Description
Global order is structured around an anxious relationship between how ‘the West’ narrates itself in relation to ‘non-Western’ Others – and vice versa. The normalisation of such binaries provides continuity, security and a stable sense of Self vis-à-vis Others. How then do states discursively manage anxiety within this dichotomy? Drawing on ten years of UN General Debate speeches between 2014 and 2024, this paper explores how a contested ‘international order’ is anchored in ontologically (in)secure narratives between the so-called West & non-West, contributing to broader ‘crisis’ narratives that represent international relations today. A Kleinian approach to Ontological Security Studies reveals how select states – France, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia and Iran – employ psychoanalytic defence mechanisms against anxiety to stabilise a sense of Self in relation to Others. In doing so, these states (re)produce binaries of ‘the West’ and ‘non-West’ through ontologically (in)secure narratives, showing how anxiety functions as a constitutive condition that both sustains and fragments contemporary conceptions of ‘international order’.
