A Post-Structuralist Approach to Security: An Analysis of NATO 2022 Strategic Concept

Abstract

One of the theoretical formations of post-positivist thought in International Relations is post-structuralism which became part of the literature in the 1980s. Post-structuralism claims a different position from the traditional realist and idealist perspectives in the field of security studies by offering the connection between national identity and security politics and the discursive character of the concept of security. Accordingly, the practices of security construct the national “self” by indicating the difference between itself and the “other”. In that sense, policy discourses are considered inherently social since the policy-making elite address the wider public sphere to institutionalize their understanding of the identities and policy options. Therefore, in order to understand the foreign and security policies of the actors involved in International Relations, the examination of the speeches and statements of policy makers, politicians or bureaucrats, the documents written by the institutions involved in foreign policy making has been an increasingly used as a method. In this context, official speeches, statements, parliamentary debates, diplomatic correspondence, interviews, newspapers, photographs and videos can be used in discourse analysis studies. The aim of this paper is to understand and situate NATO’s discourse within the framework of its recent Strategic Concept of 2022. In this framework, after the elaboration of concept of discourse and discourse analysis, the construction and hierarchical positioning of different actors in the text will be analyzed by asking “how” questions. In that sense, Roxanne Lynn Doty’s concepts of “presupposition”, “predication” and “subject positioning” will be used as analytical categories to provide a textual framework. The representational practices through which meaning are generated is crucial in this study. Accordingly, the discursive identities produced by NATO will be examined in order to understand the attachments to various social objects and subjects in international environment.