BETWEEN EXISTENTIAL AND ONTOLOGICAL (IN)SECURITY: THE BALTIC STATES AND THE EUROPEAN UNION’S RESPONSE TO RUSSIA’S MILITARY INTERVENTIONS IN GEORGIA (2008) AND UKRAINE (2014)

This thesis analyses the efforts of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as three small and liminal European states to shape the European Union’s (EU) response to Russia’s military interventions in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014). It deploys the conceptual framework of liminality in combination with the guiding concepts of existential (in)security and ontological (in)security to explore the hitherto overlooked efforts of the Baltic states to gain visibility and assert agency during two crises in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood. This thesis adopts a mixed qualitative methodological approach, combining analysis of elite public self-articulations in speeches, statements, and foreign policy documents with process-tracing to analyse the Baltic states’ discursive and practical assertion of agency during the two in-depth empirical case studies. The method of inquiry is underpinned by fifty-two original, semi-structured elite interviews with key Baltic decision-makers, including former presidents, prime ministers, ministers, parliamentarians, ambassadors, and diplomats, who were in office prior to and during the two cases. The empirical analysis provides evidence to argue that the Baltic states experienced the two crises as critical junctures that activated linked existential and ontological security concerns rooted in their liminal condition. The two critical junctures, featuring Moscow’s use of military force against two smaller neighbours formerly part of its empire, triggered the Baltic states’ vicarious identification with Georgia and Ukraine. In response, Baltic elites sought to instrumentalise their self-ascribed “special” understanding of the crises to “educate” their European counterparts and attempt to transform the EU’s Russia policy, thus aiming to re-position themselves at the European core. Yet, as the thesis shows, the Baltic states’ novel attempt to assert discursive and practical agency in EU foreign policy was constrained by a lack of recognition from the European core. This thesis bridges some of the lacunae in the existing literature on the Baltic states’ foreign policies and scholarship on small states in European foreign policy and builds on the burgeoning IR literature on liminality from the perspective of liminal actors. More broadly, it contributes to overcoming the relative ignorance of Baltic perspectives and experiences in mainstream IR and provides insight into the “alarms not heeded” in European geopolitics.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Pildegovics, Tomass

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Smith, Julie

• Baltic states
• Liminality
• EU foreign policy

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/9f63c68e-8bf2-460a-b291-73dbf1fb3fda/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.122893

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/391984