Description
This paper makes a contribution to strategic studies that engage with the practice and theory of legitimation. It is based on the analysis of political symbols of rhetoric that guide the policy re–making of Russia’s national security strategy in the interwar period from August 2008 to February 2022. My analysis of these symbols discloses a dynamic of policy changes that was initiated by president Medvedev’s justification of progressive goals of ‘world order’ and ‘modernisation’ through political association with the European Union (EU) and continued under president Putin’s justification of defensive goals of ‘world order’ and ‘modernisation’ in political association with NATO. I argue these self–legitimations of policy changes disclose the origins of justified belief in a new and deepening ‘geopolitical instability’ in Russia’s national security strategy. And this belief, in turn, explains the paradox to the delegitimation of the central doctrine of Russia’s security strategy during this interwar period, ‘stability’. In conclusion, I reflect on the normative implications of this finding for understanding the logic of self–defeat to desires for a modern ‘Euro–Atlantic’ political order.
