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Associate Professor Ahsan I. Butt is director of undergraduate studies at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. His main interests lie in nationalism, political violence, climate change, and South Asia—and cricket—and his first book, Secession and Security: Explaining State Strategy Against Separatists (2017) won the 2019 International Studies Association Award for best book in International Security Studies. He is currently writing his second book, The Lies That Bind Us: Nationalism and History Education, which focuses on the construction of nationalism in schools and in history textbooks. This interview was published by global academic news outlet E-International Relations and is reprinted with permission. It has been edited for length.
Where do you see the most exciting research/debates happening in your field?
I think the most interesting debate right now as we speak—one which reflects a larger divide in the international relations [IR] academic community—is the micro-debate concerning the origins of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I’m not an expert on that area of the world, but I have been observing closely the often quite caustic debate between those who lay the blame at NATO expansion and those who lay the blame at Russian imperialism. As an onlooker it’s been very interesting; it reflects a much larger discussion in the IR literature on why wars happen, as well as the conceivable measures that can be taken to avoid wars.
I might be biased, but I also think climate is a really important issue—I actually think in many ways it is the most important international political issue. To my surprise, however, there is much less attention paid to it than you might otherwise expect, especially if you compare it to the issue of nuclear weapons between the 1960s and the 1980s. I would argue climate is as important as—if not more important than—the issue of nuclear weapons during that period, so I find the relative lack of attention quite galling.
How has the way you understand the world changed over time, and what (or who) prompted the most important shifts in your thinking?
If I had to answer that question I would probably say something about the importance of class. I originally studied ethnic conflict in grad school and generally tended to view politics through an ethnic or nationalist lens. I would say I still mostly do, but the older I get, the more convinced I am by Marxist analyses of politics and the importance of class conflict. That may be due to real-world events and having lived as a young man through the 2008 recession and its aftermath. Just seeing the divide between the rich and the poor, especially in the U.S. but also in places like Pakistan, and seeing how far the rich will go to secure their own interests has definitely produced a shift in my thinking.
I was always broadly sympathetic to what we might call “Marxist-lite” views, but I would say that over the last 10-15 years I have developed a much greater sympathy for the classical Marxist views on how far the rich will go to attempt to protect their interests. Regarding who has had the most impact on that view, I don’t think there’s been any one person or text/document. Rather, I think it’s been my lived experience over the past 10-15 years and just observing how economic elites behave. While I haven’t had many massive shifts in my thinking, of the ones I have had, that’s probably the biggest.
Your 2017 book Secession and Security provides a theoretical framework for understanding state responses to separatist movements. Could you give us an outline of the theory, and explain how it departs from other explanations for secessionist conflict?
Separatist conflict by definition is the product of at least two actors: the separatists themselves and the state they are taking on. I choose to focus on the latter because the state has greater room for maneuver and a wider array of actions it can take—both peaceful and violent. In many ways the creation of a new state requires the acquiescence of the host state, so the state becomes the central actor in these separatist disputes. My argument is that state responses to secessionist movements are conditioned by external security considerations, both in deciding whether to coerce separatists, as well as how much to coerce.
On deciding whether to coerce separatists, most states at most times opt to respond with a fight. My basic point is that secession by its very nature represents a pretty massive shift in the balance of power against the state, both with respect to the ethnic minority seeking independence, as well as existing geopolitical rivals. That shift in the balance of power is rendered quite unpalatable in a world in which the state fears future war against either the newly seceded minority or an existing geopolitical rival. It’s only in situations where states don’t fear a war against geopolitical rivals—in other words, they live in a good neighbourhood—and don’t fear war against the seceding minority—in other words, relations between the minority and the host state are not especially grave—that they can opt for concessions, be it autonomy or outright independence. If a state fears future war, however, it cannot afford concessions, and will fight to hold onto the territory.
Are autonomy concessions effective in preventing demands for full independence?
There’s an answer I can give based on my theory, and there’s an answer I can give based on a more expansive view that goes beyond the narrow confines of the academic world. My theory says that if you give autonomy to minority groups, you’re only going to increase the problem down the road. Autonomy grants political, economic, social, and even ideological resources to an ethnic or national minority, and while they may be satisfied today, it is likely that those same resources will be turned against the central state in the future in the form of stronger demands. I think that when it comes to secessionist moments where there are high levels of polarization and politicization of identity, it is reasonable to assert that this is how both the state and the separatist minority will see things.
That said, I don’t want to issue a blanket statement against autonomy concessions. I’m a citizen of the world, and in certain cases, one could certainly argue that autonomy does buy off nationalists. The only thing I would say is that those agreements are more likely when they arise “naturally” out of democratic political processes—during elections, for instance. But if you’re granting autonomy at the point of a gun, or with the threat of secession looming, then it is likely that those concessions will be logrolled into greater demands in the future. Because as I said, you’re essentially giving political, economic, and social resources to the separatists.
What are the key recommendations policymakers should take from your book when trying to stave off destructive separatist conflicts?
There’s a couple of suggestions I make in the book, although I try to emphasize that these recommendations exist largely in a make-believe world, because the conditions under which such strategies could be followed are quite narrow, if non-existent. For theory’s sake, one thing the international community can/should do in such cases is restrain the geopolitical rivals of the state experiencing secession, because support for separatist groups by said rivals is generally what increases the temperature in these types of conflicts. Another recommendation would be to provide defensive guarantees for the state undergoing secession in exchange for “good” treatment of the minority. In other words, you attempt to address the central state’s major security concerns.
Obviously in the real world those recommendations are really hard to pull off.
Could you tell us a bit about your current book project?
Yes, absolutely. I’m looking at three different parts of the world: North America, South America, and South Asia, where I examine how history textbooks, and history education more generally, are used by governments to build senses of nationalism and national identity. I disaggregate national identity into three categories: boundaries of membership, boundaries of time, and boundaries of space.
To examine boundaries of membership—who is in the in-group and who is in the out-group—I use U.S. history textbooks and their stories of race relations as a crutch to understand how these boundaries are constructed. When it comes to boundaries of time, I look at South Asia, particularly India and Pakistan, and the ways in which certain eras are periodised, as well as how certain dates are remembered. What we observe is that both countries have religious nationalist movements which put forward very particular versions of history. I consider, for instance, the BJP’s memory of the Mughal Empire, or its view of how independence in 1947 ought to be remembered—especially Nehru and Gandhi’s role—or even how it answers questions connected to Gandhi’s assassination.
And then when it comes to boundaries of space, I look at how Argentina and Chile have peacefully handled territorial disputes—such as the Beagle Channel Crisis of the late 1970s or the historic dispute over Patagonia—which in other contexts could have easily escalated into full-blown war. I focus on how textbooks tell stories of these territories in contrast to more hotly contested territories elsewhere in the world, such as Kashmir in the case of South Asia. So far I’ve done a bunch of interviews using local language skills in each region, and I am quite excited about it.