Ukraine’s NATO Accession Discourse : Representations of National Identity in Ukrainian Debates about Euro-Atlantic Integration, 1997–2018

For a long time, Ukraine was an outlier in NATO’s outreach efforts and enlargement process. It suffers from territorial disputes and has now a protracted armed conflict. Until recently, it could not reach a national consensus on its Euro-Atlantic integration and did not ensure majority support of its population for an accession to NATO. In 2019, the Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council) voted to put the country’s aspiration to NATO membership into the Ukrainian Constitution. Iryna Zhyrun analyzes the evolving conceptualization of Ukrainian national identity in relation to Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration among the ruling political elites in Ukraine. She argues that there was a constitutive link between changes in the definition of national identity and choice of distinct policy directions. Foreign affairs became identity politics. Her argument is based on a longitudinal study of the politics and discussion of Ukraine-NATO relations during the Kuchma, Yushchenko, Yanukovych, and Poroshenko presidencies. Her study connects these debates to structural changes of Ukrainian politics and other factors influencing national identity articulations during this period and applies a discourse-analytical approach to an intense two-decades-long political debate.