Beyond barrels and battleships: Maritime power and ontological security in the Arabian/Persian Gulf

India is a rapidly growing democratic naval power. Moreover, its features such as the strong and fast-growing economy, newest military technologies and nuclear weapon make a big impression. Considering the other major powers, it seems that the world is becoming multipolar where India could have a significant role and become one of the major poles. It has been a subject for discussions among journalists and academics for a log time. On the other hand, there are a lot of discussions about India’s “friendly and mild” foreign policy; also, it is sometimes named the non-ambitious passive player in the international arena. The optimism with doubts: the paradoxical situation composed of the history of the impressive imperial civilization, modern-day economic growth, huge progress in technologies versus the major internal problems and “soft” state image. Here emerges the problem: why India’s foreign policy, despite its power growth, is still passive/neutral on the international arena? The hypotheses to answering this question are: 1. India’s role and status are restricted by its lack of power. 2. India’s role on the international arena is restricted by its ideological and neutrality traditions, which provide ontological security to India. The aim of this article is to ascertain and explore India’s status (regional or global) and to ascertain India’s role (self-identification) on the international arena by using the ontological security theory.The theoretical background of this essay is ontological security theory which ten years ago was absorbed from sociology and is quite new in the international relations and security studies. Its main arguments are: ontological security is the security of being; in addition to physical security, states also seek ontological security (security of the self); ontological security is achieved by routinizing relationships with significant others, after all players become attached to those relationships, even if they are dangerous to their physical security. This theory is strongly bound with the identity that India always gives the self culture prominence in its discourse and its friendly discourse in the Ministry of Defence annual reports. This is the reason why the ontological security theory was chosen to help understand and explain India’s foreign policy. First, links between ontological and traditional security are discussed in the first part of this work. There is a broad analysis of the assumptions of the ontological security theory in the same paragraph. Second, there is a short criticism of the ontological security. Finally, the ontological security theory as the India’s foreign policy explanation tool is discussed; the discourse analysis is introduced as a methodological instrument of the work, and the model of analysis of the second part of the work, is defined. The second part of the work contains the content analysis of experts’ articles and official documents of India’s Foreign Ministry, using the model defined in the previous part and ontological security for the results’ explanation.The analysis made in the second part of the work has shown that the ontological security theory is able to explain India’s foreign policy and does it. The first hypothesis (India’s role and status are restricted by its lack of power) was denied. This means that India can be a major global power. The second hypothesis (India’s role in the international arena is restricted by its ideological and neutrality traditions, which provide ontological security to India) was approved. Strictly, it means that India does not want to be a major power because of it self-identity and ontological security. India does not expose itself as a major power but thinks that is worth to be such. On the other hand, if India has absorbed the international politics routine form the British Empire, this could mean that India’s identity is to be a global power, but it does not want to publicise it yet.The study has shown that it is hard to regard India in the international community as a major power without special observation or using just the realism theory tools. Consequently, the ontological security theory has shown that it has the tools that can be used in countries’ foreign policy explanation.

Ontological security theory has increasingly informed research in international relations, yet its insights remain largely absent from policymaking. This article seeks to bridge that gap by offering a policy-oriented framework grounded in ontological security theory. Given the field’s theoretical diversity, practical indeterminacy, and normative complexity, translating its insights into policy guidance presents significant challenges. To address these, I propose a two-step approach. First, I identify three dilemmas that actors often face: the tension between ontological and physical security; the dissonance between competing internal identities (a dissonance dilemma ); and the trade-off between actors’ own security and that of others (a spiral dilemma ). These dilemmas underscore key tensions in decision-making and help render ontological concerns more actionable. Second, I outline three mechanisms for addressing these dilemmas: identifying sources of ontological insecurity; assessing the broader implications of security measures; and avoiding actions that needlessly threaten others’ ontological security. Rather than prescribing specific policies, this framework aims to sensitize policymakers to ontological dynamics and provide conceptual tools for navigating them. Recognizing such dilemmas can help prevent destabilizing behavior and foster more reflexive, conscious policy practices.

This paper builds upon previous work that has sought to use ontological security to understand problematic and violent state practices, and how they relate to the securitizing of identity. Yet like much (although not all) work which has utilized it in International Relations theory, the application of ontological security theory (OST) to state ‘drives’ has provided only a superficial unpacking of ‘the state’. Further, while OST scholars have examined environmental or background conditions of ‘late modernity’, and how these conditions facilitate anxiety and uncertainty for agents, the content of such factors can be further explicated by placing OST in conversation with one particular systemic account. Alongside ‘the state’ and ‘late modernity’, the paper therefore explores several complementary sites shaping the ontological security seeking process of, within and around states. The paper reads the 2000s re-embrace of torture by the United States by examining ontological security alongside: (1) the structural level via Laura Sjoberg’s ‘gender–hierarchical’ argument; (2) the routinized organizational processes (via Graham Allison) of the US intelligence community and specifically the Central Intelligence Agency; and (3) the narrated interplay between public opinion and elite discourses.

