Memory-Political Deterrence: Shielding Collective Memory and Ontological Security through Dissuasion
Gustafsson, Karl and Maria Mälksoo (2024) Memory-Political Deterrence: Shielding Collective Memory and Ontological Security through Dissuasion. International Studies Quarterly 68 (1) (March): 1-12, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae008.
Traditionally used within the context of hard military power in interstate relations, the concept of deterrence has been progressively extended to non-state actors and new issue areas. While scholarship on the social aspects of deterrence has expanded our understanding of this core international security practice, the focus of existing research has largely remained on physical security. This article argues that there is a phenomenon in international politics that can be called memory-political deterrence. Memory-political deterrence refers to the ways in which states seek to dissuade other political actors from taking actions that threaten the collective memory narratives that underpin the ontological security of the deterring actor. Memory-political deterrence works, for example, through political rhetoric, declarations, diplomatic insults, commemorative practices, and punitive memory laws. We illustrate the article’s arguments through empirical examples from Russia’s and China’s recent memory-political deterrence efforts toward Ukraine and Japan, respectively. In doing so, we elucidate the ways in which memory politics is intertwined with geopolitics, underpinning wider world-ordering aspirations.
Maria Mälksoo • 8 March 2024
NATO’s New Front: deterrence moves eastward
Mälksoo, Maria (2024) NATO’s new front: deterrence moves eastward. International Affairs 100(2) (March): 531-47, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae008.
Why has NATO taken so long in adapting its deterrence strategy to Russian revisionism and extending its military presence to the eastern allies? The setting up of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) in Poland and the Baltic states offers a critical case for examining the changing understandings of allied deterrence in the post-post-Cold War era. eFP is a story of negotiating the political acceptability and military credibility of NATO’s modern extended deterrence strategy in the exposed eastern flank, and the navigation of the alliance security dilemma in relation to Russia while buttressing the eastern allies’ physical and NATO’s ontological security. This article traces NATO’s extended conventional deterrence posture in the eastern flank from the adoption of the tripwire model shortly after Russia’s annexation of Crimea to the commitment to defend ‘every inch of Allied territory’ via embracing the forward defence stance in 2022. Mapping the evolutionary curve of NATO’s post-enlargement politics of deterrence through documentary analysis and interviews with diplomats and military representatives in NATO headquarters and national capitals, the article makes two contributions. Conceptually, it dissects the political rationalities and historical analogies underpinning contemporary allied deterrence strategy and posture in NATO’s eastern frontline. Empirically, the study illustrates how allied deterrence is made to matter on the ground, and why this matters for deterrence credibility.
Maria Mälksoo • 4 March 2024