative power, which some social scientists believe is what the work
should do, while others disagree.
13
This tension between realism, its offshoots and constructivism
extend to another binary debate found mostly in national security literature. That debate is
between ideational and material threats.
Branch (2018) argued that framing international politics from a material and ideational
lens is the right approach, however, it is a mistake to pit them against each other because they are
inextricably linked - pushing back on theoretical and real-world claims that material threats are
most important because military might be measurable and causalities are corporal, not abstract
like ideas, ideology and identity. I argue that ideas and ideology motivate military responses while
identity, such as nationality, positionality (status, race/ethnicity, gender) and religion inform how
decisions to engage in conflicts are made.

11
Waever, Buzan, and Keslstrup. (1993). Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe.
Palgrave McMillian.
12
P. J. Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1996); F. Kratochwil, “Religion and (Inter-)National Politics: On the
Heuristics of Identities, Structures, and Agents,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 30, no. 2 , (2005):
113–140; N. Onuf and F. F. Klink, “Anarchy, Authority, Rule,” International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 2
(1989): 149–173.
13
Bertucci et al. 2018.

10
Vladimir Putin is a strong example for this. He is motivated by an ideology that runs
counter to Western democracy and Western security alliances. His intersecting identities as an
Eastern European, white male, former intelligence spy elevated during the time of Empire in
Russia positions him to believe that Russian culture and society is superior to that of Ukraine’s,
a former colony of the former The Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR). It is Putin’s belief
in Russian identity as superior to Ukraine’s identity, motivated his actions to illegally invade
Ukraine twice, once in 2014 again in 2022.
14

The Putin example lends further credit to the hybrid argument and for the position that
this paper takes about a). ideational threat-making including an identity component in addition to
ideas and ideology and b). identity as a useful empirical domain for the hybrid model. Chapters
two and three will test to see if the hybrid model only works under specific conditions such as
technology or has the elasticity to explain more abstract empirical domains such as identity?
Since identity is a constructed taxonomy of categories, not tangible like military products
technology can produce; the challenge is proving its theoretical usefulness for material threats
first. Branch (2018) designed the hybridity model with technology as an empirical domain in
mind. Therefore, identity must satisfy Branch’s conditions for the hybrid model and if identity
does meet his conditions, then it lends further credit to the hybrid model being a robust analytical
tool. Branch described his model the following way: step one: a). the empirical example must
align with goals of international politics and step two: b). the empirical example must meet the
qualifications of material and ideational threats.

14
The occupation of Crimea was more of a proxy war, unlike the upfront invasion of Ukraine that started
February 24, 2022. Russia never formally took responsibility for the 2014 conflict. However, the United
States sanctioned Russian banks and key figures. US Department of Treasury Ukraine/Russia-related
sanctions. https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/sanctions-programs-and-
countryinformation/ukraine-russia-related-sanctions

11
Important for international Must fit material +
politics ideational parameters

For identity to work as an empirical domain it must directly inform, or impact weapons and
communications capabilities plus satisfy definitions of material and ideational threats. Identity
satisfies the social construction of ideas condition per Wendt and how we communicate often
depends on cultural factors and outcomes according to conflict management and negotiations
literature.
15
However, the questions become, is identity integral to making weapons and creating
artifacts? Branch describes artifacts as strictly material. Winner queried if “artifacts have
politics?” Similarly, to Branch, Winner uses technology as an empirical domain but goes farther
to include a description of what he labeled, “political artifacts.”
16
Winner’s description of a
political artifact as having internal sociological systems impacting external social systems can
apply to the national security policy and decision-making ecosystem, including defense and
weapons. The next section will expand on this concept and focus on the development of threat-
perception by weaving together real-world concerns stemming from Vietnam with national
security thinkers from World War II through the millennium.

15
Natandsmyr, J. and Rognes, J. (1995). Culture, Behavior, and Negotiation Outcomes: A Comparative
and Cross-Cultural Study of Mexican and Norwegian Negotiators. The International Journal of Conflict
Management, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 5-29
16
L. Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedalus 109, no. 1 (1980). Reprinted in The Social Shaping
of Technology, ed. D. MacKenzie and J. Wajcman (London: Open University Press, 1985).

Weapons
Communications capabilities
Create artifacts
Socially constructed by ideas

12
4.1. Defining Threats
4.1.2 Values and Material Threats
Walt (1991) defined security studies as, “… the study of the threat, use and control of
military force.”
17
The father of national security scholarship described the function of national
security as having “some degree of protection of values.”
18
Taken together, the question that
emerges is, what type of threats are valued? This section will wade into the security debate that
traditionally favored the primacy of material threats over and above ideational threats, the sphere
that takes seriously the threat-potential of ideas.
The World War II, Cold War position is grounded in a realist, self-interested and glib
perspective about the reality of the anarchic international system. Under the realist framework,
the unit of measurement is typically the state, a cold rational actor that is built to compete for
power and secure against its enemies, which can be any state at any given time. From the vantage
point of IR, due to this cold reality of state competition driven by material insecurities, privileging
state-interest pre-conditions rational security choices.
Kolodziej’s “Renaissance in Security Studies? Caveat Lector!” critiqued Walt’s realist
driven article on security studies. Kolodziej claimed that Walt’s definition of security studies was
theoretically narrow due to its strict allegiance to realism.
19
Kolodziej pushed back on the
limitations of analyzing the international system through a pessimistic lens that sees state
relationships as manipulative, coercive, institutionally driven by rational, self-interested actors,
stakeholders and decisionmakers.

17
Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?"
18
Wolfers, “National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol.”
19
E. Kolodziej, “Renaissance in Security Studies? Caveat Lector!” International Studies Quarterly 36,
no. 4 (1992): 421–438.

13
One of the earliest national security scholars, Wolfers wrote about security values as an
ambiguous symbol. The ambiguity of what state interest values did not immediately resonate, it
remained dormant in the academic world for a long time.
20
Locating the symbolism of values was
eventually sidelined favoring a typology of threats. The debate between the valuation of types of
threats, material or ideational began redefining national security literature.
21
While Hermann
(1977) also defined national security in terms of values, he predated Kolodziej’s (1992) critique
of Walt (1991) and realism by challenging the primacy of material, realist-based threats.
22
Under
realism, national security, corresponded to “…high value expectancy… realistic expectancy of
maintaining influence” (Lasswell and Kaplan 1950), which meant realism and materialism
defined the way states interacted with each other.
23

There was no room for understanding states beyond strategic deterrence. In a US context,
the role the individual or decision makers played was outweighed by a singular goal of securing
American values, also understood broadly as democracy. This established priority entailed
normative claims about the nature of what democracy was and how America emerged as the
protector of its high idealism. While discourse around the material nature of national security
ramped up among World War II scholars, the growing war in Vietnam challenged not only the
material reality of fighting an asymmetrical war in the jungle, but an anti-Communist ideology.
This new context of war, drove decisionmakers to rethink discourse about limitations of a strict
World War II-centric perspective.

20
Wolfers, “National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol.”
21
D. Bobrow, Components of Defense Policy (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965). Bobrow wrote before
Hermann, however I mention him here to acknowledge his contribution to defense and security literature.
22
C. Hermann, “Are the Dimensions and Implications of National Security Changing?” Mershon Center
Quarterly Report 3, no 1. (1977). “… the expectation of retaining and enhancing the ability to partake of
highly regarded value outcomes free of obstructions. National security thus becomes security with respect
to value outcomes desired by those who comprise the effective political base of a nation.”
23
H. D. Laswell, and A. Kaplan, Power and Security (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950).

14
Robert McNamara, who served as Secretary of Defense, remarked in 1968 that “We are
not playing a semantic game with these words; the trouble is that we have been lost in a semantic
jungle for too long and have come to identify security with exclusively military phenomena and
most particularly with military hardware. It just isn’t so.”
24
This constituted a powerful challenge
to the linear expression of military-based security that still predominated in both the academic
and policy worlds. It therefore looked as if McNamara in 1968—clearly ahead of his time a half
century ago—had come to accept, at least to some degree, that military responses to security
threats are not always enough. McNamara’s revelation was informed by the reality of losing a
war to a materially inferior military. Theoretically, an argument can be made that realism,
understood as rationality driven by self-interest can explain the extreme guerilla tactics
Vietnamese engaged in.
The supremacy material-realism held in security literature did not consider the power of
ideas and Vietnamese culture and identity. Therefore, military leaders and political
decisionmakers relied too heavily on the size and professionalism of the US military and ignored
the cultural and political identities of Vietnam.
Following McNamara’s challenge to expanding the definition of security, Hermann began
to also question the primacy of material security. Hermann asserted that the future must also be
safeguarded and protected, not just “values previously acquired.” At that point, Hermann did not
argue for integration of ideas per se, in as much as he realized “security is both about the avoidance
of loss and prevention of blocked gain.”
25
Hermann’s explication of national security still leaned
toward a material response to loss and overcoming forces that might block gains. Where his
definition differed from earlier expositions on the matter of determining what constitutes a threat.

24
R. S. McNamara, The Essence of Security (New York: Harper & Row, 1968).
25
McNamara, The Essence of Security.

15
Hermann (said, “… a threat can be seen as the “anticipated obstruction of some value.”
24
The
valuation of material-realism over ideas and culture adapted as the Cold War began. One reason
being, a hot war requires weapons, whereas the US had to infiltrate the former Soviet Union’s
culture, an older culture steeped in a history of espionage, something the US was new to in
comparison, Zegart.
26

Ultimately, Hermann’s model, describing aspects of national security, revealed that
strategic deterrence was not the singular answer to security. As Hermann was writing along the
backdrop of the Vietnam War, the Cold War with the former Soviet Union was ramping up.
Foreign policy, military and intelligence experts now had the dual threats of Communism, an
ideationally driven threat along with the material threat of nuclear proliferation. While Hermann
developed a model expanding discourse around national security beyond military intervention,
ideational threats were still undervalued. What the experience of Vietnam and threat of nuclear
holocaust did was move the national security community towards a flexible security, akin to
Wendt’s concept of rump materialism.
27
Rump materialism rejects the stricter constructivist
position that the international system is not dependently affected by material forces. Instead, rump
materialism recognizes that social forces impact international politics, but it is not a necessary
condition for materialism all the time. Rump materialism is not as rigid as earlier security

26
A. Zegart, Spies, Lies and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2022).
27
S. Smith, “Wendt’s World,” Review of International Studies 26 (2000): 151–163. “The problem is that
Wendt seems to alter his view of the relationship between the material and the ideational. Sometimes the
former has ‘some intrinsic causal powers’, at other times the ideational constitutes the material. Thus he
wants to ‘defend a ‘rump” materialism’ which opposes the more radical constructivist view that brute
material forces have no independent effects on international politics. This rump materialism sees material
factors having three types of ‘independent’ effects: the distribution of capabilities, the technical
composition of material capabilities, and geography and natural resources. For Wendt, at some level
material forces are constituted independently of society and affect society in a causal way. Material forces
are not constituted solely by social meanings. Yet in other places, Wendt argues the opposite: ‘the effects
of anarchy and material structure depend on what states want. It is only because of their interaction with
ideas that material forces have the effects they do.”

16
concepts; however, it is not quite arguing for a hybrid interpretation of threats and phenomena
either.
Hermann, writing before Wendt left a pathway towards understanding that the world does
change. Neorealism, by contrast, would argue that the world is in fact predictable due to its static
nature grounded in state-interests. These states join to form an anarchic international system that
is not supposed to privilege personal interests or grievances over state interest. The dominant
neorealist view of security, which emerged from a sense that the system post World War II would
remain in place, began to loosen with expositions from the Vietnam era, with Hermann (1977) as
an exemplar.
Agreed upon as a turning point in the academic literature, the effort from Katzenstein
(1996) continued to expand on the definition of national security. Hermann left an opening for
cultural explanations of security because he located the evolving rather static nature of threats
within the international system. Decades later, scholars with interests in social theory went
through that doorway. The team of scholars assembled by Katzenstein offered a post-Cold War
challenge to realist concepts of national security. This came about through inclusion of a
sociological perspective to complement existing rationalist theories. This perspective, with its
newfound emphasis on the social world, embraced alternative ways of thinking about national
security. Katzenstein, most notably talks about identity, norms and culture. This clearly is a
constructivist-inspired departure from earlier Cold War, neo-realist definitions of national
security.
Katzenstein observed that “security interests are defined by actors who respond to
cultural factors. This does not mean that power, conventionally understood as material

17
capabilities, is unimportant for an analysis of natural security.”
28
The Katzenstein strand of
national security analysis is where the hybridization model of material and ideational threats
begin to take shape. The Cold War evolved into a silent struggle of ideas or competing ideologies:
one liberal the other communist. Nuclear build-ups ensued as a material manifestation under
overall conditions of increasingly entrenched stalemate and concerns about crisis escalation to
war. While Hermann did not explicitly draw identity into the frame or use constructivist language
privileging identity and ideas; he understood threats were diverse and called for different types
of intervention beyond material.
To achieve this broadening out from relying on the state as a fixed dependent variable,
Hermann understood the relationship between state-interest and decision-making in a more
comprehensive way. Its origins approximate the time at which Hermann intimated that variant of
realism—still predominant within many sectors of IR—do not capture all the complex behavioral
and ideological motivations of a decision-maker to enact certain policies Vasquez.
29
More than
just pursuit of material power or security is at work when leaders decide on foreign policy
Kolodziej.
30
In as much as Vietnam is not credited in IR as a critical, strategic turning point the
way World War II and the Cold War are, for constructivist thinkers, Vietnam is a game changing
case study.
4.1.3 Ideational Threats
What is an ideational threat and how does it differ from material threats? During the late
90s to 2000s, constructivists began to assert social and cultural arguments into IR. Issues around

28
P. J. Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1996).
29
J. Vasquez, The Power of Power Politics: From Classical Realism to Neotraditionalism (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1999).
30
E. Kolodziej, “Renaissance in Security Studies? Caveat Lector!” International Studies Quarterly 36,
no. 4 (1992): 421–438; Vasquez, The Power of Power Politics.

18
democratic peace and identity started to push against realist views of the international system.
Meyer and Strickmann says an ideational threat is a security threat that has social implications,
which also aligns with Winner’s description of a political artifact.
31
In traditional IR, the structure
of the international system is the core area of concern.
32
Adler et al. and Wendt define ideational
threat as being “from a modernist constructivist perspective which holds that though material
factors exist independently from the social world, they are given meaning only through ideas,
beliefs and norms that are reproduced through social interaction.” Here Adler et al. and Wendt
speak to the symbiotic relationship between material and ideational threats, they inform each
other.
33
Branch expands on this relationship by saying, “… theorists continue to point out that
that material versus ideational is a’ flawed dichotomy’ since important IR outcomes such as
foreign policy decision-making are shaped by both material and ideational interests. What we
need is a hybrid explanation.”
34
This perspective helps explain how and why decisionmakers
make choices that are more self-interested than state-interested, pushing back on strict, material-
based realist constructs. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine reinforces the point of self-interest over state-
interest.
Newer expositions on foreign policy and security are interdisciplinary and increasingly
inclusive in content, thus providing room for hybrid explanations of threats. For instance,

31
C. Meyer, and E. Strickmann, “Solidifying Constructivism: How Material and Ideational Factors
Interact in European Defense,” Journal of Common Market Studies 49, no. 1 (2011): 61–81.
32
Meyer and Strickmann, “Solidifying Constructivism.”
33
E. Adler, and M. Barnett, “Taking Identity and Our Critics Seriously,” Cooperation and Conflict 35,
no. 3 (2000): 321–329. See also Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics.
34
Adler and Barnett, “Taking Identity and Our Critics Seriously,” 106.

