From Existential Politics Towards Normal Politics? The Baltic States in the Enlarged Europe

Abstract

This article presents a critical discourse analysis of the Baltic states’ self-positioning within European foreign policy. It argues that, despite certain relief in their immediate security concerns after the dual enlargement of the EU and NATO, the shift from existential politics to normal politics by the Baltic states is far from being accomplished. The way in which the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have responded to the construction of their identity as ‘Europe but not Europe’ throughout the enlargement processes of the EU and NATO has been largely neglected in empirical studies on their post-Cold War self-conceptualizations in the European arena. Yet, the experience of being framed as simultaneously in Europe and not quite European has left a constitutive imprint on the current security imaginary of the Baltic states. William Connolly's concept of the politics of becoming is thus applied to analyse the Baltic version of becoming a subject in the field of common European foreign policy.