Ontological security: a framework for the analysis of Russia’s view of the world

ABSTRACT

Recent studies have noted the human need for ontological security as an important factor of a state's foreign policy. Ontological security builds on the major role that embedded and routinized biographical narratives of a state play in its identity: how it sees itself, and how it wants to be seen by others. While there is rich research connecting the importance of the great power narrative to Russia's sense of ontological security, less attention has been paid to operationalization of such “greatness.” This article seeks to “decode” some aspects of Russia's ontological security. It focuses on the continuity of three narratives that in our opinion have historically formed a cornerstone of the country's ontological awareness as a great power (strong leader, imperial expansion, and the West's impact on Russia's sense of identity), and on the rupture of that continuity that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its more recent revival.

KEYWORDS:

• Russia
• ontological security
• identity
• great power
• foreign policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Some of the extensive list of analysts who employ the concept of “ontological security” in their study of international affairs include Akchurina and Della Sala (2018); Giddens (1991); Gustafsson and Krickel-Choip (2020); Hansen (2010, 2016); Innes and Steele (2013); Mitzen (2006a); Subotić (2016); Subotić and Steele (2018); Zarakol (2017); as well as others, some of whom are noted below.

2 Throughout this discussion, when the authors refer to the state as an actor, they mean primarily those officials charged with responsibility for pursuing foreign policy decision making.

3 A growing literature applies the concept of “ontological security” to the analysis of Russian foreign policy. See, for example, Akchurina and Della Sala (2018); Chrzanowski (2021); Freire (2020); Krasnodębska (2021); and Narozhna (2021). In the following brief discussion, we shall look initially at the roll that self-identity can play in impacting Russian foreign policy making – basically summarizing a more extensive argument that we make elsewhere (Moulioukova & Kanet, 2020; Kanet & Moulioukova, 2122; Moulioukova & Kanet, 2022a, 2022b).

4 Most of the factors that underlie Russian ontological perspective have their roots in the distant past in Tsrist Russia, as discussed in Moulioukova and Kanet (2022b).

5 See Moulioukova and Kanet (2022b)Moulioukova, with Kanet (2022b) for a more extensive discussion of these matters.

6 Richard Pipes is one of the most prominent, but controversial, analysts of Russian and Soviet history of the cold war period (Grimes, 2018). His insights concerning the emergence and nature of the Russian state, however, remain extremely relevant to an understanding of Russian history.

7 By “West” we are referring to the major European states that emerged after about 1600 and their extensions in the Americas and elsewhere globally. Even more important is the nature of the cultural and political systems that evolved in the “West” which included, among other characteristics, Christianity, democracy, human rights, individualism, rational thinking, capitalism, modern technology, and scientific thinking.

8 For a much more extensive discussion of issues underlying Russian foreign policy developed within the context of ontological security theory see Moulioukova and Kanet (2022a, 2022b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dina Moulioukova

Dr. Dina Moulioukova is a Lecturer in International Studies at the University of Miami and Assistant Director and co-founder of Energy Security and Environmental Sustainability Symposium. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Miami with a focus on innovative approaches to security studies, including a doctoral dissertation using an ontological approach to the analysis of Russian foreign policy.

Roger E. Kanet

Dr. Roger E. Kanet is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at both the University of Miami (2019) and The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1997). For more than five decades his teaching, research and publications have dealt primarily with Soviet and Russian foreign policy.