Contrary to many predictions of its demise, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has survived the end of the Cold War and taken on new members and task. A new dissertation at the Political Science Department at Stockholm University investigates the political and discursive strategies through which the alliance accomplished this.
After examining the evolution of NATO’s security political discourse from 1989 to 19999, its author, Andreas Behnke (now also Lecturer at the University of Reading, UK), argues that the institutional survival of NATO depended on a successful re-definition of the West as the civilisational reference point. By maintaining this collective identity the alliance could prevent the re-nationalisation of defence and security policies. Moreover, this civilisational discourse served to legitimate NATO practices and interventions outside its original area.
Yet, as the dissertation also demonstrates, NATO’s world-view ultimately rests on a commitment to a universalist perspective that does not acknowledge the fragmentation of political and cultural contexts in a globalising world. The dissertation therefore concludes on a critical note. As long as NATO insists on standards of civilisation as defined by the West, it will become increasingly unable to deal with the security issues of the 21st century.
Name of the dissertation: Re-Presenting the West. NATO’s Security Discourse after the End of the Cold War.
Further information: Andreas Behnke, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, and Department of Politics and IR, University of Reading, telephone +44 118 378 7129, e-mail a.behnke@reading.ac.uk