This article widens and deepens the notion of ontological security and therefore both the scope of ontological security studies (OSS) within the discipline of international relations (IR) and ontological security theory (OST) writ large by introducing and explaining the implications of (re/dis)embodiment—the continually contested social–political process through which bodies come to be or not be and upon which everybody existentially and ontologically depends. Understood as both a source of and a threat to individual and collective bodies’ ontological security, in this article I explain how taking the process of (re/dis)embodiment into account entails widening and deepening OSS to allow for the consideration and appreciation of how individual and collective bodies are continually, simultaneously, materially, and ideationally contested. As a primarily theoretical contribution, this is done through an interdisciplinary approach bringing Achille Mbembe's necropolitical theory into conversation with Sara Ahmed's theses on willfulness and use and is illustrated through discussions on the body politics of the COVID-19 pandemic. In short, I argue that, under conditions of contemporary global necropolitics, individuals’ ontological security as bodies becomes increasingly threatened according to raced, classed, and gendered local–global hierarchies which determine the reduction and use of individuals to the status of parts within collectives that are themselves embodied and increasingly unfit for the purpose of healthy living, especially in a time of pandemic.

Sometimes physical security may come at the cost of ontological security for refugees. They may struggle to develop stable narratives of identity and fail to situate themselves within their new social environments. States often prioritize addressing refugees’ physical security needs to facilitate their integration, but largely overlook the importance of identity security. This study argues that ontological security is crucial to integration processes, and refugees reestablish it by engaging in various forms of identity backlash, lowering their interest in the politics of the host country, and heightening their desire to return home. In other words, identity backlash, political disinterest, and an intensified desire to return home function as ontological security-seeking mechanisms and anxiety responses. The study contributes to ontological security theory (OST) by introducing a novel and nuanced framework that defines a set of indicators for the emotional and narrative-oriented aspects of ontological security among refugees. It takes a micro-level approach examining ontological security at the individual level for Syrian refugees in Turkey and Germany. The specific findings of this study are threefold. First, I find a significantly lower level of narrative-oriented security among Syrian refugees in Turkey than in Germany. Second, the results indicate that narrative-oriented ontological security among Syrian refugees is strongly associated with identity backlash, low political interest, and a willingness to return to the home country. Third, the results show that physical security and ontological security are not always correlated. Overall, this study demonstrates how OST can provide insights into the complex interplay between perceptions of security, identity backlash, political integration, and willingness to return among refugee communities.

What is ontological (in)security? Recent scholarship on ontological security in International Relations has increasingly turned to the concept's theoretical origins in psychoanalysis and existential philosophy to address the field's (meta)theoretical limitations. This article argues that this development also necessitates an interrogation of the concept of ontological security itself to address the field's theoretical tensions. Further developing the nascent Kleinian approach to ontological security, this article conceptualises ontological (in)security as two distinct positions that denote the different ways in which subjects, be they individuals, groups, or states, manage anxiety. To develop this proposition, the article draws on Melanie Klein's work on the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions to elucidate these positions of ontological (in)security, their respective defence mechanisms against anxiety, and their socio-political implications. This Kleinian approach facilitates a clear theoretical distinction between security and insecurity, providing an analytical toolbox to differentiate the various ways in which anxiety is managed in different positions. This framework particularly underscores the ethical, reparative, and transformative potential of the position of ontological security, aspects that have received limited theoretical and empirical attention to date.

Traditionally, Ontological Security Studies (OSS) have focused on the anxieties and crises of unitary states. More recent scholarship, however, has begun prioritizing the micro-level by exploring the ontological insecurities of individuals. Yet which actors are more important for identifying crises in the first place, and how do they do it? This article argues that we need to pay attention to the intermediary level of analysis between state and individual — to elites. It does so by contributing to OSS’s ongoing problematization of the level of analysis by exploring how elites identify crises and experience ontological (in)security. It is argued that the insecurities of domestic elites, and the origins of these insecurities, help us understand the emergence of critical situations in OSS. The paper then proposes two processes of elite crisis identification that prioritize how elites monitor the occurrence of critical situations. How they do so depends on whether elites derive their ontological (in)security from the state’s autobiographical narrative (referred to as statist reflexivity) or from other actors (parochial reflexivity). To illustrate this theoretical contribution, the paper applies statist reflexivity to a case vignette, the concerns of British Eurosceptics about continued European integration in the early 2010s. Eurosceptics regarded integration as incompatible with their interpretation of the country’s island identity, which required separateness from the European continent’s political project. Analyzing the struggle within the British Conservative Party about Britain’s relationship to continental Europe that began in the 1970s and culminated in the early 2010s, the paper elucidates how paying attention to elite dynamics can help us understand the emergence of ontological crises.

