They don't want us in: misrecognition and Georgia's contested departure from Europe

This book examines the relationship between the European Union (EU) and its member states by analysing how the process of integration in the field of foreign policy is shaping member states' identities. Focusing on the mutually constitutive aspects of the relationship between the EU and its member states, Jokela argues that we need discourse analytic and comparative tools for analysing foreign policy in the EU context and draws on the contributions of poststructural international relations. Providing empirically rich and comparative case studies that explore the impact of europeanization of foreign and security policy on Finnish and British foreign policy discourses as well as these states' identities, Jokela generates detailed knowledge about the interplay of national and supranational foreign policy discourses. Making an important contribution to europeanization studies, foreign policy analysis and discourse analysis, this book will be of strong interest to students and scholars of European politics, comparative politics, foreign policy and interntional relations.

The article analyzes the influence of the foreign policy activities of Algerian and Tunisian leaders on the system of regional relations in the Maghreb. In the first part of the article, the authors consider the key characteristics of the Maghreb subsystem of international relations. They define it as deeply integrated with other regional subsystems, on the one hand, and as peripheral, on the other. They describe the transformation of this system in the 2010s, the influence of Western Sahara and Libyan factors on it, as well as relations between the southern and northern Mediterranean. It is further noted that in the early 2020s, key changes at the regional level were associated with the coming to power of Abdelmadjid Tebboune in Algeria and Kais Saied in Tunisia. The second part of the article characterizes the foreign policy innovations of Kais Saied, who, within the framework of the conservative revolution, began to actively use the rhetoric of Arab nationalism in the foreign policy discourse. The third part of the article analyzes Algeria's foreign policy. The key principles of this policy are shown, the activities of the APDR in the Sahel, Palestinian and Maghrebian directions are briefly described. The main conclusion of the article is that the changes in the foreign policy of Tunisia and Algeria are mainly rhetorical in nature and do not change the essence of the Maghreb system of international relations, although they create a new design for it.

Aim. To analyze the functioning of idioms with color components as one of the actual components of the speeches of open diplomatic discourse and foreign policy discourse for the period 2020–2022.Methodology. The research was carried out by means of corpus analysis, as well as by means of лшconversational analysis in a modified version proposed by the author, namely, a variant of communication in the mode of mediated dialogue / polylogue.Results. The linguopragmatics of the use of color idioms in foreign policy communication, acting as echo phrases in the framework of mediated communication, is considered on the example of the collocations red line/line and black swan.Research implications. It is revealed on the analyzed material that a phrase, clause, collocation within the framework of foreign policy discourse acts as a trigger for a protracted dialogue / polylogue. The modified type of conversational analysis contributes to obtaining new data on communication in different types of discourse, including the study of the behavior of idioms with a color component, which plays a prominent role in foreign policy and diplomatic discourses.

The aim of the study is to analyze the modern politics of memory in Georgia in the early 2020s. The author analyzes the role and place of liberal trends in modern Georgian social thought as a factor in the development and transformation of memorial culture and collective historical memory. The novelty of the study lies in the study of the current (modern) stage in the development of the historical policy of Georgian society in the context of an objective lack of interdisciplinary research focused on the analysis of the memorial cultures of the post-Soviet space, based of the original sources use. The article also shows that 1) the liberal segment of modern Georgian society makes a significant contribution to the developments and transformations of memorial culture; 2) the spectrum of memorial practices of Georgian intellectuals varies from historical revisionism to attempts to form a liberal memorial canon; 3) the participation of intellectuals in memorial policy contributes to a parallel co-development of various forms of historical memories. It is assumed that the role of Georgian civil society, including its liberal segment, in the historical politics of modern Georgia will increase, and the intellectual community will remain among the active participants in collective memorial politics.

