Strategic Narrative Contestation as Role-Defining Discursive Conflict Between European Powers

Abstract

The article compares the strategic narratives of Britain, France, Germany, and Russia in relation to European security not only as products of their respective strategic cultures, but as productive instruments of foreign policy role and identity construction and revision. It analyses how each state develops and performs foreign policy role identity through narrative contestation and counter-framing, using a case study of the contestation over the structure of European security. It argues that these narratives constitute a discursive conflict that advances competing visions and self-perceived strategic roles, legitimizing while also adjusting strategic roles and identities, and undermining those of competitors. Through narrative analysis of elite-level strategic discourse from 2022 to 2025, related to the conflict in Ukraine and the crisis of the European security order, the article examines how foreign and security policy is affected, constrained, and adapted through ideational contestation. Strategic narratives are shown to function simultaneously as instruments of influence and as frameworks that delimit strategic action and identity. The results indicate that the conflict to reconceptualise the security environment is dynamic and reactive, and affects identity and role reconstruction and the plausibility of policy justification for the states examined, over time, in each case.

JEL: F50, F51, F52, F53, D74