Description
Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion in Ukraine has generated fear and anxiety across societies in Europe and beyond. What Russia has attempted with Ukraine – an imperial takeover of a neighbouring territory through a war of conquest in which the aggressor threatens the use of nuclear weapons is extremely rare since the Second World War. Juxtaposing Ontological Security Theory (Mitzen 2006; Giddens 1991) and criminal justice research (Stahn 2020), this article introduces the notion of expressivism to demonstrate how ontological security has been created in the Euro-Atlantic order after Russia’s invasion in Ukraine. Ontological Security (OS) refers to the security of Self. Studies on ontological security seeking at IOs level are rare (Flockhart 2020; Steele 2008). I argue that international organisations pursue ontological security seeking through expressivist practices in order to avoid overwhelming fears and anxieties at institutional and societal level. I define expressivism in International Relations as practices of representation of, and the articulation of, a moral reaction towards a certain behaviour of a political actor, embodying a reflexive intention, moral commitment or attitude. Through expressivist practices, political actors, such as state or other international agents, project a certain intention and normative desire. Empirically, I illustrate the proposed typology of expressivist practices and hermeneutically interpret how they create ontological security by studying examples of expressivist practices embraced by NATO and the EU in reaction to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The article makes an interdisciplinary contribution, advancing approaches on the entanglements of ontological security studies and order on the one side, and expressivist accounts of international criminal justice on the other side. Expressivist lenses allow us to capture mechanisms of how ontological security is regained in the context of war, and how the intentions behind those practices consolidate the OS order.
