Talking Security? The Discourse of European Identity in the Baltic States

Abstract

Over the years the impact of European integration on national identity has generated reams of newspaper editorials and ignited heated discussion among politicians, opinion-formers and everyday citizens across the continent. In the 1990s debates in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania about membership of European political, economic and security organisations were particularly salient given the situation the three states found themselves in following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Political actors in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania argued that they were in a security ‘no-man’s land between Russia and the West’, between the Commonwealth of Independent States, which they refused to join, and the EU and NATO, membership of which appeared to be some way off (Dean, 1996, p. 19). The danger of this situation, they argued, was that history could repeat itself and their states could once again find themselves sucked into Russia’s sphere of influence.