19
terrorism expert, Lawrence Rubin includes international and domestic explanations of terrorism,
largely drawing from what he refers to as the ideational security dilemma.
35

The idea is states or regimes attempt to balance around common things and ideas, such as
the economic materialism of capitalism or the ideational realm of religion and ideology versus
being wedded to endless security guessing games that motivate deterrence. Before the US-China
relationship began souring, capitalism overshadowed the fact that historically, democracy and
communism ran politically and culturally counter to the other. However, the supposed economic
security built into capitalism allowed both states to partner on economic trade agreements. Rubin
did not go as far to say that ideational and material threats are hybrid. He understood that ideas,
ideology and identity such as Islam preconditioned material responses through policy artifacts
such as the Patriot Act and the US entering Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11.
The next section will trace the intellectual debate around identity, what it is and isn’t and
how Political Science and International Relations, particularly security studies and the
Copenhagen School uses it as a unit of measurement.
5.1. Tracing Identity
Identity is a ‘buzz’ word that possesses both negative and positive implications. Consider
two sample disciplines, International Relations (IR) and Political Science (PS), within which the
present study is situated. In IR, research on identity stems largely from the Copenhagen School,
which is a constructivist approach. The concept of securitization is central to this way of thinking.

35
Lawrence Rubin, Islam in the Balance: Ideational Threats in Arab Politics (Palo Alto: Stanford
University Press, 2014). “… ideology, or ideational powers triggers threat perception and affects state
policy because it can undermine domestic political stability and regime survival in another state. Second,
states engage in ideational balancing in response to an ideological threat. This nonmilitary response aims
to mitigate an ideational threat’s political-symbolic power through resource mobilization and
counterframing. Consisting of domestic and foreign policies, this state behavior aims to bolster commonly
held beliefs about its own legitimacy and seeks to undermine the credibility of the source of the ideational
threat.”

20
States or transnational actors can become securitized – that is, menacing in the eyes of an intended
audience – via statements and policies implemented by leaders toward that end.
36
For PS, notably
among students of comparative politics, identity often is looked at as an explanatory variable that
can account for phenomena within a state.
37

Expositions on identity in PS and IR are plentiful, but a few prominent examples should be
sufficient to bring out the main lines of reasoning. Francis Fukuyama, for instance, defines identity
as “a way to distinguish between social categories and roles.”
38
This definition does not fully
capture the layers of identity, nor explicitly state which categories of identity he is commenting
on. Some efforts toward concept formation are more panoramic. Consider, for example, the ideas
from Samuel Huntington. He references Erik Erikson’s explanation of identity, which sees it as
“all pervasive but also vague” and “… a product of self-consciousness, that I or we possess
distinct qualities as an entity that differentiates me from you and us from them.”
39

Huntington goes on to adopt a binary, us versus them distinction that focusses on how one
person differs from another. This is a pessimistic view of identity because Huntington’s
categorization leaves very little room for nuances. The concept formation is premised on

36
J. Hayes, “Securitization, Social Identity, and Democratic Security: Nixon, India, and the Ties That
Bind,” International Organization 66 (2012): 63–93.
37
G. Almond, and S. Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963). See also R. Putnam, R. Leonardi , and R. Nanetti, Making
Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
38
“The terms identity and identity politics are of fairly recent provenance, the former having been
popularized by the psychologist Erik Erikson during the 1950s, and the latter coming into view only in
the cultural politics of the 1980s and ’90s. Identity has a wide number of meanings today, in some cases
referring simply to social categories or roles, in others to basic information about oneself (as in “my
identity was stolen”).” Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of
Resentment, 2018, p. 29.
39
S. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenge to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon &
Shuster, 2004), p. 21.

21
recognizing difference, while simultaneously arguing for identity cohesion through nationalism,
ignoring that identity is intersectional and not one dimensional.
The idea of social capital can be brought into play to reinforce this point. An emphasis on
difference is much more likely to build bonding capital, keeping groups weeded to eachother. By
contrast, bridging capital, which would increase the cohesion of society as whole, is not likely to
be accumulated in that way. For example, Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community emphasizes the role social capital plays in strengthening both
inclusive and exclusive bonds. These bonds created by networks, jobs, schools, unions or social
groups contribute to building social capital. Putnam suggests that both bonding and bridging are
needed to advance in society and shape identities. This dual process is what ultimately shapes
communities.
40

The discussion about social capital and bonding are important to consider when thinking
through identity-based scholarship. For instance, Huntington (2004) and Fukuyama (2018)
suggest these bonding and bridging processes are disappearing. Fukuyama points to economic
anxiety as a rallying cry to explain forgotten communities, which demand to be recognized, while
Huntington advocates for a national identity that runs the risk of cultural erasure, including
history, language and artifacts depicting pride in something other than Americanism. So then,
what happens when identity triggers inclusion and exclusion causing it to collide with itself?
Intersectionality scholars such as Americanist Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro, legal
scholars and accredited creator of intersectionality, Kimberle Crenshaw, Lisa Crooms, Leslie
McCall offers alternative views of identity, that sees it as interconnected categories of

40
Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling Alone : the Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York:
Simon & Schuster, pp. 22-24.

22
difference.
41
Their points of view, respectively, emerge from Civil Rights law, PS, Feminist and
Gender Studies. Intersectionality says that identity or identities such as race/ethnicity, gender,
religion and class are categories of difference that intersect and often conflict with the normative
power structure of state. Intersectionality also warns that it is unproductive to subsume categories
of difference into a singular identity of let’s say, American, democrat, female, male or academic
because it erases complexity and depth. Critics of intersectionality-based approaches claim the
framework fails to transcend difference. This critique suggests that identity scholars focus too
much on difference and not enough on similarities, such as Huntington’s idea of a cohesive
national identity through bonding and bridging. The result of this tension is to deflate identity
from its truly nuanced character into an ‘us or them’ model, which has led to assertive and, from
some points of view, even aggressive political realignments such as BREXIT and the election of
Donald J. Trump. These populist political shifts took root in nationalist movements that either
expressed skepticism or opposed ethnic and religious groups entering and living in the United
Kingdom and in the United States.
Difference itself became the enemy among populist movements and calls for a return to
a world based on “traditional” read as Anglo, Protestant Christian values have gained momentum.
Examples range from Trump in the US to Orban in Hungary to Putin in Russia. These new
political forces became formidable and no longer resided on the fringes of public opinion. Ideas

41
Hancock, A. (2016). Intersectionality: An Intellectual History. New York, NY: Oxford University
Press… See also Carbado, D., Crenshaw, K., Mays, V., & Tomlinson, B. (2013). Intersectionality, 10(2),
303–312. McCall, L. (2005). The Complexity of Intersectionality. Signs, 30(3), 1771–1800. Collins, P. H.
(1993). Toward a New Vision: Race, Class, and Gender as Categories of Analysis and Connection. Race,
Sex & Class, 1(1), 25–45. Collins, P. H. (1998). It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and
Nation. Hypatia, 13(3), 62–82. Patricia Hill Collins. (2012). Social Inequality, Power, and Politics:
Intersectionality and American Pragmatism in Dialogue. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 26(2),
442–457.

23
well outside of what had been standard liberal opinion began to resonate within mainstream
politics. Meanwhile, opponents of the new populist movements sometimes responded
ineffectively and quite possibly poured oil on the existing fire through perceived and to some
extent real elitist tendencies. One example, from the presidential campaign in the US in 2016,
involved a speech in which candidate Hillary Clinton used the phrase “basket of deplorables” in
referring to those who supported Trump. It almost goes without saying that the expression
virtually removed the possibility of prying those potential voters away from their preferred
candidate at the time.
Most prominently in the crossover from academic life to the world in general, Huntington
(2004) foreshadowed this identity-disconnect among certain groups when he queried whether the
US could return to September 11, 2001 (9/11) levels of national pride and shared identity? He
blamed apathy, fragmentation and eroded civic pride on others or subnational groups that celebrate
their intersectional identities (geographic or ancestral) over and above an overarching
identification with the US. Responses to Huntington have been extensive and the controversy is
ongoing.
42

42
Holloway, C. (2011). “Who are We: Samuel Huntington and the Problem of American Identity,
Perspectives on Political Science,” 40:2, 106-114. In this review, Holloway gives a fair and even account
of Huntington’s Who are We. Holloway describes Huntington’s critics as wanting a more open and less
“thick” idea of what American identity should be. Holloway argues that the American social contract
along with the Framer’s original intent for the nascent democracy, particularly the Declaration of
Independence, was fundamentally open and egalitarian. On this point, displacement of Native Americans
and chattel slavery are not explored enough, but Holloway’s point is that a strict Anglo-Protestant identity
is a narrow read of America’s founding and subsequent expanding, democratic and religiously plural
(including secular and atheists) identity.
See also M. Salter. (2002). Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations. London: Pluto Press.
This earlier critique of Huntington is more about his overall approach to culture. Salter chides Huntington
as proponent of reinforcing imperialist, colonizing sentiments about the other. Elsewhere in my paper, I
often deploy other to categorize individuals or groups that are outside of the Anglo-Protestant identity
American construct. The idea of othering is borrowed from post-colonial studies, including postcolonial
theology, political science, ethics and feminist thought more broadly. See also, Levinas, Emmanuel.
(1982). Ethics and Infinity. Pittsburgh, Duquesne University Press. and Rivera, M. R. Touch of

24
As the world shifts, traditional post-World War II constructs are being tested. China is an
influential state in terms of global, economic influence and now has the largest navy in the world,
a former US bragging right. Russia invaded Ukraine and publicly aligned with China to secure
against the West. In addition to global rebalancing, the race to arm space is a growing threat to
arms control, disarmament and illegal proliferation. These are hard, material threats all aimed to
test US strength following election fraud claims in the 2020 presidential election and the January
6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Adding to the internal instability list are growing nationalist
sentiment fomenting on the political Right and consequently landing the US on the democratic
backsliding list for the first time in the list’s existence.
43

War in Eastern Europe, China’s expanding economic power, the inglorious fall of
Afghanistan and mounting domestic instabilities are all hard, tangible, material threats to US
national security and has far reaching implications for foreign policy decision-making. It is as if a
silent bomb exploded and shook the US of its futurist, multicultural, democratic axis, shifting to
glorify isolationism, nationalism and autocracy. How did this happen? What did the national
security apparatus miss, leaving the country vulnerable to this kind of internal attack?

Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theory of God. (2007). Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Knox
Press. These existing critiques about Huntington’s view of identity and culture have consequences for the
dominance of generalizable theories within IR and for a basic question: What does it means to be
American and who gets to be one?
43
International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance the Global State of Democracy 2021:
Building a Resilience in a Pandemic Era. 2020. The Global State of Democracy Indices (GSoD Indices)
measure democratic trends at the country, regional and global levels across a broad range of different
attributes of democracy in the period 1975–2020. They do not provide a single index of democracy. They
produce data for 166 countries across the globe. The GSoD Indices are based on 116 individual indicators
devised by various scholars and organizations using different types of sources. The GSoD indices consist
of attribute and subattribute scores per country per year for the period 1975–2020. All scoring runs from 0
to 1, with 0 representing the lowest achievement in the whole sample and 1 the highest. “The United
States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked
down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale.”

25
While Fukuyama does not fully capture what identity is and focusses more on grievances
of people economically left behind; his critique of populism and its connection to nationalist
identity is salient. He argues that “much of what passes for economic motivation is actually rooted
in the demand for recognition and therefore cannot simply be satisfied by economic means. This
has direct implications for how we should deal with populism in the present.”
44
In other words,
beyond political messaging, people intensely desire recognition.
45
The politics of recognition and
identity, as played out in the twenty-first century, might well be regarded as a descendant of the
postmaterialist turn in thinking from a few decades ago.
46
In other words, some voters may have
high intensity of preference on matters that go beyond the pocketbook, as the saying goes.
Basic human needs for recognition cannot be denied. At the same time, in a highly
partisan environment, such needs can be weaponized or put differently, elevated to a material
threat, as seen during the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the country’s Capitol. It becomes
relatively easy to make enemies of individuals or groups outside of a given nationalistic or
nativist framework. Thus, from one point of view, the material and legal result of using
diversionary tactics – inducing a rallying around the flag via targeting of one or more domestic
interest groups – lives on in the form of the Travel Ban.

44
F. Fukiyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2018), p. 15.
45
There is a recent article in Foreign Affairs (2019) written by Stacey Abrams pushing back on
Fukuyama’s critique of identity politics, reducing to his representation argument. She argues that identity
has far reaching implications than just wanting to be recognized. Identity informs real world policies that
impact people lives and oftentimes, the identity of the communities is often criticized for “using” it. But
what about how decision makers “use” their identity? This is not Abram’s question, it is mine. This
question however, stems from her critique of Fukuyama putting the onus of responsibility on the backs of
people hurt by identity-based policies.
46
R. Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).

26
Identity is a complicated term to define concretely, but as the literature highlights above,
depending on what a group values – politics, religion, culture or material possessions—others
who are positioned outside of what the dominant group (group x) values and is viewed as an
outsider group (group y), which places group y in opposition to group x. Therefore, if group y’s
identity is too far outside of group x’s shared vison of identity, then it becomes easier for group
y to emerge as a threat, consequently forecasting group y as counter to group x.
This hypothesis is derived from Huntington’sbinary construction of identity, which
centers on an ‘Us versus Them’ model. Huntington thinks holding onto “… national identity,
national purpose and the cultural values they have in common will stave off possible destruction
of America, a lesson Huntington says, is similar to the destruction of Sparta.
47
He is writing from
the perspective that there is a global identity crisis. He also says that subnational cultural and
regional identities are taking precedence over broader national identities. Domestically he argues,
elites now have supranational identities in lieu of a domestic, national identity. For Huntington,
this erasure of national identity highlights the negative impact of identity.
48
Even after all of this,
I am still unclear about how Huntington thinks of national identity aside from its legacy to mostly
European, Protestant heritages?
49
He goes further to say, commonalities, such as race and
religion, have bound American citizens together. Huntington believes only with the threat of, or

47
Inglehart, The Silent Revolution, 12
48
Inglehart, The Silent Revolution, 13
49
Inglehart, The Silent Revolution, 15. This is an excerpt from Huntington (2004): “In the early stage of
European nationalism, national identity was often defined primarily in religious terms. In the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, nationalist ideologies became largely secular. Germans, British, French, and
others defined themselves increasingly in terms of ancestry, language, or culture, rather than religion,
which often would have divided their societies. In the twentieth century, people in Western countries
(with the notable exception of the United States) generally became secularized, and churches and religion
played decreasing roles in public, social, and private life. The twenty-first century, however, is dawning
as a century of religion.”

27
actual, violence that Americans will move away from what he labels “subnational identities.”
50

For Huntington, subnational identities are too concerned with difference and less interested in
one, national identity, and he thinks only a national crisis like 9/11 will erase sub-categories and
resurrect a shared US identity. I do not agree with this assessment because it is limited and
assumes that groups that identify as American were not and do not belong to other identities,
communities and groups simultaneously, a perspective intersectionality excels in explaining.
He also makes a distinction of nineteenth century immigration as being more about
migration versus twenty-first century immigration, which he asserts is about expanding
diasporas.
51
He labels this kind of immigration as an expansion of transnational cultures. That is,
instead of immigrants migrating to the US to be Americans, groups like Latinx migrants carry
their culture with them and are less interested in assimilating. What identity does Huntington
think people entering from Latin American countries should adopt? The reality of European
groups entering in the earlier centuries is they were in closer proximity to whiteness than some
Latin American groups. Not all Latin America and Caribbean communities want to adopt
whiteness the way some Cuban Americans have.
Huntington does acknowledge the reality that Black and Native Americans, however were
and are not included and others easily might be noted as well.
52
So, who has a right to national
identity, if certain groups were left out of intellectual, political and economic nation-building?
Blatt (2018) provides a deeper perspective about identity and the history of intellectualism as a
product of biological racism, particularly race in Race and the Making of American Political
Science.

