Strategic ambiguity and chemical warfare in Ukraine

Abstract

Abstract This article revisits the concept of strategic ambiguity to identify and critically assess the overlooked role of international norms. Addressing a significant gap within the existing analysis of strategic ambiguity which fails to fully explain the role of norms, the article demonstrates how international norms construct and function within deliberately ambiguous foreign policy as the normative exploitation of epistemic ambiguity. Yet the article further reveals that strategic ambiguity is then systemically dependent on a precarious overreliance on epistemic ambiguity; this comprises a highly fragile policy framework which is excessively vulnerable to change. The article applies this innovative retheorization to an empirical case-study: United States foreign policy concerning the alleged Russian chemical warfare strategy in Ukraine. This analysis is based on an original and comparative discursive analysis of US administration and institutional public statements drawn primarily from government archives. The new analysis a) identifies US policy as strategic ambiguity and explains the strategy's motivations and perceived benefits; b) shows how an international norm (the chemical weapons taboo) was employed to enact an ambiguous foreign policy; but also, c) demonstrates the intrinsic fragility and potential collapse of this strategic ambiguity as a consequence of normative dynamics.