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

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.