50
Inglehart, The Silent Revolution, 8
51
Inglehart, The Silent Revolution, 14.
52
Inglehart, The Silent Revolution, 11.

28
Huntington does acknowledge the historical mistreatment of certain groups in the US;
however, one is left thinking that the simple fix to embrace Americanism, a shared identity rooted
in patriotic pride, as he says was visible following the 9/11 attack. This presumes that all
Americans of every race, religion and class were aligned in thinking Islam was the enemy. When
in fact this thinking aligned more with the nature or biological determinism argument in chapter
two of Blatt and with Salter’s critique of barbarianizing Islam.
53

This is where intersectionality offers a broader view of how people can live and operate
in a space of convergence versus a space of divergent identities. In my view, Huntington relies
on a familiar tactic of blaming outsiders, in this case Latinx immigrants and communities. This
limited approach of ‘nationalism or else’ erases the myriad of ways people live and operate in
the world. It also suggests that communities cannot form to bridge or bond if there is not a sense
of national pride overriding ancestral cultural ties.
Security studies looks at identity as a referent object meaning identity has casual ability
because it can affect a particular result within society. Put differently, the state is the dependent
variable (DV) leaving identity to function as an intervening variable (IV). For example, Hopf
(2005) makes this case as he looked at motivating factors in the 1991 Georgian election. A centrist
Russian won the election, and many were shocked at that result. Hopf’s conclusion was that

53
J. Blatt, Race and the Making of American Political Science (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2018). Blatt’s “nature” argument is rooted in the pseudo-science of ordering of the races. Up top
were Anglos, Teutons preferably, and under this construct Blacks were considered inferior and unnatural
to the spirit of an Anglo state meant to uphold the highest ideas of society. This is an important point to
highlight because much of the animus leveled towards President Barack Obama and Judge Kentanji
Jackson-Brown is this idea that regardless of their academic and practitioner training is a lack of
understanding or grasping certain things. For instance, the Obama Administration is charged with not
handling the situation in Crimea 2014 well. This critique is grounded in the belief that President Obama
did not grasp foreign policy because its complicated. This type of critique is what Blatt is highlighting as
she walks through the history of the blatant racism or biological determinism that Political Science
journals openly ascribed to.

29
identity played a huge role in how a centrist Russian won an election because he appealed to a
particular voting bloc. This was a familiar political tactic, where social, cultural and economic
anxieties of a particular group were heightened, creating an us against them atmosphere. In the
Hopf case study, identity was used as a political device to galvanize a political base that was often
ignored or forgotten. This case perhaps is eerily like the current political situation of the United
States.
54

Constructivists, argue that society, culture and people - chiefly decision-makers and stake
holders have a direct impact on the way states respond to other states, I agree with this line of
thinking. Domestic policies have a far reach beyond the borders of the US. President Donald
Trump’s policies from the Travel Ban to detaining children of asylum-seekers to its slow recovery
plan in Puerto Rico dominated domestic and foreign headlines during his time as president.
The Travel Ban was the first substantive glance into the administration’s stance on
national security. During the 2016 presidential election, Trump built and solidified a base of
support that expanded bonding capital within society. Political commentators across the political
spectrum—a prominent conservative example would be George Will—warned of potential harm
to the fabric of society. In the language of these observers, the Trump campaign and its most
intense adversaries seemed very likely to reduce the bonding capital within the US. A few years
onward, concerns expressed at the time seem more justified than ever. While bonding capital
increased among communities that shared Trumpian beliefs, bonding capital in terms of tolerance
as a shared American value decreased.
55

54
T. Hopf, “Identity, Legitimacy, and the Use of Military Force: Russia’s Great Power Identities and
Military Intervention in Abkhazia,” Review of International Studies 31 (2005): 225–243.
55
L. Thomassen, “The Inclusion of the Other? Habermas and the Paradox of Tolerance,” Political Theory
34, no. 4 (2006): 439–462. See also L. Tønder, “Spinoza and the Theory of Active Tolerance,” Political
Theory 41, no. 5 (2013): 687–709; A. J. Cohen, “What Toleration Is,” Ethics 115, no. 1 (2004): 68–95;
W. Brown, “Subjects of Tolerance: Why We are Civilized and They are the Barbarians,” in Regulating

30
Important to the overall argument of this chapter is raising identity out its cultural silo to
show its broader effects on ideational and material factors. The Trump years successfully deployed
identity politics as a rhetorical device. It deflected attention away from legitimate grievances
expressed by people of color and instead associated such discussions with political extremism.
Adversaries of Trump failed to realize that, consciously or otherwise, the brash New York
businessman had detected a weakness in the twenty-first century version of the New Deal coalition.
Specifically, white voters who felt left behind by the times responded dramatically to a message
of economic anxiety. Thus, a key demographic—working white voters—moved away from the
Democratic Party and gave Donald J. Trump the margin of victory in multiple states. His loss in
2020 triggered a hybrid threat, ideational and material to the US with white supremacist identity
and ideology driving the attack on the Capitol. At this point, group x and group y’s identities
converged exposing a security threat beyond the realm of culture.
6.1 Conclusion
The hypothesis I put forward, if identity is a useful empirical domain for Branch’s hybrid
model, then there is an increased chance that it can help explain what causes threats. In this paper
I threaded together different literatures to show how identity could work as an empirical domain
for Branch’s hybrid model. The first part of the paper situated the evolution of the material,
ideational debate inside national security literature. Here, I used Vietnam as a case study to
highlight the move towards national security understanding, to some degree, the role identity
played in losing that war.

Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire, pp. 149–175 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2006).

31
From there I detailed Branch’s model and its constitutive parts and explained how by
adjusting his condition for “creating artifacts” by inserting Winner’s concept of political artifacts
that identity can in fact work as an empirical domain. Sections four and five defined materialism,
ideationalism and combed together different treatments of identity spanning American Political
Science, IR, particularly security studies. I questioned the dominant hold Huntington’s theories
of identity have on the discipline writ large to favor more dynamic explications found in
intersectionality literature.
What I found takes the form of a question—what happens when there are no points of
ideological agreement? The January 6, 2021, insurrection is a clear example of ideological
disagreement resulting in violence. 9/11 is the next best modern example of how competing ideas
converged, resulted in a violent end, plus expanded the physical and legal realm of national
security.
55
9/11 is also a useful case study for the hybrid model because it brings identity into the
analytical frame. The ideology that motivated the multiple attacks on 9/11 were based in a
particular strand of Islam, Wahhabism. An extreme interpretation of Wahhabism manifested into
a material threat when terrorists highjacked physical planes to weaponize them against an
ideological enemy. This was a convergence point because the US responded with military force
and embarked on a campaign to root out Wahhabism. In other words, identity markers such as
religious ideology, ethnicity and nationality were no longer in a separate ideational category.
A different kind of hybridization process occurred once identity became a threat to US
national security, disrupted regional, international security and reshaped US Middle East foreign
policy. I found that in the hybridization process there is a point of convergence when the
decisionmakers bias converges with the aggressor’s bias to create something I label, dynamic
hybrid process. This occurs when identity-bias collides with itself. I cannot offer any further

32
details on dynamic hybrid process; I will develop it for my book project. Papers two and three
dive deeper into the 2017 and 2020 Travel Bans. Paper #2 is ideational focused. It takes a
quantitative look at the countries placed on the bans to statistically assess whether religion, a
category of identity drove the Trump Administration’s decision-making process. Paper #3 is
materially focused and questions why the ban was so urgent when the pressing arms control threat
in 2017 was nuclear proliferation, not terrorism. Paper #3 uses data that traces deaths from
terrorism beginning in the 1970s, the peak phase of global terrorism. It details all three phases
while highlighting outlier moments like 9/11. Taken together, all three papers are urging Political
Science to explore identity considering its dynamic causal effects.

33
Chapter 2: Throwing the Boomerang: National Security Policy and Identity
1.1 Introduction
In the seminal work Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientist, Abdelal et al.
(2009), they set out to address problems with measuring identity. Problems range from difficulty
with determining causality, measuring identity as a variable and understanding its function as
independent or intervening variable from a collective concept.
56
As this is a security studies
focused work, the collective concept that most social scientist utilize is not the aim of this chapter.
One of the focusses of security studies is to gage if a decisionmaker is a rationale or biased actor
and by default their national and foreign policy choices. To determine rationality or bias,
establishing how a decisionmaker assesses or defines threats is key. For instance, after September
11, 2001, what motivated President George W. Bush to determine that Saddam Hussein was a
threat to international security and stability? Additionally, what motivated the Trump
Administration to determine that mostly Muslim-majority countries were a threat to the United
States (US) national security? Were these rationale or biased acts?
The theoretical mechanism security studies use to understand motivations and actions of
decisionmakers is found in the decades long debate that centers on what type of threat is more
valuable, ideational or material. For example, did ideational factors such as an anti-Muslim
bias/ideology motivate the Trump Administration to enact the 2017 Travel Ban as its first
national security and immigration policy? Another example is, was the material threat from
global terrorism justification enough for the most expansive national security policy, the Patriot
Act? These are the type of questions that fuse together a current theoretical debate in security

56
Abdelal, Measuring Identity.

34
studies with determining if rationality, a realist position or bias a constructivist position impacts
policymaking decisions.
The valuation of threats takes shape when harm is considered. For instance, can a
decisionmaker’s ideological bias cause harm through policy and if so, who gets harmed? Also
consider, what happens when the ideology of a decisionmaker results in material harm? Who
then becomes the threat, the target or decisionmaker? And, what type of threat causes more harm,
biased ideology or a material, military response? Or are the two inextricably linked, one
informing the other and if so, should one type of threat be valued over the other? As the paper
proceeds, the genesis and current views on this debate will become evident.
The question of who gets harmed, situates the ideational, material debate inside the real-
world. So far, no real attempt in security studies has highlighted the intended or unintended
consequential effects decision-making can have on target populations. As target population is a
public policy term, it helps fill a gap with understanding why and how a decision was made and
who the decision will impact.
How then does identity and security fit together? While national security deals with
constructing policy to combat material and ideational threats, security studies is an area within
International Relations (IR) that looks at how and why decision-makers craft policy. For instance,
religion was an obvious factor in drafting the 2017 Travel Ban, which says identity or categories
of difference deserve serious scholarly attention.
Identity is a broad category that captures multiple differences such as race/ethnicity,
religion, gender and nationality. This is not a complete list as it can also include age and socio-
economic status, such as educated or uneducated, first-generation college graduate or legacy
graduate. Identity as it relates to security broadly revolves around a question put forth by

35
Caldwell and Williams, “who gets to be secured?” This question suggests a relationship between
target populations (who policy effects) and the state. Identity as a descriptive category can reveal
part of a puzzle, such as indicating how many Muslims or Catholics live in the US, but what
else? Once a broader, more complex question is asked, for instance, how does identity effect
policy-making decisions? Knowing how many Muslims or Catholics living in the US is not
sufficient to measure or analyze effects of policy.
This chapter traces the scholarly and real-world evolution of the ideational, material
debate. Using identity as an empirical domain, I apply both types of threats to real world national
security policies, the 2017 Travel Ban and the Patriot Act, broadly. One goal is to draw attention
to the way identity can affect decision-making. Another goal is to show how policies biased by
identity can result in destabilization, this is called the boomerang effect.
In this chapter, I organize the literature review in the following manner: In Section 1.1,
the introduction looks at the varying ways identity will be discussed throughout the paper.
Section 2.1 describes the mixed methods approach including a hypothesis and research questions.
Section 3.1 is the largest section of the paper because it synthesizes identity and security literature
while unpacking implications of the bans. This section introduces the concept of the boomerang
effect which focusees on implications of security policies that surpass the realm of normal
politics to an extreme, destabilizing point. Section 4.1 Section 5.1 disaggregates race and religion
from the larger category of identity to detail a). how bias towards race and religion relegates
research to the margins of Political Science and IR. Lastly, section 6.1 offers concluding thoughts
on the necessity of elevating identity focused research from the margins. Identity possesses
explanatory power. It can explain decision-making, voting behavior, and bias.

36
2.1 Research Design
This is a qualitative, case study that uses the comparative method found in process tracing
and critical theory analysis.
57
This method allows generalizations to be made from a core case
study that shares similar causal factors with another case study. The cases used are the 2017
Travel Ban and the Patriot Act, broadly. I draw attention to the boomerang effect, which
illustrates how consequences of imbalanced policymaking can cause unintended security
instabilities.
3.1 The Evolution of Security and Identity
As early as Morgenthau and Wolfers, IR thinkers realized that material-based threats were
motivated by what state’s value. Wolfers described this valuation of ideals as ambiguous because
they can shift in meaning.
58
Not until the nineties did constructivist thinkers apply a social theory
to the construct of identity categories such as race. The late nineties through the millennium saw
the next wave of security scholars that would apply a social theory to the way threats were
conceived, not just perceived. The Copenhagen School gets much of the credit for this
advancement in security literature. In much the same way Vietnam exposed gaps and influenced
practitioner and scholarly thinking, September 11, 2011, made clear the threat potential of
ideologies shaped by categories of identity such as religion and nationality.
Security literature focused on the ideational, material debate attributes the power of ideas
and the threat of ideology to the overall definition of ideational threats. Identity as a feature of
ideationalism is implied, but not fully articulated in its definition. In Paper #1, I queried if identity

57
D. Beach, “Process-Tracing Methods in Social Science,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics
(2017).
58
Morgenthau, “The Problem of Sovereignty Reconsidered”; Wolfers, “National Security as an
Ambiguous Symbol.”

37
could function as an empirical domain for Branch’s hybrid model, repeating the trend of treating
it independently from ideationalism. The difference is, I argue identity is dynamic especially at a
point of convergence. When identity collides with itself, when the bias of a decisionmaker shapes
policy that vilifies or others a specific target population, deeming that population a threat, a
boomerang effect can occur.
59

Decisionmakers and stakeholders, in this case the 2017 Travel Ban, created punitive
foreign policy under the guise of protecting national security. As the boomerang always comes
back to the source, revealing the true intention of a policy, in the case of 2017 ban the motivating
factor was premised on identity-bias. In this scenario the ideational threat stemmed from the state
and not from the target population. This is when identity-bias and identity-difference collides or
converge. This conversion is materialized through policy and to its extreme point, conflict. The
ideational, material debate typically explains convergence by casting the target population as a
threat forcing the state to respond.

59
A., Schneider and H. Ingram, “Systematically Pinching Ideas: A Comparative Approach to Policy
Design,” Journal of Public Policy 8, no. 1 (1988): 61–80; A. Schneider and H. Ingram, “Social
Construction of Target Populations: Implications for Politics and Policy,” The American Political Science
Review 87, no. 2 (1993).
Schneider and Ingrams work on identifying bias in policymaking was groundbreaking. The concept they
coined is “target populations,” a framework based on the following belief that, “… scholars may
contribute to improved policy design by making more explicit the biases introduced through reliance on
decision heuristics” (1983, 2).
Following their 1983 article, Schneider and Ingram conceptualized that “… target populations are
assumed to have boundaries that are empirically verifiable (indeed policies create these empirical
boundaries) and to exist within objective conditions even though those conditions are subject to multiple
evaluations. One of the important issues for analysis is to understand how social constructions emerge
from objective conditions and how each change” (pp. 2–5). This is one of the policy-constructivist ideas I
will grapple with in detail in my book project. The question driving all three papers centers on one
question, were the countries placed on the Travel Ban objective beyond their racial, ethnic, and religious
identities?

38
Lawrence Rubin’s important book Islam in the Balance: Ideational Threats in Arab
Politics, details the traditional convergence model. He advances one of IR’s foundational theories,
security dilemma by nuancing it to include an ideational component.
60
The thrust of ideational
security dilemma deals with regimes and states responses to international security threats and how
domestic ideology transcends boundaries. Rubin writes, “An ideology must be projected for it to
be considered a national security threat.”
61
While Rubin is speaking to how Muslim states interpret
ideological based threats, it is a useful consider how projection works. Decisionmakers project
their ideologies through policies. His approach also recognizes the overlap between domestic and
foreign affairs, which speaks to the scope and impact national security policies like the 2017 and
2020 Travel Bans have on the world.
Rubin does not wrestle explicitly with identity as an empirical domain; he focusses on
state’s responses to the threat potential of ideology, particularly religious ideology. He puts forth
that ideational power triggers threat perception, effecting state policy. The Arab-centered context
Rubin writes from sees how the state can view culturally resonant symbols as ideational driven
threats seeking to undermine domestic ideology, potentially altering the legitimacy of the state,
which can facilitate social unrest. Due to this, states engage in ideational balancing in response to
an ideological threat. This non-military response is meant to mitigate ideational threats through
resource mobilization and counterframing. In the case of 2017 and 2020 bans, countries on the

60
R. Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30, no. 2 (1978): 167–214; R.
Jervis, “Realism, Neoliberalism, and Cooperation: Understanding the Debate,” International Security 24,
no. 1 (1999): 42–63; J. W. Taliaferro, “Security Seeking under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Revisited,”
International Security 25, no. 3 (2000): 128–161; A. P. Liff and G. J. Ikenberry, “Racing toward Tragedy?
China’s Rise, Military Competition in the Asia Pacific, and the Security Dilemma,” International Security
39, no. 2 (2014): 52–91.
61
Rubin, Islam in the Balance, 4.