Emotions and ontological security open up one of the latest avenues in International Relations (IR). An increasing number of interdisciplinary approaches have been engaging in emotions and ontological security, for example, foreign policy analysis. However, academic research is scarce concerning the triangulation of emotions, foreign policy, and individual ontological security. Driven by the gap in the literature, the study analyzes how Turkey’s foreign policy decisions influence individual existentialism in terms of ontological security during the AKP era. A subsidiary question addresses how Turkey’s foreign policy decisions adjust/affect individual emotions towards its most engaged and interacted countries. Based on Ontological Security Theory (OST), the study has conducted 20 interviews. The questions cover Turkey’s foreign policy milestones: the start of the EU accession negotiations, the “one minute incident,” the Mavi Marmara incident, and the Arab Uprisings and the Syrian Civil War. The questions aim to reveal people’s emotional reactions to and descriptions of such events. The interview transcripts are analyzed in a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) context. Through CDA, the individuals’ perceptions of risk, threat, and danger are analyzed to seek the determinants of growing existential uncertainty in tandem with significant foreign policy decisions of the AKP government. This study finds that foreign policy decisions in Turkey impact individuals’ emotions based on key events. Through the case of Turkey, the study contributes to the emerging literature on emotions and ontological security by studying the dimensions between foreign policy and individual insecurities and emotions.

This article aims to investigate how the legal requirement to promote fundamental British values (FBVs) impacts Muslim teachers’ professional identity formation, utilising Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with self-identified Muslim teachers, including both male and female individuals from diverse ethnic backgrounds, employed in secondary schools across England. This study seeks to interpret Muslim teachers’ experiences through Anthony Giddens’ ontological security theory. Firstly, Muslim teachers expressed pride in being British and their successful integration into society. Secondly, the meaning of Britishness was elucidated by the participants through references to the values described in the current government guidelines on promoting FBVs. Finally, the impact of the obligation to promote FBVs on the professional identity formation of Muslim teachers points to a degree of ambivalence rooted in seeking ontological security. Certain teachers adopted an uncritical stance towards FBV policy, prioritising ‘values’ within the debate and thereby normalising the discourse surrounding FBVs. In contrast, others engaged in a critical analysis of FBV rhetoric, highlighting its adverse impact on academic discussions and their professional identities. From the perspective of ontological security theory, Muslim teachers are situated in a fragile position; while the majority grapple with ontological insecurity, others exist in a realm between ontological security and insecurity.

Ontological security theory (OST) provides a unique account of how state Self-identity is formed and reformed in international relations. OST postulates that state Self-identity is usefully understood by inquiring into the foundation of a state's sense of Self: its autobiographical narrative. We seek to amend this line of argument by further suggesting that the autobiographical narratives of states are ‘gendered’. Feminist theorizing about the relationship between gender and power implies that the dominant autobiographical narrative of state Self-identity is ‘gendered’ masculine. The power of this masculinized autobiographical narrative flows from an ‘internal othering’ process of counter ‘feminine’ autobiographical narratives that exist alongside the masculinized autobiographical narrative. Our goal is to suggest that opportunities do arise for counter ‘feminine’ narratives to challenge the dominant autobiographical narrative due to their interdependence and we explicate two practices by which masculinized narratives can be engaged, challenged and disrupted.

This study examines how media-induced anxiety amplifies perceived disruptions, impacting consumers’ ontological security and adaptive behavior during prolonged economic crises in Puerto Rico. Grounded in Coping Theory and Ontological Security Theory, this study addresses gaps in the understanding of the emotional and cognitive effects of media narratives on consumption patterns. Using PLS-SEM and IPMA to analyze data from 646 surveys, a sample that exceeded the minimum requirement of 385 participants revealed that media narratives intensify perceived threats, destabilize consumers’ ontological security, and prompt adaptive responses in areas such as entertainment and investments. This study highlights the moderating role of personal economic conditions and provides theoretical contributions by extending existing frameworks. Practical implications emphasize the importance of transparent communication strategies to reduce anxiety and support resilient decision making, offering a comprehensive view of consumer behavior in turbulent economic contexts.

