Ukraine - NATO Identity Politics 1997-2018

Abstract

This dissertation analyses the changes in national identity among the ruling political elites in Ukraine. Specifically, it argues that there is a constitutive relationship between changes in foreign policy and transformations in the discursive articulation of Ukraine's identity. The argument is developed on the basis of a longitudinal study on Ukraine-NATO identity politics from 1997 to 2018. Ukraine has been an outlier in the NATO enlargement process: it has had territorial disputes and a protracted armed conflict, it has neither reached a consensus on its Euro-Atlantic integration policy within the country nor has it ensured full support of NATO membership. Yet, despite the lack of a formal invitation to join NATO, Ukraine's ruling elites managed to adopt amendments to the Constitution, fixing the aspirations of NATO membership in 2019. This dissertation explores the intertwined nature of national debates on NATO accession, placing trends in national identity projects in their historical national and international contexts. <br/> The research takes into account structural changes of Ukrainian politics and national identity articulation, applying a discourse-analytical approach to a wider political debate. Foreign policy is treated as identity politics. <br/> The results of the dissertation provide a nuanced understanding of a variety of positions on Ukraine-NATO relations that were constructed within three basic discourses on NATO accession. Russia, NATO, and the U.S. are constitutive Others that shape identity representations of Ukraine into different projects of identity articulated by basic discourses. Representations which became incompatible with political realities and other national identity representations disappeared from those discourses. The national identity project constructed by the dominant pro-NATO discourse provided a justification for fixing NATO accession in the constitution.