Josefina Alvarez (2006) states 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 eliminate or defeat enemies. 

War and genocide may be thought of as a response to “infection:” 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 body. War and genocide are social movements seeking to maintain the health of a national organism: a struggle against pathogens.

Everything begins and 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 or herself—imagining that his or her nation exists within his own body.

To protect one's nation is to protect one's own body.