Bu makale, Türkiye’de yeterince iyi tanınmayan, ancak Batılı Uluslararası İlişkiler (Uİ) yazınında uzunca bir süredir çalışılan “Ontolojik Güvenlik Teorisini” (OGT), çeşitli kavramsal ve pratik tartışmalarla, tanımlayıcı yaklaşımla incelemektedir. Giddens’ın “insanın öz-kimliğinin sürekliliğine ve çevresindeki sosyal ve maddi eylem ortamlarının tutarlılığına duyduğu güven” olarak açıkladığı ontolojik güvenlik; insanlar kadar, toplumların ve devletlerin de yaşamlarındaki rutinler, sosyal etkileşimler ve istikrarla bağlantılıdır. Bu noktada çok sayıda iç ve dış politika eyleminin arka planında ontolojik güvenlik ya da güvensizlik olgusunun yattığı görülmekte; tekrarlayan çatışmalar ve irrasyonel devlet davranışları bu kavram üzerinden sosyo-psikolojik bir altyapı ile incelenebilmektedir. Bu araştırma hem kavrama dair tanımları derinlemesine ele almakta, hem de konuyla ilgili çeşitli vaka analizlerini geniş bir literatür taramasıyla ortaya koymaktadır. Amaç, Türkiye’de Uİ alanında gelecekte yapılacak güvenlik ve dış politika çalışmalarının, bu tartışmalar eşliğinde analitik bir zenginlik kazanmasına katkı sağlamaktır. Öz-kimlik/benlik ve güvenlik ilişkisine dair bulguları ve disiplinlerarası yapısı sayesinde, ontolojik güvenlik yaklaşımı böyle bir potansiyele fazlasıyla sahiptir.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the reasons for Saudi Arabia's pursuit of a soft power strategy since the rise of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman from a constructivist perspective. To do so, this paper utilizes ontological security as an analytical framework. From an ontological perspective, Saudi Arabia is likely to maintain biographical continuity and continue to build soft power with the modification of its national identity to promote its national interests of royal family survival and national unity. Saudi Arabia is analyzed to be in the process of establishing a new national identity as a moderate Islamist, secular nationalist, and economically diversified state. This proves that Saudi Arabia is a suitable case to be explained by the ontological security theory.

The understanding of traditional security is undergoing a more multi-faceted transformation. Security itself is no more regarded as being limited to a physical presence, it requires a stable self as well. Claiming this, ontological security theory enables scholars to examine state behavior which strengthens identity values via self-narratives. This study aims to reveal that the traditional security perception of Canadian governments is limited in evaluating their relations with the Arctic states and indigenous people, therefore, in recent years, the relevant governments have provided Canadian ontological security in the Arctic region by constructing indigenous people as self-narratives. Therefore, in this paper, instead of traditional national security, it is mentioned that ontological security theory better articulates the state behavior of Canada both domestically and internationally. In the study, the qualified document analysis method is used by examining the reports that include the indigenous peoples as a significant part of Canada's national identity and the declarations announced at the ministerial meetings of the Arctic Council after the chairmanship of Canada. In this way, the study concludes by mentioning that Canada has built its ontological security by constructing self-narratives from indigenous peoples to have a robust position in the Arctic.

The growing literature on ontological security theory (OST) in international relations, ontological security studies (OSS), is characterized by great internal diversity. This internal pluralism is one of its greatest strengths, but it is also potentially confusing, for example, when different works using an ontological security lens arrive at contradictory conclusions without it being obvious why. In order to make sense of this diversity, this article traces two interrelated conceptual divergences related to the notion of anxiety. The first one concerns the observation that anxiety is seemingly both debilitating and an impediment to action, as well as a call to action, inspiring adaptation and change. The second divergence centers on whether ontological security is at all attainable, which is largely a matter of whether anxiety is best understood as an extraordinary and temporally limited condition or as an ever-present and normal part of life. This article argues that the divergent answers to these questions, and the problems they give rise to, are primarily the result of ambiguity with regard to the key concept of anxiety. The malleable nature of the concept of anxiety engenders deviating interpretations and applications among scholars. While awareness of these issues already goes a long way toward making sense of some of the diversity within OSS, this article further suggests ways to increase the conceptual clarity of anxiety and to address the two issues of change and attainability. Doing so increases our conceptual understanding of OST.