Politics of Becoming European

<p>This book weaves together perspectives drawn from critical international relations anthropology and social theory in order to understand the Polish and Baltic post-Cold War politics of becoming European.</p><p>Approaching the study of Europe’s eastern enlargement through a post-colonial critique author Maria Mälksoo makes a convincing case for a rethinking of European identity. Drawing on the theorist Edward Said she contends that studies of the European Union are marked by a prevailing Orientalism rarely asking who has traditionally been able to define European identity and whether this identity should be presented as an historical process rather than a static category. The central argument of this book is that the historical experience of being framed as simultaneously in Europe - and yet not quite in Europe – informs the current self-understandings and security imaginaries of Poland and the Baltic States. Exploring this existential condition of ‘liminal Europeaness’ among foreign and security policy-making elites the book considers its effects on key security policy issues including relations with Western Europe Russia and the United States.</p><p>Supported by solid empirical analyses this book provides an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to the post-Cold War predicament of Poland and the Baltic States. It will be of interest to students and scholars of International Relations European Studies Social and Political Theory and Anthropology.</p>