39
bans did not pose a direct threat to the US, even though terrorism was used as the justification. If
the reasoning stood, why not deploy mitigating or balancing tactics, such as sanctions?
Constructivists like Hayes perceive state actors as responding to threats based on identity-
informed interest.
62
Engaging with identity directly, Hayes critiques Democratic Peace Theory
(DPT) suggesting political structures respond to political actors identity-informed interests
challenging the effectiveness of DPT’s broad claim that democracies do not war with each
other.
63
Hayes approached this puzzle by fusing securitization theory with political psychology
to explore the effects democratic identity had on tough foreign policy decisions.
64
In Hayes’s
case study, democratic identity had a positive effect on decision-making, a result that is rarely
expressed in identity literature. This work advanced the field from mostly theoretical to having
a practical use for policymaking. By integrating constructivist, rationalist and political
psychology decision-making, Hayes presented a rich explanation about what drives a political
actor to determine certain national security policy while negotiating to keep the democratic
identity of the US intact and unblemished. Rubin centering the state and regime as the DV and
focusing on ideology as the IV differs from Hayes’s more positivistic critique on the effect
identity has on decision-making. While Hayes and Rubin explore different IVs, ideology and
identity function similarly and possess attributes that drive ideational threats.
Since 9/11, Islam as an enemy to the West and civilization dominated political thought.
Ideology was coded to represent the opposite to the civilized, Christian West. Similarly, identity

62
Rubin, Islam in the Balance, 65.
63
Hayes, “Securitization, Social Identity, and Democratic Security.”
64
K. Lenz-Raymann, “Securitization Theory: Legitimacy in Security Politics,” in Securitization of Islam:
A Vicious Circle: Counterterrorism and Freedom of Religion in Central Asia (2014), pp. 243–256. G.,
Karyotis and S. Patrikios, “Religion, securitization and anti-immigration attitudes: The case of Greece,”
Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 1 (2010), 43–57.

40
signals something in opposition to the preferred status quo, Anglo-Protestant. By coding ideology
and identity to represent otherness, difference was cast in an adversarial role, threatening
whiteness and Christianity. Casting difference in a negative light is not a new concept, 9/11 drew
religious ideology and racial/ethnic identity together posing a risk to normative values, which
according to Hermann is the mandate that triggers national security to operationalize. Trump’s
identity is aligned with an ideological and political base that operates from a binary position of
in-group and out-group. The in-group are Americans suffering from foreign terrorists, illegal,
criminal Mexicans and a loss of American jobs to foreign countries. The out-group, the outsider-
Other are the enemy intent on destroying America.
From a rationalist perspective, Trump enhanced his signaling by labeling the established
political structure as a swamp. To Trump and his base, terrorists were permitted to destroy
America because the structure of Washington, D.C. failed the country. Trump tapped into a part
of America that felt abandoned by Obama’s vision of a diverse, educated and physically healthy
America, which many viewed as elitist. Economic realities coupled with a growing resentment
toward Obama and a distrust towards Hillary Clinton allowed Trump to rally a powerful minority
base of voters that felt on the outside of prosperity, political discourse and history. Therefore, the
rationale used to support the initial ban was from a realist perspective. Elevating national security
concerns is always in the best interests of country. Protecting domestic interests shows strength,
which have greater military implications. Although state’s judiciaries checked Trump’s
executive order powers for the first two iteration of the ban, it became clear that the US was
moving away from soft, diplomacy power to hard, military, protectionist power. Trump’s MAGA
nationalist identity materialized in hardline policies that played well to his core American
audience.

41
Kugler and McDermott’s case study on the first Iraq war is helpful in contextualizing a
political psychology perspective regarding the Travel Ban.
65
Decisionmakers cannot wholly
discount their biases when drafting policy. In the case of Donald Trump, he is famously loyal to
his political base. He engaged with them openly on Twitter before getting banned. Post his
presidency, he still holds campaign-style rallies to reinvigorate them and repeat hyperbolic
campaign promises and rhetoric. Trump and his political operatives understand that his base
responds to verbal strength and disregards politically correct language.
Was Trump the first American President to elevate identity as threat into the realm of
security? In the article 9/11 and Iraq: The Making of a Tragedy, Bruce Riedel recounts of his
time at the National Security Council during and after 9/11. He wrote, “Bandar told me privately
that the Saudis were very worried about where Bush’s obsession with Iraq was going. The Saudis
were alarmed that attacking Iraq would only benefit Iran and set in motion severe destabilizing
repercussions across the region.”
66
Foreshadowing the section on the boomerang effect, like
Trump, Bush’s bias against Saddam was not unwarranted, nor was Trump’s preoccupation with
fighting terrorists. It was Trump’s individualistic-centric approach to convincing his base that
only he could “drain the swamp” that blurred self-interest with state-interest. George W. Bush’s
preconditioned bias against Saddam Hussein also conflated self-interest with state-interests. The
destabilizing effect entering Iraq in 2003 on regional and international security are still felt today.
As an extension of Bush’s response to 9/11, many criticized the effects the Patriot Act had on
domestic security and privacy.

65
Rose McDermott and Jacek Kugler, “Comparing Rational Choice and Prospect Theory Analysis: The
US decision to Launch Operation ‘Desert Storm’, January 1991,” Journal of Strategic Studies 24, no. 3
(2001): 49–85.
66
B. Riedel, “9/11 and Iraq: The Making of a Tragedy,” The Guardian (September 17, 2021).

42
Paradoxically, Hayes describes how President Nixon, in the case of India, preserved the
reputational security of the US by not engaging in an act of war against another democratic state’s
territory. In Trump’s case, political psychology helps explain how the admixture of anti-Muslim
bias which he projected publicly, coupled with and individualistic-centric worldview resulted in
decision-making that was destabilizing and unethical.
To be clear, strands of Islam that support jihadist, terrorist activities are clear and present
international security threats. The growing transnational threat to terrorism increasing is not
imagined or contrived especially since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. The goal of states acting
in their best security interests is a rational response to a terrorizing entity that is intent on
destroying not just Western democracies, but states perceived as agents or clients of the West.
The difficult part of the global terrorist equation is how can states protect its citizens against an
enemy that can hide in plain sight?
The Copenhagen School’s framework helps unpack how identity, securitization and
societal security all help to create a regional security complex that can become easily complicated
and makes discerning misnomers from reality difficult.
67
The bans shed light on the slippery
slope of securitizing verses discrimination, an aspect tools such as sanctions and the blacklist try
to mitigate. The act of securitizing involves both a securitizing actor - who makes the claim that
a particular object of value (referent object) is facing an existential threat requiring the suspension
of normal politics - and an audience, which must agree both that the referent object is a thing of
value and that it is (existentially) threatened in the way that the securitizing agent claims. The
goal of Trump’s securitizing rhetoric was to shift the issue from the arena of normal politics into
the realm of security politics - characterized by urgency and exceptional measures, including

67
Riedel, “9/11 and Iraq,” 485.

43
power centralization and marginalized debate.
68
This move from normal to security politics
weaponized the bans, turning them into material artifacts, a means or tool to cause harm.
Jef Huysmans’s, “Revisiting Copenhagen: Or the Creative Development of a Security
Studies Agenda in Europe” (1998) details what moving from “normal politics” to “security
politics” looks like. This is where identity politics often gets misunderstood within public and
political discourse. Within normal politics, it is agreed that jihadi terrorists are an enemy that
should be destroyed. The 2017 ban catapulted terrorism to an urgent and exceptional threat that
deserved immediate and extreme attention. Again, this is a slippery slope because terrorism is
extreme, however, the result of the ban essentialized all Muslims based on nationality and their
religion.
Huysmans placed political concerns along a continuum from normal to security, this
continuum is analogous to the effect bias to full bloom belief had on the travel ban that all
Muslims from certain countries were security threats. Securitizing America from Islam did little
to assuage tensions in global Muslim communities. In fact, ISIS/L released a propaganda video
following the first ban to capitalize on America’s legal attempt to further marginalize Muslim
identity, culture and religion. Overtime, this messaging resonated and the chaotic exit from
Afghanistan only lends credibility to critiques leveled against the US.
4.1 The Boomerang Effect
Before the 2017 Travel Ban, Donald Trump’s slogan of Make America Great Again
(MAGA) worried critics that its messaging aligned with a nationalist perspective that harkened
back to a nostalgic past of American exceptionalism. MAGA was the first rhetorical clue

68
J. Huysmans, “Revisiting Copenhagen: Or, the Creative Development of a Security Studies Agenda in
Europe,” European Journal of International Relations 4 (1998): 479–505.

44
signaling that identity was going to play a strong role in administrative policies. Ironically,
Trump’s opponents were labeled as a race baiters engaged in identity politics, while his campaign
traded on the sympathies and vulnerabilities of mostly rural, disenfranchised white Americans.
Identity became a negative thing to discuss because race as a concept is something constructed
to be in opposition to whiteness, put differently, race explains otherness, something other than
white. Therefore, the term “playing identity politics” is somewhat of a political tactic that became
an explanation to people who felt left behind or threatened by a browning of the US.
The problem with viewing the world through this lens recalled an American past that was
structurally stacked against a non-white male, underprivileged class of Americans suffering from
paralyzing income inequality, segregation, and overt, structural racism. The MAGA slogan and
surrounding rhetoric sent costly rhetorical signals that America’s emerging political nationalism
was intolerant and protectionist. Trump’s campaign rhetoric was eventually operationalized by
creating policy that would normalize the exclusion of foreigners from entering the US based on
religion and country of origin.
The boomerang effect is useful in explaining why excessive responses, like the bans are
destabilizing. The boomerang effect is a security-based concept in which focus is on both
national and human security. Imbalance or destabilization occurs when “…excessive focus on
one aspect of security at the expense or detriment of the other may well cause us to be
`boomeranged' by a poor balancing of ends and means in a changing security environment.”
69

An aspect of the changing security landscape is the rise of autocratic leadership, a direct

69
P. H. Liotta, “Boomerang Effect: The Convergence of National and Human Security,” Security
Dialogue 33, no. 4 (2002): 473–488.

45
challenge to democracy, a core American value along with the reemergence of the legitimization
of white supremacist activity, resulting in an uptick in domestic terrorism.
The boomerang effect triggered by the bans were motivated by an extreme America-first,
anti-Muslim and anti-African sentiment, which did more to destabilize national security than
secure it. This is a clear articulation of how national security collided with human security by
using the apparatus of the state to cast the religious, racial/ethnic Other as a threat to core
American values. The US got boomeranged and the residual effects are still present and
unfolding in legal and policy debates around the stability and safety of strict scrutiny and the
Immigration Nationality Act amended in 1968.
70
Often the two intersect, but it is not always the
case that a foreign policy decision has a destabilizing impact on domestic national security.
The bans are not singular examples of bias informing national security and foreign policy
decisions. From chattel slavery to the 1882 Chinese Exclusions Act, the US has a rich history of
bias effecting policymaking decisions. The Patriot Act is perhaps one of the most popular national
security terrorism-based policies that also demonstrate the boomerang effect. Similar to the bans,
the Patriot Act experienced a boomerang effect because a heavy emphasis was placed on capturing
domestic Muslim terrorist while sacrificing the rights of American citizens triggering a security
imbalance. President George W. Bush was faced with an unprecedented attack on US soil since
Pearl Harbor causing the administration to enter into a confrontation. This was a rational choice.
However, what drove the Bush Administration to attack Iraq? Was it a rationale act or an
ideological one informed by his identity as George H. Bush’s son?

70
Matthew Peed, “Blacklisting as Foreign Policy: The Politics and Law of Listing Terror States,” 54
Duke Law Journal (2005).

46
The next section argues that identity is an important variable for security analysis because
it has the ability to trigger responses from the state. It is the mechanism of causing harm that drives
identity beyond the descriptive and places it inside the realm of threats. This is the connective
tissue that binds identity with security. Therefore, as anti-identity rhetoric increases in the US and
abroad, it is important to present a balanced representation of identity scholarship. Like critics of
race-based work or critical theories such as post-colonial studies, identity as a broader field of
study struggles to gain prominence within the larger cannon of IR.
71

5.1 Postcolonialism and Critical Theory
Post-colonial studies historically existed on the margins of political science, largely due to
its critical analysis of residual effects of empire-building. One such effect, redrew boundaries in
places like Africa and the Middle East without respecting cultures, religion, ethnic ties or riffs.
Omeje defines postcolonial as, “hav[ing] mainly materialized from resistance (i.e. political and
ideological) and critique of post-nineteenth century imperialism and colonialism, including the
legacies of Western exploits in the global South and the contemporary power relations between
the latter and global North.”
72
The tensions postcolonial studies reveals runs counter to the
positivistic, realist approach that sees value in the Western dominated, liberal institution focused
international system. Due to this, post-colonial studies is seen as adversarial, hypercritical and
lacks in its ability to measure and operationalize theories and frameworks.

71
R. Spencer, and A. Valassopoulos, Postcolonial Locations: New Issues and Directions in Postcolonial
Studies (Routledge, 2020). See also: U. Bosma, J. Lucassen, and G. Oostindie, “Introduction: Postcolonial
Migrations and Identity Politics: Towards a Comparative Perspective,” in Postcolonial Migrants and
Identity Politics: Europe, Russia, Japan and the United States in Comparison, ed. U. Bosma, J. Lucassen,
and G. Oostindie, pp. 1–22). See also T. Ranger, “Postscript: Colonial and Postcolonial
Identities,” Postcolonial Identities in Africa (1996), 271–281.
72
K. Omeje, The Crisis of Postcoloniality in Africa. Council for the Development of Social Science
Research in Africa (CODESRIA) (2015).

47
Postcolonial critiques of the effects of imperialism, borrows largely from thinkers such as
Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foccault. For instance, Spivak’s
seminal postcolonial work “Can the Subaltern Speak” centers identity, particularly gender,
ethnicity, nationality and socioeconomic status.
73
Her intersectional approach gave voice to
voiceless colonized women in India existing in the middle or on the margins of a hierarchical,
system. Inspired by Gramsci’s use of the military term subaltern, described as “lower rank,” Spivak
is credited as challenging imperialism, sexism and racism.
74
By labeling these invisible and
voiceless women as subalterns, Spivak hinted at both the material and ideational nature of
colonization.
The goal of IR is to understand global structures and systems. However, critiques of the
international system are typically grounded in challenging realism and questioning if liberal
institutions are sustainable or even relevant. On the sidelines of Political Science, post-colonial
studies posits that international structures helped create a race-based world, a result of a large
portion of the world trapped under the yoke of colonial powers. Scholars writing from that position
are dedicated to raising the alarm and challenging the field’s hesitation to embrace that identity
markers such as race and religion are integral to understanding why some states are strong,
prosperous and others are not. Counter to traditional IR which projects a Western centric view,
post-colonial studies embraced an identity focused approach to understanding the economic,
political and socio-cultural impact colonization had on Africa, Latin America and Asia. The
epistemologies developed within post-colonial studies included the sub-field of post-colonial

73
G. C. Spivak, “Can the subaltern speak?” reprinted in Conomial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory,
ed. Williams and Christman Harvester Wheatsheaf.
74
P. Ambesange, “Postcolonialsim: Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak,” Research Journal of Recent
Sciences 5, no. 8 (2016): 47–50.