How can emotions be studied in foreign policy discourse? In a step toward fostering methodological engagement and dialogue on this issue, this chapter develops a methodological framework for studying emotions in foreign policy discourses: emotion discourse analysis. Emotion Discourse Analysis is concerned with how foreign policy actors talk about emotions and how they employ emotion categories when talking about subjects, events, or social relations. It is based on three steps: (1) selecting appropriate texts, (2) mapping the verbal expression of emotions, and (3) interpreting and contextualizing their political implications. I argue that Emotion Discourse Analysis offers a promising framework to make emotions empirically accessible for Foreign Policy Analysis. The methodological framework will be empirically illustrated using NATO’s foreign policy discourse vis-à-vis Russia over the annexation of Crimea.

The depiction of identity in foreign policy analysis is typically presented as inherent or predetermined. However, discursive approaches within the field, particularly poststructuralism, have emphasized foreign policy discourse's influence on identity formation. The main aim of this paper is to elucidate the performative relationship between identity and foreign policy through a poststructuralist lens, even in situations that are not existential or geographically proximate crises. This study employs a critical discourse analysis methodology to examine the performative dynamics between foreign policy discourse by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) policymakers and officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) about distant natural disasters and the construction of the Turkish national identity. The study presents three primary findings: firstly, the AKP's foreign policy discourse recognizes the Indonesia and Pakistan disasters as significant events, in contrast to the case of Haiti; secondly, this discourse constructs a homogenous Turkish identity; and thirdly, this homogeneous Turkish identity qualifies by several signifiers and is distinguished from external others.

In the mid of July, a few Members of the Parliament proposed the idea of downsizing the Nepali Army as one of the measures to decrease public spending. But this is not the first time that such debate has stirred in the Nepalese political stratum. The topic of downsizing the Nepalese Army has been reiterated from time to time in the higher echelons of the Nepali government, most notably following the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA). At the national level, The Nepal Army as an institution has been deployed since centuries for to accomplish a wide array of functions. On the international front, the Nepbat has been deployed in UN Peacekeeping missions since 1958 in war-prone regions and is largely regarded as a highly competent battalion of proven caliber. Nepal Army's global exposure and experience as such have also refined the institution's conflict resolution and crisis management skills. But despite such positive global acknowledgment and the rich experience that the Nepal Army has garnered, the deliberations regarding the utilization of their insights and experiences in Nepal’s foreign policy discourse seem to have been kept at an arm's length. To identify the role of the Nepali Army in promoting the value of world peace as enshrined in the Nepalese Constitution, this article has intended to investigate the level of recognition and influence of their insights in Nepal's foreign policy discourse. This qualitative study based on both primary and secondary data and process tracing and interview methods, identified that the imbalances in the state's priorities have led to the skills of Nepali peacekeepers from their global exposure being kept under the radar. The study has then suggested some of the possibilities for incorporating military expertise into Nepal's foreign policy discourse.

This article investigates whether Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro extended demagoguery and populism into his foreign policy discourse. An analysis of 673 tweets indicates that demagoguery was more common (observed in 94 tweets) than populism (observed in 14 tweets). Bolsonaro adopted a Red Scare tactic, distorted information about the 2019 Amazon wildfires, spread rumours about COVID-19, and portrayed relations with the US during Trump’s administration and Israel during Netanyahu’s as panaceas. Findings suggest that demagoguery can ramify into foreign policy discourse, with a leader fitting distorted interpretations of foreign topics and actors into stories made for domestic consumption. Bolsonaro was cautious concerning relations with China though, indicating that international power politics and expected gains or losses from trade and investment may condition the scope of demagogical discourses. This article shows a conceptual gap in literature on foreign policy discourse, which a framework using the concept of demagoguery can, in part, fill.

