How to survive reality: Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia’s search for ontological security
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2025-06-23
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en
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This thesis aims to explain the foreign policy of Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia in the context of West-Russia relations. It does this through the concept of ontological security, which is defined by the need for actors to preserve a stable Self. A conceptual framework of the Self has been constructed fore state-actors that supports an explanation of small states’ need for ontological security. This framework demonstrates how the Self consists of three mutually changing dimensions: existentialism, relations with others and autobiography. They are underscored by mechanisms that have the ability to (de)stabilise the dimensions: sovereignty, embodiment, external recognition, othering, and role-identities. This thesis shows how fluctuations in Georgian and Armenian foreign policy can be accounted by a feeling of ontological insecurity: a feeling that occurs when an actor simultaneously is unable to uphold its established autobiography, does not take its existence for granted, and changes its relations with others. Conversely, Ukrainian foreign policy shows endurance because of a feeling of ontological security, where the three dimensions of the Self and its underlying mechanisms mutually reinforce each other.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen