An evolving Other: German national identity and constructions of Russia
| Published date | 01 February 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395717715819 |
| Author | Marco Siddi |
| Date | 01 February 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395717715819
Politics
2018, Vol. 38(1) 35 –50
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395717715819
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An evolving Other: German
national identity and
constructions of Russia
Marco Siddi
The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Finland
Abstract
This article shows that national constructions of the Other are not fixed, but evolve as a result
of policy makers’ agency, the domestic contestation among different identity narratives and
their interaction with international structures. This is illustrated through an interpretive Social
Constructivist approach and the Discourse-Historical Analysis (DHA) of narratives of Russia as an
Other in German national identity. The article investigates the paradoxes of identity/difference and
of continuity/change, which constitute the theoretical core of this Special Issue. It is argued that, in
a longue durée perspective, narratives of Russia as an antagonistic Other have evolved and allowed
for the emergence of less oppositional forms of difference. This change had an impact on German
foreign policy, notably through the emergence of the cooperative Ostpolitik towards Russia. From the
1960s, Germany’s genocidal past was constructed as the main Other in national identity, whereas
Soviet Russia was reconceptualised as an economic partner. I argue that this conceptualisation has
proven remarkably resilient and has not disappeared in the context of the 2008 Georgian war and
the current Ukraine crisis. While the Ostpolitik narrative temporarily lost momentum at the height
of the crisis, it is ready to resurface as soon as structural conditions change.
Keywords
foreign policy, Germany, identity, Russia
Received: 29th May 2016; Revised version received: 24th April 2017; Accepted: 18th May 2017
Germany is broadly seen as a key actor in European politics. Numerous analysts have
argued that, in the last few years, Germany increasingly shaped the foreign policy of the
European Union (EU; Helwig, 2016; Janning, 2015). This is especially true of the EU’s
relationship with Russia, where German politicians uploaded national policies vis-à-vis
Corresponding author:
Marco Siddi, European Union Research Programme, The Finnish Institute of International Affairs,
Kruunuvuorenkatu 4, P.O. Box 400, FI-00161 Helsinki, Finland.
Email: Marco.Siddi@fiia.fi
715819POL0010.1177/0263395717715819PoliticsSiddi
research-article2017
Special Issue Article
36 Politics 38(1)
Russia on the EU agenda1 and took a leading role in coordinating the Union’s response to
Russian policies in Ukraine in 2014–2015 (Forsberg, 2016; Mischke and Umland, 2014;
Siddi, 2016). Analysing German foreign policy is thus essential to understand current
developments in European foreign and security policy.
Scholars have argued that German foreign policy has been based on a relatively stable
set of tenets since the end of the Second World War, including the reluctance to use force
to solve international disputes, support for European integration, the transatlantic alliance
with the United States, and a policy of cooperation with Russia (Banchoff, 1999; Berger,
1997; Wittlinger, 2011). Social Constructivist scholars have analysed extensively the
relationship between Germany’s post-war national identity and foreign policy. For
instance, they have exposed how the genocidal experience of the Third Reich has become
engrained in German identity, leading to the formulation of a pacific security culture,
reconciliation with wartime enemies, and the quest of cooperation at European level
(Berger, 1996; Bjola and Kornprobst, 2007). However, less attention has been paid to the
evolution of post-war identity and its relationship with international structures. To what
extent has dominant narratives and perceptions of external actors (namely, Germany’s
‘Others’) changed over time? What are the drivers of continuity and change?
In this article, I engage the debate on continuity and change in German foreign policy
through an analysis of German identity narratives regarding Russia, one of Germany’s
main historical Others. In doing this, I explore both the paradoxes of identity/difference
and continuity/change that constitute the theoretical framework of the Special Issue. The
paradoxes concern the relational nature of identity and its diachronic development.
Identity tends to be defined through difference; the Self is constructed in relation to the
Other. Moreover, the concept of identity requires consistency of identification with par-
ticular ideas; at the same time, ideas are redefined and rearticulated over time, which
implies that continuity and change coexist in identity construction.2
Investigating these paradoxes is important because, as previous scholarship has argued
(cf. Morozov and Rumelili, 2012; Wendt, 1999), the dichotomy between Self and Other
is at the root of conflicts in politics and international relations. The article contributes to
the scholarly debate by showing, through a diachronic analysis of German narratives
about Russia, how conflict can be transcended and allow for more positive forms of other-
ing. The German case reveals that positive changes in the construction of the Other can
occur as a result of introspective analysis of the Self, which recognises and rejects the
mechanisms that drove conflictual othering in the past. As the article shows, positive
forms of othering are durable if they become entrenched in national identity.
I focus on the development of German official narratives about Russia from a longue durée
perspective and then zoom into the period from the 2008 Russian–Georgian war to the 2014
crisis in Ukraine. I argue that continuity and change in German foreign policy discourses
largely depends on the contestation among decision makers who advocate different narratives
of the Russian Other. This contestation is permeated by deep-rooted identity narratives and
influenced by developments in domestic politics, shocks in international structures, and the
agency of foreign policy makers. Policy makers are both the main purveyors and agents of
national identity. National identity acts as a cognitive structure through which they interpret
the world and formulate policy responses (cf. Checkel, 2006: 63; Hopf, 2002: 5; Lebow, 2008:
556–564). Although national identity constrains their policy options, its complexity and the
coexistence of competing narratives within it allows for some flexibility in policy responses.
In other words, policy makers may adopt a particular identity narrative (rather than a compet-
ing one) in response to international events or to pursue a particular policy agenda.
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