This study is driven by the growing importance of political rhetoric in international relations, where the linguistic tools employed by the speaker serve as instruments for strategically managing the perception of the audience. It also addresses the interplay between language and politics under conditions of global international tensions. The aim of this research is to identify and analyze the verbalization of communicative strategies within the foreign policy discourse of the President of the Russian Federation, using textual addresses to the international audience as a case study. The study focuses on a comparative analysis of dynamic changes in foreign policy discourse, the mechanisms and means of implementing cooperative and confrontational strategies through communicative tactics within a rigid genre framework, and the pragmatic-semantic role of these strategies in achieving extralinguistic objectives. The novelty of this study lies in its comprehensive approach to analyzing the President’s foreign policy addresses, integrating linguistic, pragmatic, and genre-discursive aspects. For the first time, a detailed comparison of cooperative and confrontational strategies is conducted through the lens of their linguistic realization in the context of temporal dynamics. It has been determined that the genre structure and linguistic implementation of the President's foreign policy addresses adapt to shifts in the geopolitical context, ensuring the flexibility of foreign policy discourse. The cooperative strategy employed focuses on strengthening Russia's positive image by emphasizing historical ties, shared values, and pros­pects for partnership, whereas the confrontational strategy utilizes specific tactics to inf­luence imp­licit audiences. The multi-level approach to audience segmentation enables the President's fo­reign policy discourse to effectively combine strategic perception management of explicit audiences with addressing implicit political objectives.

Realism- and geopolitics-inspired rhetoric was common currency in Russian foreign policy discourse throughout the 1990s. This led some commentators to adopt realism and geopolitics—realism’s more nationalist and strategic counterpart—as conceptual lenses for understanding Russian foreign policy. As a result, Russian foreign policy of the 2010s is still considered predominantly geopolitics-driven despite the fact that geopolitical vocabulary has virtually disappeared from foreign policy discourse while a desire to carve out spheres of influence have been officially pronounced utterly anachronistic and inappropriate, a “thing of the past”. Thus, a more nuanced interpretation views the rise of geopolitics in Russian post-Soviet foreign policy discourse as an attempt to tap into the symbolic and rhetorical power of geopolitics in order to reduce ontological insecurity brought about by the end of the Cold War. The chapter, therefore, advances a theoretical claim about the relevance of the constructivist and poststructuralist literature and very limited relevance of realism for understanding the twists and turns of Russian post-Soviet foreign policy. Methodologically, the chapter argues that an exploration of state identity rooted in the ontological security argument will benefit from employing discourse analysis. Empirically, the present study provides substantiation of the theoretical claim that the concept of hegemony captures well the historical trajectory of Russia’s relations with its ‘significant other’- Europe/the EU/the West—and provides important insights into the sources of Russia’s ontological insecurity in the twenty-first century.

Observers of Indonesia’s foreign policy commonly argue that while the state needs to include domestic Muslim interests in its foreign policy formulation, foreign policy officials have rarely considered Islam in their policy choices, with a dual-identity predicament constraining such a move. This article challenges this argument by demonstrating that foreign policy leaders have begun referring to Islamic identity and norms when justifying Indonesia’s foreign policy choices. By discussing Indonesia’s foreign policy responses to the United States’ war in Afghanistan in 2001, this paper elucidates the way in which Indonesia’s foreign policy leaders have constructed Islam as an “inclusive civilizational” identity in their foreign policy discourse, legitimizing their alliance with the global war on terrorism amid staunch domestic Muslim opposition to the war. They managed to turn identity constraint into opportunity by framing their policies within the context of “inclusive” and “integrative” Islamic values and norms.

This chapter provides an answer to the main research questions in identifying the main areas of convergence and divergence between the foreign policy discourses, which in turn define the shared space of possibilities for the IBSA initiative. A key result of the analysis consists in showing the discursive overlap between the founding governments of IBSA characterized by the presence of the South-South collaborator role conception combined with a relatively strong global revisionist role conception, thus providing for a discursive backdrop for the initial thrust of the IBSA initiative. As discussed further below, this overlap vanished soon after IBSA’s creation with the change of government from Prime Minister Vajpajee (BJP) to Singh (INC). This observation makes it easier to understand why the IBSA process started with an ambitious agenda but then failed to produce significant tangible results, especially in terms of coordination in multilateral fora, which would have been a context for the South-South leader/collaborator role conceptions to be put into practice. Following the increasing disengagement of Indian foreign policy discourse with South-South cooperation from 2004 onwards, the key overlap amongst IBSA countries’ foreign policy discourses has moved to the area of the pursuit of development cooperation with third countries.