48
theology, which attacked problems stemming from empire building. To put this in an IR context
Alexander et al. write:
Keneth Waltz may have surprised many of his contemporaries when, in the
influential 1979 publication Theory of International Relations, he chose V.I. Lenin
to be his key interlocutor… Waltz could also have looked closer to home. There,
an African American sociologist called WEB Du Bois had published a thesis (1915)
on the imperial determinants of the First World War one year before Lenin. Waltz
might have also consulted more closely the pages of Foreign Affairs… In it pages,
in 1925 Du Bois also published an article entitled “Worlds of Color” that revisited
a statement he had made over twenty years earlier: The problem of the twentieth
century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter
races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.
Analyzing categories like race and religion is different from engaging with normative IR
literature.
75
It is a controversial topic that many agree motivates many things, but is difficult to
reconcile, identify and measure. As the above quote eludes to, race, colonialism, ethnicity, and
dilemmas caused by “empire-building” were the questions and puzzles IR was founded on.
76
In
my estimation, ignoring or dismissing identity leads to more complications than solutions. IR
cannot advance if it does not honestly embrace criticisms from scholars like Salter, (2002),
Vitalis (2017), Sampaio (2018) and Blatt (2019).
77

75
Ambesange, “Postcolonialsim.”
76
Ambesange, “Postcolonialsim,” 2.
77
M. Salter, Barbarians and Civilization in International Relation (London: Pluto Press, 2002).

49
5.1.1. Criticizing Identity
Critics of identity scholarship Brubaker and Cooper argued, “it is time to let go of the
concept of identity.” Agreeing with Brubaker and Cooper, Abdelal et al. argued due to identity’s
“slippery and amorphous” nature it was time to abandon it. The core problem with these critiques
is identity denotes otherness and difference, a domain where race/ethnicity, religion, gender and
nationality matter. Sampaio applies the process of racialization and gendering to analyze the
intersections of national security and immigration. This is an important book for Political Science
because race is treated as a thicker variable, pushing beyond capturing quantities to explain the
process of racialization, a result of race colliding with the state.
78

Huntington would disagree as he disavows identity-difference as a useful category of
measurement, aligning with a collective identity approach privileging a national identity over
and above ascriptive and cultural identities. The danger with erasing particular and intersectional
identities is it assumes there is only one American identity and diversity also read as difference
is an assault on American ideals and values. Smith pushing back, says, identities are “among the
most normatively significant and behaviorally consequential aspects of politics.”
79
For example,
the 2017 ban on Chad, Iraq (removed), Libya, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and eventually
North Korea and Venezuela was noticeably Muslim and non-European focused.
Scholars that comment on areas of race, religion or gender are rarely engaged as
interlocutors in mainstream articles and books. The fact that Ralph Bunche, Nobel Peace Prize
winner for his work in the Middle East as the first Black undersecretary to the United Nations, is

78
A. Sampaio, Terrorizing Latina/o Immigrants: Race, gender, and immigration politics in the age of
security (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2015).
79
Smith, R. Smith, R. M. “Black and white after Brown: Constructions of race in modern Supreme Court
decisions,”U. Pa. J. Const. L., 5, 709. See also (2004). “Identities, Interests, and the Future of Political
Science,” Perspectives on Politics 2: 302.

50
more of an IR footnote versus a lionized scholar and practitioner, underlines a racial bias within
the intellectual hierarchy of the discipline.
80
The problem of race in IR is two-fold: 1) the work
of scholars of color is not heralded, and 2) the role race played in the structure of international
relations and systems is ignored.
Anti-Muslim bias is also an extension of early empire-building and colonial projects. In
fact, discord between Muslims and Christians date back to the Crusades. Fast forward to the early
US academy, blatant biasing against the perceived Other has roots in the construct of Social
Darwinism, or better yet Spencerism (Herbert Spencer). This outlook supported claims of racial
division along the lines of superior and inferior. Baker explains that early advocates of Social
Darwinism dominated Enlightenment thinking following the appearance of Darwin’s Origin of
Species. Social Darwinian rhetoric demarcated a hierarchy of races beginning with the inferior
savage and culminating with the civilized citizen. This class plank presumed that the poor were
biologically unfit to struggle for existence, Baker. This barbarian or savage class that Baker,
Salter and others mention, extend to religion.
At the turn of twentieth century, outgroup communities, such as the Chinese were blamed
for economic stresses of many Americans, which resulted in The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Historically, America experienced moments of extreme economic anxiety throughout history.
During the late part of the nineteenth-century, America experienced an economic downturn. The
fortunes of many prominent Americans were ruined in what Soennichsen describes as this
“world-wide depression.”
81
Economic depression caused many hourly workers to be
unemployed and forced to compete for scarce jobs. Because of massive job unemployment, an

80
R. Bunche, A World View on Race (Chicago. Chicago University Press, 1936, 1968).
81
J. R. Soennichsen, The Chinese Exclusion Act (Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2011).

51
antagonist relationship developed between the workers and management of the nation’s largest
companies. The companies tapped into a large Chinese workforce, Soennichsen, which caused
animosity toward Chinese communities in California. The result, a pattern of blaming Chinese
outsiders for causing economic anxiety among the status quo. Another outcome, a litany of
domestic and foreign policies and laws criminalizing and preventing all Asian groups from
legally entering the US. Weaponizing identity, invoking national security and exporting bias
through foreign policy are not tactics unique to Bush after 9/11 or to Trump in 2017.
5.1.2 Critical theory: Religion as Category of Identity
Religion as a category of identity also has a long and complicated relationship with IR.
In a post 9/11 context, Islam is often synonymous with terrorism, a securitizing tactic Trump
relied on when defending the first ban. Scholars like Hassner argue that religion should not be in
service to politics and that a thick analysis framework is needed to capture the significant
relationship between the state and religion. For instance, in terrorism literature, the boomerang
effect criticizes one dimensional explication that say terrorism is determinative of extremist,
Muslim ideology. It is never assumed that projecting extreme ideology is a securitizing method,
performative and bombastic. The assumption is that less civilized states are preoccupied with
culture, thus lacking the sophistication to deploy diversionary tactics akin to rallying around the
flag.
82
Hassner offers a deeper, thicker explanation for what motivated 9/11. The destruction of
sacred spaces in the Middle East, (which holds social psychological memory) by the United
States military heightened ideational beliefs, resulting in a devastating, material response on
9/11.
83
Hassner’s social psychology framework has broader implications for IR because sacred

82
Diversionary tactics.
83
R. Hassner, War on Sacred Grounds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009).

52
spaces are a material interest for states and religion can explain how these interests converge on
the international stage.
84

Hassner and Monica Toft present cases were religious identity had both material and
ideational consequences. Hassner unpacked the role sacred spaces play in the lives of religious
worshipers and how this has both material and ideational implications. In the Hassner case,
materialism has a dual effect because sacred, religious spaces, such as shrines, churches,
synagogue are material. Yet they are also the physical manifestation and representation of a
particular religious ideology; the other effect is the use of military force.
The Hassner case involves the United States military destroying sacred spaces in Saudi
Arabia. This incident triggered a heavy anti-West backlash, including condemnation from Usama
bin Laden. Now, many sacred spaces are protected by The United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and international law, but when the destruction of sacred
spaces in Saudi Arabia occurred, these spaces were only protected by memory. It is situations
like the destruction of sacred spaces that some argue amplified the hatred toward the West, which
was already simmering in that region. It is difficult to say if Muslim sacred spaces were purposely
targeted by the US military in this case, but it does frame how religion can trigger conflict and
have resounding consequences. Hassner also developed a method of thick religion, which is
designed for social scientist to incorporate religion into their work in a meaningful way by not
privileging politics as if religion is in service to it.
For example, in many states, religion defines the social, political, cultural structures and
norms. For instance, in Salafist Islam, the ideological and theological foundation is rooted in the

84
Hassner, War on Sacred Grounds, 2.

53
idea of a pious mission.
85
Mercer makes the distinction between ideational structures and
instrumental rationality to explain the difference between psychology in political science versus
rational actor theory. Piety is mentioned to suggest that what stands as rational to a Western
audience does not align with rational thinking in many non-Western states. Piety is a rational
concept for many Muslims, but the secular West rejects this as rational because it is rooted in
religion. The unfavorable Western-centric view of religion is too embedded in Political Science
and IR. Religion for most of the world orders existence through sacred artifacts like temples,
churches, sacred texts, symbols, chants and prayers. Because religion provides order for a large
population of world, it can be manipulated by leaders, decisionmakers and stakeholders to
convince adherents to make choices not in their best material, as in economic or political
interests.
Toft is one of Political Science’s strongest examples of how research on religion can be
useful and impactful. Toft looked at 42 civil conflicts involving religion spanning a century. She
found that 25 conflicts were directly caused by religion and the remaining 17 cases indirectly
involved religion. Toff identified a method of how political actors activate a fringe base.
Expanded on an earlier concept of outbidding initially found in Rabushaka and Shepsle,
Horowitz; she figured out that in instances where religion was used or weaponized to motivate
people to politically engage there was usually an actor engaged in an outbidding process. An
outbidder weaponizes religious anxiety.
Toft identified this outbidding process in Sudan. An outbidder is usually a political
opponent or incumbent that is losing political power. Because of this, the politician moves from

85
R. de. Meijet, Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement. Hurst & Co.
“It promotes both a personalized private piety centered on ritual purity and an activist action oriented
towards a vigorous campaign to change the world by various means” (15).

54
the center to the fringes to appeal to target groups that are often forgotten and ignored.
86
The
outbidder will search for easy targets to bolster their political standing. When religion is
activated, the idea is to convince people on the fringes that their situation is caused by the
vulnerable group on the margins not believing in God or Allah enough.
This tactic of outbidding can trigger a material response, in this case civil war. Religious
identity is activated by an outbidder then weaponized to manipulate a political outcome by way
of force. This is another example of ideational and material threats being manipulated from the
top down.
The Toft (2007) Sudan case study is eerily like what Trump as a candidate and incumbent
did to get and maintain power. He convinced his base that they had to fight for him, culminating
in a violent attack on the Capitol while moving closer to autocratic tendencies. Case studies like
Hassner and Toft’s highlight how identity can be triggered to cause real harm. 2016 Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) figures show that crime rates rose following Donald Trump’s
election, including a 22 percent spike in neo-Nazi groups.
87
The point here is not to directly
blame President Trump for the spike in neo-Nazi groups or hate crimes, but to illustrate the
connection between identity and violence.
Islam claims roughly 1.5 billion adherents, or about 22% of the world’s population,
making it larger than the most populous nations, such as China’s 1.3 billion population.
Christianity has more than two billion, or 33% of the world’s population. These religions
transcend national boundaries and have made claims about authority that challenge nation-state

86
M. Toftsds, “Getting Religion? The Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War,” International Security, 31,
no. 4), 97–131.
87
K. Thomas, “Hate crime is on the rise and experts say it started with the 2016 election,” (2018),
https://katu.com/news/local/hate-crime-is-on-the-rise-and-experts-say-it-started-with-the-2016-election.

55
boundaries. For example, the Vatican transcends secular state jurisdictions and functions as a
theocracy, different from Iran, but governed by religious laws. Grzymala-Busse makes an
argument that ethnic cleavages stemming from race, religion, language, caste and tribe tensions
are crucial areas for security studies.
88

Religions also make transnational claims across populations and is the largest unit to
which individuals claim loyalty. Toft, Hassner and Grzymala-Busse all make cases to support
the claim that religious people care about, 1). if their leaders are religious or not, 2). their sacred
spaces and 3). religious identity because they are loyal, or zealot-like to their religious identity.
This is where Hassner theory of thick religion is helpful because in Political Science, religion is
hardly on par with politics, rather relegated to a secondary position. This is problematic like
Hassner says, because as Grzymala-Busse states, Islam’s religious population is larger than
China’s population. Meaning, Political Science, especially IR must engage with religion and by
extension identity differently.
6.1 Conclusion
How does identity and security fit together is the core question that drives this paper.
Identity is a broad category that captures descriptive characteristics about a person or group. It
also shapes our worldview and inform how we make determinations about other people either
positively or negatively. An argument can be made that identity forms ideologies or at the very
least they inform each other. This matters for security because decisionmakers are motivated by
their self-perception, their identity and as the paper illustrated, identity-informed interests can
override state-interests, which can be destabilizing.

88
Grzymala-Busse (2012) cites Chandra (2004), Posner (2005) and Bellin (2008) for looking at religion
as a way to explain political cleavages.

56
For instance, what motivated the Trump Administration to determine that mostly
Muslim-majority countries were a threat to the United States (US) national security? And was
the Bush Administration justified in invading Iraq and enacting the Patriot Act? Were these
rationale or biased acts? Critics of both administrations argue that bias factored largely into the
decision-making process. Supporters of preventive deterrence security measures will argue that
preempting violence is a savvy way to approach national security. While merit can be found in
each argument, the key issue is, are these decisions balanced?
The bandwagon effect, which is “…excessive focus on one aspect of security at the
expense or detriment of the other may well cause us to be `boomeranged' by a poor balancing of
ends and means in a changing security environment. In each case, the domestic security
environment was altered. The Patriot Act skirted domestic security in a way the country has never
experienced, and the national security apparatus got expanded to include the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS). The fallout from the Supreme Court codifying the 2017 ban resulted
in disrupting settled immigration law and left millions of protected Americans via strict scrutiny
unprotected.
Another feature of this chapter is, it addresses challenges within the broader fields of
Political Science and International Relations regarding identity-based scholarship. What’s at
stake is, as anti-identity rhetoric increases in the US and abroad, it is important to present a
balanced representation of identity scholarship. Like critics of race-based work or critical
theories such as post-colonial studies, identity as a broader field of study struggles to gain
prominence within the larger cannon of IR. Critics of identity scholarship Brubaker and Cooper
argued, “it is time to let go of the concept of identity.” Abdelal et al. argued due to identity’s
“slippery and amorphous” nature it was time to abandon it. I disagree.

57
When identity is sidelined, scholarship suffers because a crucial variable is missing from
analysis. Or, the analysis will be one-dimensional, typically lionizing Western-centric views.
Scholarship should be robust and honest. For example, Hassner offers a deeper, thicker
explanation for what motivated 9/11 beyond the familiar trope that Islam is evil. Hassner shined
a light on US culpability, which is what thorough analysis should do, present counterfactuals.
There are relatively fixed theories that are central to IR, the above pages mentioned a
few, securitization theory and democratic peace theory (DPT). These ideas, including deterrence
theory are considered theoretical hallmarks of the discipline. They shape most IR scholarship
and any deviation from the settled model invites questions such as, why is this work important?
Or is this really IR?
Post-colonial studies as a critical theory exists on the margins of Political Science and IR,
largely due to its critical analysis of residual effects of empire-building. Empire building is at the
cornerstone of all of IR scholarship. The problem is, the modern liberal system does not view its
aims and goals as imperial therefore, any mention of empire-building recalls a past that many in
the discipline want to escape or ignore. However, empire-building triggered generational, global
instabilities and any in many ways can be counted as the largest example of the bandwagon
effect.
The boomerang effect describes a moment where national security collides with human
security skirting normal politics resulting in catastrophic outcomes. Traditional security dilemma
sees an anarchic international system that is preoccupied with displaying power through material
strength. There is an information problem with traditional security dilemma. States are stuck in
an endless guessing-game loop, always worried about other states material strength. It is a
guessing game because many states, especially autocratic leaning ones operate clandestinely.

58
Therefore, it is difficult for decisionmakers and stakeholders to correctly gage the seriousness of
a material threat.
At stake is, the world is dangerously close to World War III. Identity in all its constitutive
parts is an important research domain because it provides insight into a decisionmaker’s
motivations. For instance, before Putin invaded Ukraine, many IR scholars relied on traditional,
realist-based, rationale actor theory. Not many analysts thought about his public statements
rooted in Russian, white supremacy demeaning the existence of Ukraine as less than. Or his
public statements that were steeped in imperial language. Putin’s identity, his self-perception was
ignored favoring rationality as defined by Western, liberal thinkers.
As autocratic decisionmakers emerge, understanding how they perceive the world and
others in it will be on par with material calculations. Identity is not an ambiguous symbol like
values. It informs decision-making and is weaponizable through political practices like
outbidding and policymaking.

