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In This Thesis I Examine the U.S. Foreign Policy Discussion That Followed the War Between Russia and Georgia in August 2008

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In This Thesis I Examine the U.S. Foreign Policy Discussion That Followed the War Between Russia and Georgia in August 2008 Tiedekunta/Osasto ҟ– Fakultet/Sektion – Faculty Laitos – ҟInstitution – Department Faculty of Social Sciences Department of Political and Economic Studies Tekijäҏҟҏ– Författare – Author Heikki Tuomas Koskenniemi Työn nimiҏҟ – Arbetets titel – Title We Are All Georgians: The Neoconservative Narrative on the Russia-Georgia War Oppiaine – Läroämne – Subject World Politics Työn lajiҏҟ – Arbetets art – Level Aikaҏҟ – Datum – Month and year Sivumääräҏҟ – Sidoantal – Number of pages Master’s Thesis 1 November 2010 79 Tiivistelmäҏҟ – Referat – Abstract In this thesis I examine the U.S. foreign policy discussion that followed the war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008. In the politically charged setting that preceded the presidential elections, the subject of the debate was not only Washington’s response to the crisis in the Caucasus but, more generally, the direction of U.S. foreign policy after the presidency of George W. Bush. As of November 2010, the reasons for and consequences of the Russia-Georgia war continue to be contested. My thesis demonstrates that there were already a number of different stories about the conflict immediately after the outbreak of hostilities. I want to argue that among these stories one can discern a “neoconservative narrative” that described the war as a confrontation between the East and the West and considered it as a test for Washington’s global leadership. I draw on the theory of securitization, particularly on a framework introduced by Holger Stritzel. Accordingly, I consider statements about the conflict as “threat texts” and analyze these based on the existing discursive context, the performative force of the threat texts and the positional power of the actors presenting them. My thesis suggests that a notion of narrativity can complement Stritzel’s securitization framework and take it further. Threat texts are established as narratives by attaching causal connections, meaning and actorship to the discourse. By focusing on this process I want to shed light on the relationship between the text and the context, capture the time dimension of a speech act articulation and help to explain how some interpretations of the conflict are privileged and others marginalized. I develop the theoretical discussion through an empirical analysis of the neoconservative narrative. Drawing on Stritzel’s framework, I argue that the internal logic of the narrative which was presented as self-evident can be analyzed in its historicity. Asking what was perceived to be at stake in the conflict, how the narrative was formed and what purposes it served also reveals the possibility for alternative explanations. My main source material consists of transcripts of think tank seminars organized in Washington, D.C. in August 2008. In addition, I resort to the foreign policy discussion in the mainstream media. Avainsanat – Nyckelord – Keywords Georgia Narrative Neoconservatism Russia Securitization The United States WE ARE ALL GEORGIANS The Neoconservative Narrative on the Russia-Georgia War Heikki Tuomas Koskenniemi University of Helsinki Faculty of Social Sciences World Politics Master’s Thesis November 2010 1 Table of Contents 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 2 1.1 Aim and Research Questions ............................................................................... 2 1.2 The Russia-Georgia War ...................................................................................... 6 1.3 The Neoconservative Narrative ........................................................................... 8 2 Theory and Methodology ....................................................................................... 12 2.1 Narratives in World Politics ............................................................................... 12 2.2 Narratives, Performativity and Securitization .................................................... 15 2.3 Identifying and Analyzing Narratives ................................................................ 20 2.4 Sources ............................................................................................................. 23 3 From Threat Texts to Narratives ........................................................................... 27 3.1 Threat Texts on the Russia-Georgia War ............................................................ 27 3.2 Motives and Consequences................................................................................ 31 3.3 Context in the Existing Discourse ...................................................................... 36 4 The Narrators ......................................................................................................... 40 4.1 Whose Texts? .................................................................................................... 40 4.2 Neoconservatives in 2008 .................................................................................. 43 4.3 Looking for Alternative Explanations ................................................................ 46 5 Performing the Narrative ...................................................................................... 52 5.1 Defining Performative Force ............................................................................. 52 5.2 The Use of Historical Analogies ........................................................................ 56 5.3 Theoretical Presuppositions ............................................................................... 61 5.4 Cold War Rhetoric and Power Politics ............................................................... 65 6 Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 70 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................... 73 2 1 Introduction 1.1 Aim and Research Questions When Georgia launched a military operation against South Ossetia on the night of 7 to 8 August 2008, President George W. Bush was following the Olympic Games in China along with the rest of the world. The U.S. Congress was at recess, and even the presidential campaigns of Senators Barack Obama and John McCain were taking it slowly before the home stretch: Obama’s first statements on the conflict were delivered from a holiday resort in Hawaii. The Russia-Georgia war caught the United States off guard. In the foreign policy circles, an intense debate erupted on the reasons for, consequences of and the administration’s response to the conflict. Reading the newspapers, watching the television and following the discussion in the think tank community, it is possible to recognize a myriad of different stories that were told about the crisis in the Caucasus. Another thing that stands out is how the Russia-Georgia war was immediately perceived by many as a significant shift in world politics. Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb (2008) was not alone in his judgment that the little war had “changed the world”. More than two years later, when many of the details about the crisis remain unclear, it is still commonly assumed that the war was not only a regional conflict that could be explained by historical and sociological factors, but symbolic of something more important: a sign of times to come. In Washington D.C., the discussion that followed the war was rapidly transformed into a battle over the direction of the U.S. foreign policy after the presidency of George W. Bush. Like all significant political developments in 2008, the conflict also became an issue in the presidential election. The stories about the Russia-Georgia war were thus politically charged. How the context was framed and the conflict interpreted had direct policy consequences. The discussion was closely intertwined with several fundamental questions about the U.S. foreign policy: What was the global role of the United States after the unilateral moment and in the face of a number of rising great powers, a group in which Russia appeared 3 eager to assert its membership? Should Washington wield a carrot or a stick in dealing with adversaries? Did the crisis provide evidence for or against further expanding the NATO to Georgia and Ukraine? Among other places, inspiration was looked for in history books and theoretical assumptions that were seen to have served the West well during the Cold War. The initial empirical motivation for the present thesis was to shed light on the contentious and confusing foreign policy discussion that followed the Russia-Georgia war. It was assumed that an analysis of the discursive battle would provide interesting insights on the U.S. security and defense policy at the outset of the Obama administration. Many themes that were sounded during the discussion – for example the need to maintain deterrence and credibility vs. engaging the rivals, unilateralism vs. multilateralism – hold obvious importance for the way the United States approaches other contemporary security issues such as the NATO enlargement, missile shield, Iran, or terrorism. At a theoretical level, the securitization framework established by the Copenhagen School has proved useful in identifying and disentangling complex discourses on security. Following Buzan and Wæver (2003, 491), securitization is defined as [A] discursive process through which an intersubjective understanding is constructed within a political community to treat something as an existential threat to a valued referent
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