This essay explores the composition of United States post-Cold War foreign policy rhetoric under President Bill Clinton. We contend that Bill Clinton offered a coherent and comprehensive foreign policy narrative for the direction of U.S. foreign policy discourse in the post-Cold War world. Specifically, we analyze the “new partnership” narrative that Clinton articulated in his 1998 trip to Africa as a representative anecdote for the larger body of his foreign policy discourse. This “new partnership” narrative was structured by three narrative themes: (1) America’s role as world leader; (2) reconstituting the threat environment; (3) democracy promotion as the strategy for American foreign policy. These three themes can be found throughout Clinton’s foreign policy rhetoric and serve as the basis for a foreign policy narrative used by Clinton, and perhaps, future administrations.

Conspiracies abound. States regularly plot in secret, together and against each other. Terrorist organisations are, by their very nature, based on conspiracies. This is one reason why the threat of conspiracies has often loomed large in foreign policy discourses. Yet allegations about the secret operation of international political power are often thought of as paranoid. Of all the ways an idea can be discredited, the label ‘conspiracy’ ranks amongst the most effective. Images of delusion and irrationality come thick and fast. Which conspiracies are real? Which allegations are irrational? And who decides? The purpose of this thesis is to examine the role conspiracy discourse played in American foreign policy during the so-called War on Terror decade. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, high profile foreign policy commentators claimed that Arab-Muslim resentment towards America was provoked by conspiracy theories about American power. This connection subsequently made its way into numerous US Government policy documents and initiatives. Examples here include the National Security Strategy and the National Strategy for Combatting Terrorism of 2006, and State Department public diplomacy programs tasked with ‘debunking’ anti-American conspiracy theories and misinformation. I argue that the link between anti-Americanism and conspiracy theories had a specific political effect in this context: it delegitimized criticism of American power, buttressed particular foreign policy practices, and secured an image of America as benign and misunderstood in its international political interactions. My thesis contributes to international relations literature investigating the processes through which legitimacy is produced in foreign policy discourses.

Throughout the history of independent India, nuclear and foreign policy issues have been democratically debated in the country. The nuclear debate, particularly, may be seen in four phases. The debate soon after independence was marked by the country’s concerns for disarmament and nonalignment. After China’s attack on India in 1962, the debate centered around India’s concerns about nuclear proliferation, loopholes in the nonproliferation regime and the dilemma whether India should manufacture its own nuclear weapons. The third phase of the debate commenced in 1998, after India successfully tested its nuclear weapons at Pokhran. (The earlier test in 1974 was avowedly a Peaceful Nuclear Explosion.) The focus in the current phase of the nuclear debate (the fourth phase) is whether nuclear weaponization is a continuity or departure from India’s long-held policy of nuclear ambiguity. India’s engagement with the US in the post-Pokhran-II period and the recently concluded Indo-US civilian nuclear deal has brought the debate of “continuity or change” in India’s foreign policy to the fore. One school is of the view that the nuclear tests and post-Pokhran-II diplomacy have changed the way the Indian elite began to think about external relations; that nuclear diplomacy has inevitably brought maturity and self-assurance to India’s foreign policy. The other school, while viewing the policy of nuclear weaponization not as continuity but a “reactionary departure”, considers the burgeoning Indo-US strategic partnership as a euphemism for India’s joining the “US Empire” as a junior partner, unmindful of its long-term national interest. While India’s domestic nuclear debate is prominent in academic and media discourse, the intrinsic link between the country’s nuclear policy and its foreign policy and how nuclear policy has impinged upon the foreign policy discourse has not been enquired adequately. Indian diplomacy has always shouldered the responsibility of propagating the country’s beliefs, concerns, and agenda in the nuclear domain and allaying misapprehensions regarding its nuclear policy. In turn, the nuclear factor has sufficiently influenced the structure, nature and strategy of Indian diplomatic undertakings. This paper highlights the importance of the nuclear factor in India’s foreign policy discourse and how it has remained a major determinant in its diplomatic endeavor.