59
Chapter 3: Material Threats and the Hybrid Model: Was the 2017 Travel Ban Justified?
1.1 Introduction
The debate between materialism and ideational factors is one of the foundational aspects
of constructivism as it relates to security studies. One of the key features of the debate is around
the matter of causality. In chapter one, I agreed with Branch’s hybrid model, substituting
technology as an empirical domain with identity. To resolve what Branch determined as conditions
of ideationalism and materialism, I argued that polices are material artifacts based on Winner’s
(1980) theory of political artifacts. At a closer look, I wrestle with claims that materialism
functions independently from ideationalism, thus challenging the hybrid model. Additionally, I
argue that the blacklist and sanctions are material artifacts like the bans.
As discussed in chapter one, the material-ideational debate hinges on causality and
predictability. In other words, do ideas, ideology and identity always trigger material responses or
are material factors independent akin to Wendt’s rump materialism argument that sees materialism
and ideationalism as both separate and apart depending on the security situation? The problems
this chapter are attempting to resolve is why the urgency of enacting the 2017 Travel Ban
considering a decrease in global terrorism while the real material threat is an increase in nuclear
proliferation? Why were the bans weaponized against countries that were Muslim and African-
majority? Why were entire countries banned by being placed on the blacklist versus individuals,
banks or companies?
The history of the blacklist is rooted in post-World War I and World War II economic
sanctions. Overtime the list became a national security deterrence tool to legally punish states
through harsh economic sanctions and prosecute rogue or key, state and non-state actors deemed

60
responsible for terrorist acts against the United States (US) and partner states.
89
The blacklist or
terror watch list is a powerful terrorism deterrent in the US, Department of State’s arsenal. The
Secretary of State (SoS) is imbued with sanction powers over states accused of commissioning
proxy wars or supporting terrorist attacks economically and militarily. This type of terrorism is
referred to as state-sponsored terrorism (SST). An assumption about terrorism is, that it occurs
because a group of Muslim extremists decide to attack without provocation. The reality is, most
terrorist organizations, which are not all Muslim are funded by some form of proxy. Traditionally
states who landed on the blacklist were engaged in clandestinely funding terrorist activity in other
states.
In terrorism and national security legal scholarship debates center on whether the list is
effective at deterring SST. What is certain, the threat of states engaging in SST declined from the
dangerous period of the 1970s to1980s and is currently in its lowest phase of SST since the
Department of State began monitoring terrorist activity around the world Collins (2014).
90
This
may change considering the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. However, as the world turns its
attention to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, nuclear fears are heightened. However, it is still the
case that SST is in its lowest peak, with isolated spikes in 2001 and 2010, begging the question,
why the urgency and necessity of Travel Ban?

89
M. Peed, “Blacklisting as Foreign Policy: The Politics and Law of Listing Terror States.” 54 Duke Law
Journal, (2005). Libya and Iraq are examples of how states argue for equal protections under international
law. Libya presented an equal protection argument in Rein v. Socialist Peoples Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,
995 F. Supp. 325, 330 (E.D.N.Y. 1998), but apparently misconceived the role of the terrorism classification
as simply a jurisdictional predicate, urging strict scrutiny for the interference with its right to a fair trial.
Iraq echoed the equal protection argument in Daliberti v. Republic of Iraq, 97 F. Supp. 2d 38, 52 (D.D.C.
2000), but requested only rational basis review. In neither case does this particular attack on the
classification make its way into the court's analysis. Libya and Iraq were attempting to challenge their
classification on the blacklist. They lost because when the courts applied a rational basis review to each
case, it was found that the blacklist rationally “related to the goal of preventing terrorism” (p. 15).
90
S. Collins, “State-Sponsored Terrorism: In Decline, yet still a Potent Threat,” Politics and Policy 42, no.
1 (2014).

61
The Trump Administration offered an explanation, which was, “America [was unable] to
screen out terrorists” because sending governments do not provide sufficient information about
their citizen’s identity.
91
With this explanation, nationality, read as identity, not the specific threat
of states sponsoring terrorism became the basis for the bans. The ban ultimately assumed that a
person’s nationality aligned their citizenship with terrorist ideology and its government’s
policies.
92
To be clear, bans are not new. Historically, states accused of sponsoring terrorism were
subject to a ban of their citizens entering the US. However, those incidents were isolated and
directed towards a specific state and non-state actors engaging in some form of a proxy war.
President Donald Trump made several public statements crediting the basis for the Travel
Ban as a holdover from the Obama Administration’s Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015, also
referred to as the Act. The Trump Administration did extend the Act, but drastically so. With the
Act, The Obama Administration sought to close specific visa waiver loopholes for individuals
linked to terrorist organizations and political parties. The Act initially included Iran, Iraq, Sudan
and Syria then Libya. Somalia and Yemen were added, again, limiting the Visa Waiver Program
travel for suspected individuals.
93
The Trump Administration expansion of the Act went further
than banning specific individuals to banning all foreign nationals.
Fear of terrorists entering the US from mostly Muslim-majority states was the public-
facing reason the Administration gave to justify the policy. The material threat of terrorists entering
the US is a serious security matter to investigate, considering Afghanistan fell to the Taliban and
Russia having a history of deploying private mercenaries to engage in proxy wars in Eastern

91
David Bier, The Washington Post, September 26, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-
basic-premise-of-trumps-travel-ban-is-wrong/2017/09/26/7cb868b0-a2d5-11e7-8cfe-
d5b912fabc99_story.html?utm_term=.0a7cb295af13
92
Definition of Title 8 U.S. Code § 1361. Burden of proof upon alien.
93
Department of Homeland Security. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/02/18/dhs-announces-further-
travel-restrictions-visa-waiver-program. Date accessed: January 2, 2020.

62
Europe. This means, international security is an area IR scholars should spend time investigating.
One important reason is before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, national security scholars were
raising the alarm about states clandestinely engaging in nuclear proliferation. That warning has
new meaning as war wages in Eastern Europe with the largest nuclear power in the world, Russia.
Taking new international security developments into account, questions motivating this
chapter are a). what drove the Trump Administration’s urgent decision to enact the 2017 Travel
Ban for its first major national security policy? And b). is terrorism the most pressing international
security concern? If not, what is?
Attempting to answer these questions, I approach this chapter in the following manner:
Section introduced the puzzle of the paper, which is, why the urgency to enact the travel ban in
2017 when global terrorism was declining? Section 2.1 sketches the mixed-methods research
design. Section 3.1 traces the evolution of defining terrorism and distinguishes it from SST.
Section 4.1 defines state-sponsored terrorism and its uses. Definitions of terrorism and SST
changed overtime and with each iteration, a different worldview is revealed. Section 5.1 defines
and traces the history of the blacklist to punctuate its use, function and connection to economic
sanctions. In this section, I also suggest that sanctions and the blacklist are a type of material
artifacts since they can cause harm. In section 6.1, I unpack the three phases of SST spanning the
1970s-present day. Section 7.1 links the paper together by analyzing all the three legal iterations
of the Travel Ban.
In the final section, section 8.1, I offer concluding thoughts on the following: 1) the list’s
effectiveness; 2) if the Travel Ban was necessary considering the current low phase of SST and
the heightening threat potential of nuclear strikes; and 3) how this work is relevant for international
relations, specifically national security, US foreign policy, arms control, and international security.

63
Refer to the appendix for charts and graphs depicting global terrorism from the 1970s to different
years according to the three phases and outlier years 2001 and 2010. Lastly, it is important to note
that in 2020 the Trump Administration added six new states to the TB: Nigeria, Eritrea, Tanzania,
Sudan, Myanmar and Kyrgyzstan.
94

2.1 Research design
This mixed-methods paper is doing two things, questioning the urgency of the 2017
ban by challenging the Trump Administration justification of an imminent terrorism threat.
To counter the justification, I analyze lower court decisions and use data from the Global
Terrorism Database to visually illustrate how global deaths caused by terrorism peaked in
the 70s then declined with noticeable outlying points such as September 11, 2001. The
second aim of the paper is responding to a critique of the hybrid model, asserting that
material threats are sometimes independent of ideational factors. Additional data is from
Peed, it measures three phases of global terrorism: 1) peak; 2) moderate; and 3) low.
3.1 Defining Terrorism
Before the paper moves forward, it is important to define terrorism in the context
of state-sponsored terrorism (SST) since the blacklist is designed to punish states that
engage in different forms of terrorism against the US and its partner states. Terrorism
studies does not have an agreed upon definition of terrorism or SST because states adopt
and evolve, which is to say, what worked for states in the 1970s does not translate into a
post 9/11 world. Within terrorism literature, SST is a constant concern due to its changing
nature of how smaller states seek to gain power and legitimacy through low-cost,

94
New York Times. Zolan Kanno-Youngs. (January 31, 2020). “Trump Administration Adds Six
Countries to Travel Ban.”

64
asymmetrical war and conflict tactics. Since the 1980s, IR, particularly terrorism studies grappled
with understanding and defining SST following its deadliest peak during the violent decade of the
1970s–1980s. Now, in its lowest phase, 1990–2000s, the current SST threat involves nuclear
proliferation, not coordinated land-based terrorist attacks, Collins.
The definition of terrorism evolved throughout the decades as violence increased and
political aims became clearer. Alex Schmid discovered there were 250 academic and institutional
definitions of terrorism.
95
Much of the debate wrestles with more parsimonious definitions, such
as Laqueur, which claims terrorism is, “the use of covert violence by a for political ends.”
96
Critics
of Laqueur stress that this definition does successfully operationalizes terrorism, but does not
address complexities, such as tactics, objectives and how targets are classified, Collins.
Hoffman added the element of fear to his definition. He defines terrorism as, “the
deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit
of political change.”
97
Laqueur does little to distinguish type of violence along with the intent of
terrorism, which is to instill fear through mostly asymmetrical warfare tactics. Hoffman’s
definition also does not include a tactical component, but fear is crucial to understanding the
motivation of a terrorist act.
Kegley’s definition is like Hoffman’s (1998) definition, which includes the role fear plays
in a terrorist attack and its social and political impact. Kegley says, “violence or the threat of
violence calculated to create an atmosphere of fear and alarm – in a word, to terrorize, and
thereby bring about some social or political change.”
98
Collins argues while all these important

95
Schmid, A. P. (1983). Political Terrorism. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing. p.136
96
Laqueur, W. (1999). The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction. New York:
Oxford.
97
Hoffman, B. (1998). Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press. p.43
98
C. Kegley, ed., International Terrorism: Challenges, Causes, Controls (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1990), 28.

65
studies advanced work in terrorism studies, none of the thinkers took “targets” or the “who” portion
into serious account. The who or target in a terrorist strike is crucial for distinguishing between
what terrorism is.
Collins defines terrorism as, “… the use of or threat of violence by nonstate actors against
civilians or noncombatants for the purpose of creating an atmosphere of fear and of intimidating
a wide audience, in order to produce political or social change.”
99
The Taliban in Afghanistan is
an example of how civilians and noncombatants live under the threat of violence daily, especially
if they worked with the US in any capacity. What is agreed upon across all definitions of terrorism,
is its goal, which is to manipulate a political end through a violent act. Collin’s (2014) definition
of terrorism considers the role bad actors play in terrorism. The role of actors figures prominently
into defining what state sponsored terrorism is and the blacklist (defined in Section 5) is meant to
identify states in league with bad, or rogue actors.
Traditionally, states were placed on the blacklist if the SoS believed a state financed,
supported and provided safe harbor for terrorist organizations. The Department of the Treasury’s,
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also plays a role, by enforcing sanctions, another
example of a material artifact.
100
However, due to the clandestine nature of state involvement and
a decline in SST, it became increasingly difficult to prove if states sponsored proxy wars. One
reason for this was since September 11, 2001, the economic costs due to heavy sanctions (defined
in Section 5.1) became too high for states to engage in sponsoring terrorism. In this way, economic

99
Ibid. 2
100
US Department of the Treasury. Accessed 2021. https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/office-of-
foreign-assets-control-sanctions-programs-and-information.
“The Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") of the US Department of the Treasury administers and
enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against
targeted foreign countries and regimes, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, those engaged in
activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other threats to the national
security, foreign policy or economy of the United States.”

66
sanctions possess materiality because they are effectively used as a weapon to deter rogue actors
from sponsoring terrorism leaving terrorists organizations unfunded and exposed.
Presently, only four states are listed on the blacklist: North Korea (November 20,
2017), Iran (January 19, 1984) Sudan (August 12, 1993) and Syria (December 29, 1979).
101

Of the four states currently on the list, three states, (Sudan excluded) have or are gaining
nuclear capabilities.

Figure 1. Current list of states on US blacklist.
In many cases, states are secretive about their nuclear programs, which presents a unique
information problem for the US. Isolating and targeting a terrorist group such as al Qaeda carries
different costs from targeting an entire sovereign state. For example, defending against a nuclear
first-strike automatically triggers the more costly option of a second-strike, which is a clear act
of war.
A key distinction to highlight is between practitioner definitions of terrorism versus
scholarly definitions of terrorism. The US Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and
Federal Bureau of Investigations definitions of terrorism align closely with Collins’s definition.
However, the agencies focus on the unlawful use of force, where pay closer attention to the

101
State Department website. Accessed August 2021. https://www.state.gov/state-sponsors-of-terrorism/
*Syria
(1979)
*Iran
(1984)
Sudan
(1993) -
removed
*North
Korea
(2017)
Cuba
(2021)

67
political aspect of terrorist attacks.
102
What both practitioner and academic explications of
terrorism reveal is, the motivation of a terror attack is fear; they are not always ideationally based.
Therefore, are hybrid explanations always warranted? Or, like Wendt’s rump materialism
suggests, materialism is at times independent of ideational triggers?
The next section will define state-sponsored terrorism and explain how terrorist threats
are different when states are accused of sanctioning a violent act of aggression against another
sovereign state.
4.1. Defining State-Sponsored Terrorism
What is state-sponsored terrorism (SST) and how does it differ from other forms of
terrorism? A terrorist act does not always challenge sovereignty, whereas, with SST, sovereignty
is at the core of the controversy over the blacklist. Hoffman defines state sponsored terrorism as
“the active and clandestine support, encouragement and assistance provided by a foreign
government to assist a terrorist group.” Byman says, “a government’s intentional assistance to
a terrorism group to help it use violence, bolster its political activities, or sustain the
organization.” Collins defines SST as, “a sovereign state’s sustained and significant financial,

102
J. Cohan, “Formulation of state's response to terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism,” Pace
International Law Review 14, no. 1 (2002): 77–120.
Below are combined definitions from The U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and
Federal Bureau of Investigations. I did not include these definitions in the paper because they are
technical definitions that deal with unlawful use of force. In the paper, I focus on scholarly definitions.
• “The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a
government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social
objectives.”
• “Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetuated against noncombatant targets by
subnational groups or clandestine state agents.”
• “Violent criminal conduct apparently intended: (a) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(b) to influence the conduct of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (c) to affect the conduct of a
government assassination or kidnapping.”
• “The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a revolutionary organization against
individuals or property with the intention of coercing or intimidating governments or societies, often
political or ideological purposes.”

