The logic of national security, Ronnie Lipschutz (1995) says,  is exclusionist:" drawing boundaries to differentiate within from without. Secure borders mean “differentiating self from others.”

“Enemies” constitute the essence of a state by defining “national security.” The enemy is the alien that cannot be allowed to penetrate. National boundaries separate badness from goodness—protecting the self.

One’s own nation is conceived as absolutely good. The enemy is conceived as absolutely bad (or evil). Badness is defined as what does not belong within the boundaries of the nation. Enemies are entities whose presence within the national body is forbidden. They are like "infections:" pathogenic organisms penetrating into the nation's bloodstream. 

Political violence revolves around destroying badness to preserve goodness. War is generated when badness is located outside national boundaries. Genocide involves destroying badness identified with “internal enemies.”  The nation's purity must be preserved at all costs. Like a human body whose immune system rejects what is not-self, the nation must not allow “aliens” to be present within its borders. These aliens may be Jews, Mexicans, Moslems, illegal immigrants, etc. The nature of the enemy is fungible. The fantasy is the same.

Josefina Alvarez (2006) suggests that borders are the very “walls of the edifice of the state, separating inside from outside.” Security discourses “name dangers;” define enemies. As long as an enemy exists, the nation exist. The idea of a nation cannot be separated from the idea of an enemy. Nations exist to wage a struggle to destroy or eliminate enemies. 

War and genocide may be thought of as a response to “infections:” diseases that may enter and endanger the body politic. War and genocide are psychosomatic phenomena. Enemies are experienced--no matter how distant from the self--as if contained within one's own body. War and genocide are social movements that seek to maintain the health of a national organism: the struggle against pathogens.

According to Paul Kahn (2013), the idea of the enemy is constructed based on a perspective on territory: “The enemy penetrates the border.” This transgression—penetrating the border—makes someone an enemy even if he does relatively little harm and regardless of whether he damages public or private property.

Borders represent the integrity of the state.  The border becomes a geographical representation of national existence. A cross-border threat, regardless of how limited, motivates an extreme response. After 9/11, the United States went into a frenzy of border protection.

Everything follows from the equation of one’s own body with a body politic. The individual projects his or her own body into the external world—experiencing himself or herself as a body politic. Put differently, the individual internalizes the idea of the nation into himself—imagining that his nation exists within his own body.