Pertti Joenniemi

Geostrategies of the European neighbourhood policy

The debate about the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has, in essence, been about borders and bordering. Such departures could contribute — and often do so — to a rather fixed geopolitical vision of what the EU is about and how it aims to run and to organize the broader European space. However, this article aims to retain space for viewing the ENP as a developmental and somewhat fluid process. A conceptual framework, based on outlining three geopolitical models and a series of different geopolitical strategies employed by the EU in regard to its borders, is hence employed in order to be able to tell a more dynamic story regarding the developing nature of the ENP and the EUs evolving nature more generally. The complexity traced informs us that various geostrategies may be held at the same time at the external border. Moreover, the dominance of one geostrategy may be replaced by another or a different combination of them with regard to the same neighbourhood. It is, more generally, argued that if anything it is precisely this dynamism that should be championed as a valuable resource, avoiding the tendency to close off options through the reification of particular visions of the nature of the EU and its borders.

When Two Aspire to Become One: City-Twinning in Northern Europe

The contribution probes the burgeoning phenomenon of city twinning by engaging with four city-pairs transcending and challenging the difference-producing impact of national borders in northern Europe (Imatra–Svetogorsk; Tornio–Haparanda; Valga–Valka; Narva–Ivangorod). It also aims at discussing the dynamics and meaning of twinning in a broader, more principled and critical perspective. Despite a number of obstacles, city twinning has more recently turned into an established form of overcoming of the divisive effects of borders. The model of cities re-imagining their borders, activating them through increased cooperation, not only changes the local landscapes but may entail broader state-related and European consequences as well.

Regionality Beyond Security: The Baltic Sea Region after Enlargement

This article addresses the issue of the relationship between security-speak and regional cooperation in Northern Europe. In the post-Cold War period, it is argued, regional cooperation has been driven by a mixture of realist- and liberalist-based security discourses. While realism results in cooperation through othering, liberalism rather promotes cooperation through inclusion. On the whole, security has been a unifying theme, not a divisive one. European Union and NATO enlargements, however, are undermining the security bases of regional cooperation. The article asks the question of what will happen to regional cooperation if security is removed from the frame. Will regional cooperation wither away as a political project? Or will attempts at re-securitization be made to rejuvenate regional cooperation? Either way there are apparently difficulties in thinking of regional cooperation without relying on security for motivation and justification. Through a revisionist account of Nordic cooperation that challenges the idea that Norden is a security community par excellence and is rather driven by a security concerns, a way out of the security-cooperation dilemma is offered.

Contending Discourses of Marginality: The Case of Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad is argued to raise profound questions regarding the role, power and influence of marginal actors in EU–Russian relations as well as international politics at large. Such entities may have to confine themselves to a totally subordinated position but they can also gain, as seems increasing to have been the case with Kaliningrad, considerable influence. As spaces in-between, or as potentially emergent third spaces that significantly problematise the idea of territorial sovereignty, they do not only influence – by blurring borders and various conceptual categories – the setting of local or regional agendas. They may also impact upon the very constitution of subjectivity, in the cases of both the EU and Russia. In this essay these processes are tackled, above all by scrutinising how margins are understood in both common and theoretical discourses with the departures unfolding then explored in the case of Kaliningrad.

The European Union’s Two Dimensions: The Eastern and the Northern

In light of the forthcoming enlargement of the European Union, concerns over how the Union will deal with its new eastern neighbours have risen to some prominence. This article analyses Poland’s current efforts to get to grips with the new challenges posed by enlargement, as expressed in its policy initiative of the Eastern Dimension. In particular, the Eastern Dimension is compared with the EU’s Northern Dimension, which has been on the scene for some time. The argument of this article is that, despite some similarities and despite the fact that the Eastern Dimension has clearly been influenced by its Northern counterpart, key conceptual differences exist between the two initiatives. While the Northern Dimension opens up for overlapping spaces of governance, for being genuinely inclusive of outsiders and for emphasizing regionality in the construction of a new Europe, the Eastern Dimension remains more traditional in essence. Indeed, in some respects the Eastern Dimension, despite apparent intentions otherwise, will only contribute to re-bordering in Europe.

Towards a European Union of Post-Security?

Several new ways of security-speak are about to enter the European scene. The article seeks to identity these by investigating the use and unfolding of the security argument in the context of the European Union’s (EU) new security doctrine and the devising of an explicit neighbourhood policy. In addition to tracing the way the plot structure underpinning the EU is changing, alternative options are sought by tapping into the potential offered by the way security works in the case of the Nordic constellation. Juxtaposing of the EU and the Nordic entity is also there in order to challenge the increasingly closed and non-negotiable European configuration and to open it up for critical scrutiny.

Ontological security, self-articulation and the securitization of identity

The concept of ontological security has made increasing headway within International Relations, in particular through its ability to offer alternative explanations of the forces underpinning security dilemmas and conflict in world politics. While welcoming the insights already provided by its application, this article argues that the concept’s use to date has been too much geared to questions of identity-related stability, with change viewed as disturbing and anxiety-inducing. In contrast, the article calls for a more open understanding that: (i) links ontological security to reflexivity and avoids collapsing together the concepts of self, identity and ontological security; (ii) avoids privileging securitization over desecuritization as a means for generating ontological security; and (iii) opens out the concept beyond a narrow concern with questions of conflict and the conduct of violence more towards the theorization of positive change.

Re-Negotiating Europe's Identity: The European Neighbourhood Policy as a Form of Differentiation

Abstract The contribution sets out to probe changes in the essence of the European Union through the lens of neighborhood. It rests on the claim that the advent of the concept of ‘neighbor’ in the context of the Unions new policy of neighborhood (ENP) testifies to an altered EU‐identity. It argues that approaching the concept as foundational rather than seeing it merely as something functional and instrumental reveals crucial changes not just in the EUs vicinity but first and foremost in the EU itself.

Turning into a Sovereign Actor? Probing the EU Through the Lens of Neighbourhood

A central goalpost characterising the European Union has consisted of escaping Europes notorious past, and this aspiration has then also profoundly impacted the Unions approach to the construction of political space. Sovereignty has for the EU subsequently been off limits. However, the more recent claim of the Union having succeeded in reaching its initial goal of leaving the past behind radically alters the situation. It does not merely set the EU free but also compels it to reconsider the underlying generative grammar. Does this then also mean that the EU is bound to return to more sovereignty-geared approaches premised on clear distinctions between self and other or does it still aspire to stay with the previous script by refraining from adopting the rather strict organising principles characteristic of modern states? This is the issue that the article sets out to explore by focusing on the concept of a neighbour which has recently been added to the EUs repertoire of key constitutive departures through the recent coining of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).

The politics of remembering: Saint Petersburg's 300th anniversary

Abstract With Leningrad abandoned, what are the stories told about St. Petersburg, the town named after Apostle Peter? In particular, how was the citys Tercentenary jubilee staged? Discarding images related to Lenin and the Soviet era could signal liberation. Tapping into alternative mnemonic resources could allow the city to free itself from a variety of constraints by utilizing the imperial heritage and the various linkages to Europeanness embedded therein. However, the effect could also be one of being trapped in time, with the city thereby also being unable to break outside the established territorial constraints. The stories told could restrain rather than liberate in being told in a manner that is inconsistent with the challenges that the city — and Russia at large — are currently facing both internally and in view of its rapidly changing external environment. This is the issue that we tackle by viewing the citys 300th anniversary as a mnemonic battlefield.