68
military, territorial, or logistical assistance to a terrorist organization.”
103
What is important
about Collin’s definition is his claim that in order for a state to sponsor terrorism, it must have a
“significant” and enduring relationship with the terrorist organization it is sponsoring. In other
words, the state must be the terrorist organization’s patron. Unlike with Hoffman’s and Byman’s
definitions, Collins’s nuanced definition centers on robustness versus just establishing that a
relationship exists between a terrorist organization and a state.
This is a standout distinction because Collins claims that SST exists along a continuum
and that not all state support is an intentional act of aggression against the US. For instance, he
believes that some states engage in “modest and intermittent support.” What he does not explain
is why he thinks modest and intermittent support is not enough to determine if a state is
culpable?
104
Collins goes on to say, “not all states can be placed at the extreme ends of the
spectrum, and therefore, it is important to determine at which position of the spectrum a
government can be coded as a state sponsor of terrorism.”
105
He uses Saudi Arabia as an example
of a state that was not directly responsible for training or sending 15 of the 19 9/11 attackers. He
spends little time defending this claim, which is a weakness in his treatment of SST.
9/11, akin to World War I and World War II reshaped international security and it seems
dismissive to absolve the Saudi government completely. Despite this missed opportunity, by
placing SST on a spectrum, it presents an alternative, non-oil, perspective explaining why Saudi
Arabia was omitted from the blacklist.
In the section that defined terrorism through practitioner and academic lenses, fear, was
the political end for most attacks. It challenges the notion that ideology is a necessary condition

103
Ibid. 5
104
Ibid. 5-6
105
Ibid. 4

69
for a terror attack. Terroristic groups hired by bad or rouge actors representing states are typically
motivated by money, not ideology fueled by religious identity. Keeping these realities in mind,
why were Muslim-majority countries targeted in the 2017 ban? To target mostly Muslim-
majority countries implies that religious and national identities buoyed by an anti-West ideology
are the sole drivers of terrorism. To be clear, 9/11 was driven by an anti-West, anti-American
contempt in which extreme concepts of sharia law found in Wahhabism was weaponized to
radicalize 9/11 attackers.
106
9/11 should not be held constant when thinking about terrorism,
especially when domestic attacks by American-born individuals are occurring almost daily.
In section 5.1, the blacklist and sanctions are traced and defined. This is an important
section because it bridges academic definitions of terrorism, the real-world threat of state
sponsored terrorism with the breadth of material power of the US state. The blacklist and
sanctions are punitive, exogenous factors that seeks to cause targeted harm to individuals,
business entities and in the case of Russia, an entire state. They are indeed weapons which
satisfies one of Branch’s material conditions. The other condition, communication is also
mollified because the list and sanctions communicate the strength, political reach and will of the
US.

106
Pew Research Center. (2017). Accessed February 2, 2022. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2017/08/09/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/
“Pew Research Center survey of Muslims in 39 countries asked Muslims whether they want sharia law, a
legal code based on the Quran and other Islamic scripture, to be the official law of the land in their country.
Responses on this question vary widely. Nearly all Muslims in Afghanistan (99%) and most in Iraq (91%)
and Pakistan (84%) support sharia law as official law. But in some other countries, especially in Eastern
Europe and Central Asia – including Turkey (12%), Kazakhstan (10%) and Azerbaijan (8%) – relatively
few favor the implementation of sharia law.”

70
5.1 The Case for Material Weapons: The Blacklist and Sanctions
What is the blacklist and its relationship to the ban? The blacklist, which is more of a
colloquial term is technically the terror watch list. It is a powerful weapon the Department of
State has in its diplomatic toolkit, supported by sanctioning authority backed by the Department
of Treasury. The purpose of the blacklist is to economically punish and tarnish the reputation of
a state throughout the international community. Another key function is to warn states from
interacting with a blacklisted country because that essentially means its acting against the US.
Specifically, the blacklist is a list of countries that are determined by the Secretary of State to have
repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism which are designated pursuant to three
laws: a). section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act (EAA); b). section 40 of the Arms Export
Control Act (AECA); and c). section 620A of the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA). Section 6(j) of the
EAA is where I focus the bulk of the discussion in this section because of the sanctioning power it
bestows onto the SoS.
107

The blacklist has a long history rooted in economic sanctions law tracing back to World
War I. The Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 (TEA) allowed the president to declare a national
emergency (key word here is emergency) against another country by regulating comprehensive
financial transactions.
108
Considering the backdrop of two world wars, (the first war being
sparked by an act of terrorism by the Black Hand), Congress began to expand presidential
powers, especially within the realm of international security. Following the 1917 TEA Act,
presidential powers expanded through the Export Control Act of 1949 (ECA) and Export
Administration Act of 1969 (EAA). These acts gave the president substantial powers to deal with

107
Ibid. 4-5
108
Ibid. 5

71
security threats by declaring national emergencies with other states. The International Emergency
Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) combed together the president’s power to declare a
national emergency with the power to sanction a country. These series of emergency Acts laid
the statutory basis for the president to sanction a country. By 1985, when The International
Security and Development Cooperation Act was codified, presidential powers expanded to have
nearly unlimited discretion to restrict ban imports from countries.
109
A post-World War II world,
expanded presidential powers and set the stage for the chief diplomat, the SoS’s powers to also
increase.
Section 6(j) of the EAA outlines powers the SoS must determine if a state has reversed
its course from terroristic activity. 6(j) is an amendment to the EAA that requires a license for
the export of military goods and or technology to states identified as supporting international
terrorism. In other words, a state’s sovereignty is challenged by the authority of the US, Peed
(2005). While this power is controversial and states sue, section 6(j) imbues the SoS with
statutory authority that either adds or remove states accused of sponsoring terrorism from the
blacklist. Statutory bias of the terrorism list is not limited to section 6(j); however, many
economic consequences that relate to being on the list stems from section 6(j).
110

Under section 6(j), The SoS is also required to submit states suspected of SST to Congress
in a report and advance said country’s name to the Federal Register, which is the official daily
publication of rules, executive orders and presidential documents.
111
The statutory power given
to the SoS with section 6(j) occurred when the EAA came up for renewal after the peak era of

109
Foreign Relations and Intercourse Title 22 U.S. Code § 2349aa–9, “Ban on importing goods and
services from countries supporting terrorism,” 6.
110
Ibid. 6
111
Link to the “About” page of the Federal Register
https://www.govinfo.gov/help/frrate

72
terrorist attacks in the 1970s. Due to the peak terrorist times of the 1970s, the EAA of 1969 was
renewed to include the statutory basis for the blacklist.
112
Section 6(j) was added to allow the
SoS to determine if 1) a country is involved in international terrorism and if so, 2) the SoS could
block the export of material goods, technology, plus place sanctions, with the president, on a
state suspected of sponsoring terrorism.
Critics of the list claim the list is not reliably objective because the SoS holds an enormous
amount of sway over it.
113
Peed supports this claim by tracing court cases bought against the US
for violating states sovereignty while Collins dismisses the usefulness of the list by claiming its
politically motivated due to the SoS’s bias against certain states. After searching for
counterarguments, I could not identify a paper or book arguing positive features of the blacklist
to counter both Peed and Collins’s unfavorable view of the list’s intentions. Regardless of the
list’s potential subjectivity, it represents US strength and shows how materialism can be more
than physical weapons.
Where the 2017 ban and list share a problem is the Trump Administration argued that the
Obama Administration initially placed banned countries on the blacklist. Can we also say the
Obama Administration trafficked in identity-biasing? Without looking at details, a superficial
argument can be made that the Obama Administration placed Muslim-majority states on the list
and the Trump Administration was attempting to express continuity.
114
At a closer look, a key
distinction between the list and the bans is, the Trump Administration banned entire countries
versus punishing individuals, companies and banks through targeted sanctions. Sanctions are key

112
Ibid. pg. 6
113
Ibid. 4
114
There is a discrepancy with dates. On the current blacklist, Iran is listed as being added on the list in
1984. However, Collins (2014) has Iran listed as being on the list in 1976, 1994, then 1995-2012.

73
to understanding the evolution of the blacklist since its origins began with economic sanctions
after World War II.
Below illustrates four categories (not limited to four) US sanctions can impact the internal,
economic stability of states on the blacklist.
115
It is important to note that sanctions not only disrupt
the internal stability of targeted individuals, but they can also trigger other states to increase external
pressures through additional sanctions and by upending trade deals. An argument can be made that
the hybrid model holds if the list and sanctions are responding to ideological threats that are anti-
West, anti-American, satisfying one of two conditions for ideationalism. But can the list and
sanctions fulfill the second condition, which Branch says must have the ability to create artifacts?
This is where Winner’s political artifact argument helps to operationalize Branch’s model
beyond the empirical domain of technology. If Branch’s condition of being able to make artifacts
is modified to consider the list and sanctions are existing political artifacts, then the hybrid model
holds. Turning to the next conditions, weapons and communications capabilities, can the list and
sanctions pacify each category? Like the bans themselves they communicate the security
philosophy of the US and are used to inflict harm on a perceived enemy, so yes.
The following section challenges the Trump Administration’s public-facing reason for the
2017 and 2020 bans by looking at three phases of terrorism to determine if global terrorism was
an imminent threat.
6.1 Tracing Phases of SST
The relationship between the blacklist, 2017 and 2020 travel bans is simple, the list provided
the Trump Administration with a list of countries to ban. Late November 2015, Syed Rizwan Farook

115
State Department’s explanation of how states are selected for the blacklist. https://www.state.gov/state-
sponsors-of-terrorism/

74
and American citizen, Tashfeen Malik killed 14, wounded 17 in San Bernardino at a holiday party.
116

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump used that story to justify anti-Muslim rhetoric, suggesting his
motivation was preconditioned versus responding to an imminent threat of increased global
terrorism. To be clear, the terror attack in San Bernardino was heinous. Did it justify banning entire
counties with Muslim majorities from entering the US and if states were already on the blacklist and
subject to punishment under section 6(j), why penalize all nationals from those countries from
entering the US?
The Trump Administration’s public-facing reason for the ban claimed that America was
unable to screen out terrorists from mostly Muslim-majority countries. To justify the initial eight
countries selected, the administration said, “... [their] governments failed to share sufficient
information about the identities of the nationals with U.S. agencies.”
30
The pushback from Trump
administration critics was that “applicants bear the burden of proof,” not the government. And
that the administration was assuming that nationality automatically meant that a person aligned
with its government’s policies.
31
Contrary to the administration’s claim about America being
unable to screen out terrorists, from 2001 until 2017, 41 million visas were approved and out of
the 41 million approved, 34 of whom immigrated legally were arrested due to terrorist concerns.
Nine of the 34 attempted attacks occurred once they immigrated and became radicalized inside
the US.
117
These statistics challenge the administration’s claim that the US was failing to
correctly weed out foreign born terrorists. The ban somewhat altered the purpose of the blacklist
by claiming foreign born citizens, not bad state actors would engage in terrorist activity against

116
R. Serrano, P. Esquivel, and R. Winton, Los Angeles Times, December 2, 2015,
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-up-to-20-shot-in-san-bernardino-active-shooter-sought-
20151202-story.html
117
Ibid.

75
the US if allowed entry. Was the threat imminent or was bias driving decisionmakers to ban
entire Muslim-Majority Middle Eastern and African countries?
Another challenge to the necessity of the bans, is the fact that SST has declined in this
decade, Collins (2014). The decade of 1970s-80s was the peak phase of SST. Meaning, in the
1970s-80s, Libya, Syria, and Iran, engaged in direct participation of terrorist strikes, either through
state agents or in collaboration with terrorist groups.
118
In a 1985 Department of State annual report
on international terrorism noted, “the unprecedented degree of backing by these states and, in some
cases, their active participation in terrorist operations.”
119
As an example, from 1984 to 1986, 20
acts of terror occurred with links to Libya, resulting in 589 deaths.
120
Some contributing factors
were the existence of the then Soviet Union bloc, the Civil War in Nicaragua, India backing the
Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and The Holy Alliance (Libya, Syria and Iran), dubbed by Muammar
Qaddafi. This alliance among Middle Eastern states helped contribute to the peak phase, along
with Warsaw Pack states.
121
Following this extreme decade of violence, The US government
expanded the 1979 EAA by adding six states to the blacklist, officially designating them sponsors
of terrorism.

118
Ibid. 8
119
Ibid. 8
120
Ibid. 8-9
121
Ibid. 7

76

Figure 2. Shows the amount of yearly global deaths caused by terrorist attacks from 1970 until
2001, then from 2002 to the present.
122

Libya’s death tolls are lower than Iran and Syria. One explanation is, Libya was one of
the three states that made up the Holy Alliance during this time period. State participation as
Collins explains did not always involve direct terror attacks, rather a continuum of participation.
Another explanation is, the dataset Collins used stems from Enders and Sandler’s work that
included categories of 1) hostage situations, 2) assassinations, and 3) threats.
123
Regardless of
the explanation of low death tolls, before the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, Libya was a constant
terroristic concern for the US. The diagram above does not reflect the entire story of Libya’s
involvement in SST during the peak phase.
The intermediate phase spanned 1990-2001 and included seven states on the blacklist.
This was also a period of sizeable SST attacks. During this phase, deaths declined from 500 plus

122
Ibid. 139
Graphs (abbreviated as G) 1-12 are visualized in appendix
123
I do not have access to the International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE) data
Enders and Sandler used. Access is limited to the Duke community. However, it is important to mention
since the Our World Data does not fully capture all the categories in their dataset.
600
470
251
1970-1989 1990-2001 2002-PRESENT
GLOBAL TERRORISM DEATH TOTALS PER
YEAR
Peak Phase Intermediate Phase Low Phase

77
attacks per year to 398. Why the drop? 1) dissolution of Soviet Union; 2) collapse of communism
in European Bloc States; and 3) calls for human rights protections. The United Nations attached
a heavy cost to states if they engaged in SST.
124
While the collapse of communism factored into
the decline of SST during the intermediate phase, two communist states remained active, Cuba
and North Korea. However, their suspected SST activity declined during this period, notably,
Cuba was placed on the blacklist in January 2021 (death totals from 9/11 are missing).
A state heavily impacted by the dissolution of the Soviet Union was Libya. Libya was
once very active, but heavy economic sanctions placed on Tripoli in 1992 slowed their SST
activities.
125
Both, Libya and Sudan offered safe harbor for Usama bin Laden, which some argue,
is proof Libya was still active. The Department of State in 1976, 1994, 1995–2012 characterized
Iran as “most active.”
126
Iran reportedly supported groups up to 100 million annually. Their
hostility was typically directed towards Israel, including Hamas and their core client was
Hezbollah.
127
Although this is considered the intermediate phase, during this time, states in
Central Asia, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Pakistan played pivotal roles in laying the foundation
for the attacks on September 11, 2001 (9/11). The Taliban provided safe harbor and funding for
al Qaeda, which resulted in 9/11 and marked a turning point for SST. Following the collapse of
Afghanistan to the Taliban in August 2021global terrorism totals will likely increase.
Akin to the way World War II shaped international relations, 9/11 elevated national
security in new ways, chiefly with the passing of the Patriot Act and formulation of The
Department of Homeland Security. The war in Ukraine will certainly alter the ways IR thinks

124
Walter Enders, and Todd Sandler, “Transnational Terrorism in the Post World-War Era,” International
Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1999): 145–167.
125
Ibid. 9
126
Ibid. 11
127
Ibid. 12

78
about war, international law, regime type and identity. Since 9/11, SST dramatically dropped
from 2001-present, this time period is referred to as the lowest phase in SST.
128
There is a spike
in Iraq in 2010 following the withdrawal. SST decreased for several reasons, chief among them
was terrorist groups became more self-sufficient coupled with the resounding impact of the US
military’s response to 9/11 due to the Bush Doctrine.
129
Iraq, Libya and North Korea were
removed from the list generally between 2003-2008, however North Korea was added once again
in 2017.
130

Central Asia is where the sharpest decline occurred because the Taliban was removed,
which meant al Qaeda lost its secure base. While Pakistan is not on the blacklist, intel suggests
it still allows some level of security for al Qaeda in the western, tribal regions.
131
Iran is still
active and supports Hezbollah and is currently facing harsh sanctions from the US for the oil
bombings in Saudi Arabia. Since the collapse of the Iran Nuclear Deal and the death of General
Soleimani, the situation with Iran is volatile and uncertain. Whereas there was hope for renewed
talks with the Biden Administration, Russia’s invasion will undoubtedly complicate talks with
Iran since Russia does not keep security promises. The current security dilemma for states is
questioning if they should increase or engage in nuclear proliferation or disarm? Consider too,
that a Taliban led Afghanistan will drastically impact international security and foreign policy.
According to Department of State reports from 1995 to 2012, Syria is still on the blacklist
because they provide safety from Hamas and other terrorist organizations in the region. In 2010,

128
I do not have death totals for this phase.
129
Gregg, G. George. Bush: Foreign Affairs. Miller Center, University of Virginia.
https://millercenter.org/president/gwbush/foreign-affairs
130
Ibid. 14
131
Ibid. 16

79
Tehran was expanded its support for terrorism, mostly targeting Israel. Still, with these remaining
examples of SST, this current period is considered the lowest phase of activity from earlier
years.
132
However, the threat-potential looms large because the latest concern around SST is not
the spread of jihadi-style terrorism. Rather, states gaining nuclear capabilities heightens threat-
potential, which is defined as the “lethal consequences of state support.”
133

Collins (2014) argues that threat potential is an important variable for international
relations to consider because it deals with costs and in this instance, nuclear weapons can increase
causalities, while a more traditional take on SST has a lower threshold for casualties. The reason
is, land-based, asymmetrical warfare has its limits, versus the sheer impact of a nuclear strike.
The next section will take a closer look at the iterations of the bans to contextualize its
relationship with the blacklist.
7.1 The Final Dot: the 2017 Travel Ban
So far in the chapter the justification for the 2017 ban does not equate with the level of
urgency in which the Trump Administration rolled out the controversial immigration, national
security policy. Global terrorism at the time of the ban was in decline and by banning entire
countries instead of individuals or business entities, it seemed as if bias drove the policymaking
decision. Several lower court decisions claimed the ban was rooted in bias. By the time the final
version of the policy reached the United States Supreme Court (USSC), lower court findings did
not hold.
On January 27, the Trump Administration released “Executive Order 13,769 [EO-1],
Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorists Entry into the United States,” which suspended
travel for 90-days from majority-Muslim countries, such as Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan,

132
Ibid. 18
133
Ibid. 7

80
Yemen and Iraq (initially) citizens from entering the United States. All Syrian refugees were
“indefinitely” blocked from entering the US along with haltering entrance from other refuges for
120-days.
134
EO-1 went into immediate effect, and since the ban also applied to permanent US
citizens as well as visitors from other countries, confusion, outrage and court filings against the
ban ensued immediately.
135

The following day, January 28, 2017, Darweesh v Trump stayed the deportation of valid
visa holders. On the following day, Louhghalam v. Trump resulted in a temporary restraining order
to protect legal immigrants from being detained or removed. The Trump Administration held that
the ban had to be maintained in the interest of national security. Following the stay and restraining
order, the Court of Appeals in the Ninth Circuit said, that the Trump Administration provided no
evidence of a terrorist threat posed by travelers from the countries in question.
136

The need to protect American lives emerged as an overarching justification for putting the
policy in place. However, the official reason the Administration offered did not match actual
immigration statistics, nor did it align with the underline purpose of the blacklist, plus it greatly
expanded the parameters of the initial Obama Administration’s Act. This begs the question, what
was the true impetus for the harsh and totalizing ban? Some answers involve the ban’s overt anti-
Muslim tones and assault on difference and identity as illustrated in chapter 2. The ban looked to
many as an explicitly, America-first policy aimed to discriminate against Islam as a religion.
137

Identity-bias, racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia became huge rallying cries to challenge the

134
Dycus, S. et alia. (2019). National Security Law and Counterterrorism Law. MD, Wolters Kluwer. P.
162.
135
Ibid. 163
136
Ibid. 164
137
Los Angeles Times. Regular report. (2017, March 6). “Reaction and analysis What happens now with
Trump’s new travel Ban?”
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-travel-ban-white-house-20170306-story.html

81
ban in the courts on the grounds of strict scrutiny, a legal provision that protects vulnerable, racial
classes.
138
There are domestic possibilities for the urgency of the TB, such as circumnavigating
the legal protections of strict scrutiny and the Immigration and Nationality Act.
139

Following the 9
th
Circuit Court of Appeals decision that concluded the ban was likely
unconstitutional, The Trump Administration pulled the first TB. A second attempt to impose a TB
occurred on March 6, 2017, Executive Order, 13,780 [EO-2]. This version omitted Iraq from the
list of banned countries and rejected the claim that EO-1 was bias against religion. Critics said the
Trump Administration did not consider that American troops were still deployed in Iraq fighting
against the Islamic State (ISIS/L).
Legal battles asserting statutory and constitutional Establishment Clause claims quickly
followed EO-2.
140
A key lawsuits was a Maryland case, International Refugee Assistance Project
v. Trump. This case challenged the Administration’s use of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Presidential authority was upheld in one instance, yet the Establishment Clause claim was not
successful since,
… the travel ban bears no resemblance to any response to a national security risk
in recent history, it bears clear resemblance to the precise action President Trump
described as effectuating his Muslim ban. Thus, it is more likely that primary
purpose of the travel ban was grounded in religion. And even if the Second
Executive Order has a national security purpose, it is likely that its primary purpose
remains the effectuation of the proposed Muslim ban.
141

138
Refer to Establishment Clause citation 52 below

140
The Establishment Clause. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/establishment_clause
141
Ibid. 166

82
The result of the Maryland decision was the court upheld Section 2(c) of EO-2, which enforced
a ban on six Muslim-majority countries. In Hawai’i v. Trump, US District Judge Derrick K.
Watson ruled in favor of the Establishment Clause claim due to the administration’s repeated
bias claims against Muslims (consider adding some tweets).
142
The decision from Hawai’i said
the latest ban "suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor."
143
Judge Watson
continued to say that EO-2 "plainly discriminates based on nationality" in a way that is opposed
to federal law and "the founding principles of this Nation."
144

Watson also challenged presidential powers by stating that "It [Travel Ban] exceeds the
limits on the President's exclusion authority that have been recognized for nearly a century, by
supplanting Congress's immigration policies with the President's own unilateral and indefinite
ban.” Furthermore, "it continues to effectuate the President's unrepudiated promise to exclude
Muslims from the United States."
145
A nationwide restraining order on EO-2, including the 120-
day and 90-day bans was issued. With that challenge to President Trump’s authority, Judge Watson
signaled those presidential powers were limited. Following Judge Watson’s decision, The
Department of State instructed embassies around the world to continue processing visas as normal.
Venezuela and North Korea were not included on that version of the list. Before the Supreme Court
rendered its decision, the ban restricted the entry of travelers from six of the eight countries.
Following Hawaii’s challenge to EO-2, on September 24, 2017, the Administration issued
Proclamation No. 9645, Enhancing Vetting Capabilities and Processes Attempted Entry Into the

142
Ibid. 166
143
The Washington Post. Matt Zapotosky. October 17, 2017.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/federal-judge-blocks-trumps-third-travel-
ban/2017/10/17/e73293fc-ae90-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html?utm_term=.aaad41ccd164

145
The Washington Post. Matt Zapotosky. October 17, 2017.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/federal-judge-blocks-trumps-third-travel-
ban/2017/10/17/e73293fc-ae90-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html?utm_term=.aaad41ccd164

83
United States by Terrorists and other Public-Safety Threats. A modification was added to
Proclamation 9645, with Proclamation 9723, Maintaining Enhanced Vetting Capabilities and
Processes for Detecting Attempted Entry Into the United States by Terrorists or Other Public-
Safety Threats.
146

The Administration adjusted their approach before issuing the third iteration of the ban.
Venezuela and North Korea were added to assuage criticism around xenophobia, Islamophobia
and racism. The new ban included, Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea and
Venezuela. Adding Venezuela to the ban nudges at the argument that the blacklist is politically
motivated. While relations with the US and Venezuela were strained since 2015, tensions
between President Maduro and President Trump were aggressive and on front page news.
147

Then Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson held a long-time grudge against former Venezuelan
President Chavez. In a 2017, Washington Post article titled, “Rex Tillerson got burned in
Venezuela. Then he got revenge” traced the years long conflict involving his company Exxon-
Mobile and Venezuela.
148
This overt conflict of interest is the type of criticism Collins (2014)
and Peed (2005) level against the objectivity of the blacklist considering the immense powers
section 6(j) of the EAA imbues to the SoS.
Once the third ban a large portion of the ban could not sustain scrutiny under the
constitution. The state of Hawai’i, along with the International Assistance Refugee project, sued
President Trump et al. and won; however, the United States Supreme Court (USCC) said

146
Ibid. 167
147
The Guardian. (2019, May 5). “Trump Administration Denied Special Help to Venezuelans Seeking
Asylum.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/05/venezuela-asylum-seekers-refugees-trump-
administration-us
148
Washington Post. Nick Miroff. (2017, January 16). Rex Tillerson got burned in Venezuela. Then he
got revenge https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/16/rex-tillerson-got-burned-
in-venezuela-then-he-got-revenge/

84
challenges to EO-2 were moot.
149
In addition, the USCC granted a writ of certiorari and in a 5-
to-4 Supreme Court decision, the Trump Administration won. The court ruled that the president’s
past discriminatory statements about Muslims did not outweigh his presidential powers to secure
US borders. Put differently, national security concerns outweighed the president’s perceived bias
against Muslims and clear bias towards Maduro.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said President Trump had
“ample statutory authority to make national security judgments in the realm of immigration.” The
chief justice also rejected a constitutional challenge to Mr. Trump’s third executive order on the
matter, issued in September as a proclamation.”
150
The decision was condemned by the dissenting
judges on the court.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor compared the court’s decision to Korematsu v. United States, the
1944 decision that centered around the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II and
birthed strict scrutiny.
151
The legal history of the 2017 Travel Ban is important to contextualize
because the lower courts stated that identity-bias was present in the policy and a clear national
security reason of increased terroristic activity was also disproven. In the end, protections of
presidential power or in Wendt’s language what the state wants, won the battle in the USSC. The
political, material artifact, the Travel Ban, expressed the internal will of the decisionmaker and
was given license within the political ecosystem of the Supreme Court to externally weaponize
national security claims with foreign policy implications.

149
The United States District Court for the District of Hawai’I State of Hawai’I, Ismail, Elshikh, John
Does 1 & 2, and Muslim Association of Hawai’I, Inc v. Donald. J. Trump et al. (2017).
https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/hawaii-v-trump-order-granting-motion-tro.
150
Adam Liptack, New York Times, June 26, 2018.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/us/politics/supreme-court-trump-travel-ban.html.
151
Adam Liptack, New York Times, June 26, 2018.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/us/politics/supreme-court-trump-travel-ban.html

85
The concluding section will connect all the dots and offer some overall suggestions
regarding the implications for weaponizing national security policy as a tool to discriminate along
the lines of religion, race and nationality. Additionally, I offer thoughts on strengths and
weaknesses of the hybrid model.
8.1 Conclusion
This chapter was driven by a set of questions that emerged after doing extensive research
on the Travel Ban over the past 5 years. Those questions I sought answer are 1) what drove the
Trump Administration’s urgent decision to enact the 2017 Travel Ban for its first major national
security policy? and 2) is terrorism the most pressing international security concern? Over the
years, I wrote different papers about the 2017 Travel Ban and the subsequent 2020, Africa focused
ban and the critique was always the same, yes, it was obvious identity bias was present in the bans,
but what can I say that is interesting, scientifically compelling about identity-bias? Theoretically,
I responded to this critique by locating a security studies-based argument that could explain the
behavior and policy choices of decisionmakers.
In sections three through five, terrorism was defined and distinguished from state-
sponsored. The goal here is to highlight the intended purpose of the blacklist, which is a tool to
cause economic harm to specific individuals and entities. The bans however, weaponized
difference by communicating racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic foreign policy vilifying entire
countries without provocation. The following sections punctuated the use, function and connection
the blacklist has to economic sanctions.
Section six and seven provided the clearest rebuke to the Trump Administration’s claim
that an increase in terroristic activity drove the urgent roll out of the ban. The horrific killings in
San Bernardino the year before his presidential election were used as a justification. Ironically,

86
mass shootings caused by non-Muslim Americans did not trigger policies from the Trump
Administration banning the sale of guns. Sections six and seven provided a data-driven look at
peaks and lulls in global terrorism then detailed lower court decisions that irrefutably blamed
identity-bias as the motivating factor behind the bans.
Secondarily, an argument was made suggesting that the bans possess materiality, like tanks
and missiles, simply because they cause harm and showcase the political might of the US. Branch’s
hybrid model is divided in two categories 1) importance for international politics and 2) must fit
material and ideational parameters. Those parameters or conditions are a) weapons, b)
communications capabilities, and c) the creation of artifacts. To apply Branch’s model to the bans,
I included Winner’s description of political artifacts to nuance Branch’s parameters that says the
intervening variable must be able to create artifacts to satisfy the condition.
After adjusting Branch’s hybrid model, something mirroring Wendt’s concept of rump
materialism began to take shape. Rump materialism says depending on the situation, material
threats can act independently of ideational factors. Whereas, Branch suggests that material and
ideational threats are fixed as hybrid functions, always informing the other. This paper revealed a
limitation with that view by using policies as material artifacts and not technology.
Summing up, why is this compelling for Political Science and IR? As the US tries to regain
its reputation back as a reliable partner and ally following the Trump years and the foreign policy
failure of leaving Afghanistan, IR is tasked with confronting its reliance on World War II rational-
irrational constructs that do not go far enough in explaining motivations of decisionmakers. For
instance, before Putin invaded Russia, experts and pundits relied heavily on what rational actors
do and are not supposed to do. Putin’s identity, framed by a belief of Russian supremacy was

87
sidelined, nearly ignored. If the West valued identity and a threat-potential, Vietnam could have
unfolded differently and perhaps Putin’s imperial ambitions would have been recognized.
The other compelling interest is democracies are backsliding and authoritarian states,
Russia and China are allying - to what degree is yet to be seen. Traditional IR concepts like balance
of power and security dilemma are western-centric theories that hold US domination constant,
relying too heavily on economic integration as the glue to peace. Having an economic and trade
relationship with Russia did not prevent Putin from invading Ukraine, nor has it deterred China
from inching farther from the US dollar. These high-stake international security problems must
consider how identity drives decisionmakers to policy-make and respond to threats perceived or
real. To that end, we are beyond the parameters of culture wars. That is a term best suited for
hippies in sixties rebelling against short haircuts, suits and the war in Vietnam. At stake is avoiding
World War III where the threat of nuclear war looms and the entire international system is
realigning. Finally, the domestic security reality in the US is democracy is backsliding, tilting
towards ultra-religious Conservative, white supremacist-based ideologies while embracing
autocracy. The threat-potential of codifying the weaponization of identity is rising and nuanced
scholarship in IR is needed to address these growing security threats.

88
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Appendices
Charts

Figure 3. Peak Phase: 10-year view of deaths caused by terrorism in Iran, Syria, and Libya.

Figure 4. Peak Phase: 20-year view of deaths caused by terrorism in Iran, Syria, and Libya.

97

Figure 5. Peak Phase: Expanded and isolated view of deaths in Libya.

Figure 6. A 17-year view of death totals across states listed on the blacklist. North Korea does
not show up on the diagram because data is not available for North Korea during this time period
and the Our World in Data map does not extend pass 2017.

98

Figure 7. Map of where global terrorism was focused before 9/11.

Figure 8. Map of the impact of 9/11.

99

Figure 9. Map of global terrorism after 9/11. It reverted to 2000 levels.

Figure 10. All three phases of terrorism from its peak in the 1970s, intermediate in the 90s to the
lowest in the late nineties to 2000.

100

Figure 11. Graph of the impact 9/11 had on global death totals. Where G5’s N = 350, G6’s
N=3000

Figure 12. Graph of a sharp decline in deaths in 2002.

101

Figure 13. A 57-year overview of deaths caused by terrorism. There are spikes in 2001 and in
Iraq and Afghanistan following US involvement. Salient for the paper, there was not an
immediate threat of terrorism leveled towards the US. Following 9/11, the US remained flat up
to the year the Travel Ban was enacted.

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Creator Haynes, Eboni "Nola" K. (author)

Core Title Flinging the boomerang: locating instability and the threat potential of identity-bias in US national security policy

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Political Science and International Relations

Degree Conferral Date 2022-08

Publication Date 08/08/2022

Defense Date 05/09/2022

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Tag arms control,Blacklist,boomerang effect,decision-makers,Foreign policy,hybrid model,ideational threats,identity,international relations,international security,intersectionality,material threats,Muslim ban,national security,nuclear threats,OAI-PMH Harvest,Political science,Race,race ethnicity and politics (REP),Religion,sanctions,security studies,target populations,travel bans

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