Separatists, state subjectivity, and fundamental ontological (in)security in international relations
| Author | Janis Grzybowski |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211045619 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211045619
International Relations
2022, Vol. 36(3) 504 –522
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178211045619
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Separatists, state subjectivity,
and fundamental ontological
(in)security in international
relations
Janis Grzybowski
Lille Catholic University
Abstract
Ontological security studies (OSS) in International Relations (IR) emphasize the role of
identity, anxiety, and a sense of self in world politics. Yet suggesting that states act in certain
ways because of ‘who they are’ also assumes that they are in fact states. In this article, I
problematize the presupposition of state subjects in the context of separatist conflicts in which
claims to statehood compete and overlap. Where unrecognized de facto states are pitted
against their unyielding parent states, the two threaten each other’s very state personhood,
thereby presenting a more radical challenge to their existence than traditional ‘physical’ and
‘ontological’ security threats. Separatist conflicts thus reveal a widely overlooked dimension of
fundamental ontological security, provided by the constitution and recognition of states as such.
Moreover, because of the exclusiveness of state subjects in the modern international order,
any third parties attempting to resolve such conflicts inevitably face a meta-security dilemma
whereby reassuring one side by confirming its claim to statehood simultaneously renders the
other side radically insecure. Thus, rather than regarding particular state subjects as merely the
starting point of quests for ontological security in international relations, they should also be
understood as already their result.
Keywords
de facto states, ontological security, recognition, secession, security dilemma, separatism
Corresponding author:
Janis Grzybowski, European School of Political and Social Science, Université Catholique de Lille, 60
Boulevard Vauban – CS 40109, Lille 59016, France.
Email: janis.grzybowski@univ-catholille.fr
1045619IRE0010.1177/00471178211045619International RelationsGrzybowski
research-article2021
Article
Grzybowski 505
Introduction
The thriving literature on ontological security in International Relations (IR) emphasizes
the role of identity, anxiety, and the need for a stable sense of self in world politics.1 It
suggests that ‘states perform actions in order to underwrite their notions of “who they
are”’2 as particular states, based on their ‘auto-biographies’3 and relations with other
states.4 At the same time, if states act in certain ways because of ‘who they are’, this also
indicates, if only in passing, that they are in fact states. However, no matter how useful
and justified for many analytical tasks, assuming states as the starting point renders the
process of their very constitution as states invisible, thereby neglecting the anxiety over
state subjectivity itself and the role played by third states in making, or rejecting, state
‘persons’ in the first place.
As I argue in this article, the fundamental ontological security provided by state sub-
jectivity becomes visible and acutely relevant where states are openly contested, as is
notably the case in separatist conflicts and especially in conflicts between unrecognized
de facto states and their unyielding parent states.5 Particular states cannot be presupposed
in these conflicts because determining which of the overlapping state projects constitutes
a state is precisely what is at stake in them. Indeed, statehood in the modern international
order is not simply a special status that given political entities seek to achieve, but rather
an exclusive type of subjectivity that constructs a particular community and territory as
a corporate person and delineated space, at the expense of all others. That is, any con-
tenders for statehood which are not regarded as states find themselves inevitably on the
territory and under the sovereignty of another state, which undermines their own claim
to statehood and political independence.
This not only means that states cannot be analytically presupposed in separatist
conflicts, but also that they pose a meta-security dilemma for third parties trying to
resolve them in practice, whether by mediation, legal determination, or recognition.
While the support for and recognition of one of the contenders fundamentally reas-
sures it in its supposed statehood, it at the same time renders the other one fundamen-
tally insecure. Considering ontological security in separatist conflicts therefore sheds
light on a basic dilemma of some of the most entrenched identity conflicts, while also
contributing to a reflexive and relational understanding of state subjectivity in
Ontological Security Studies (OSS). It more particularly suggests that state subjectiv-
ity is not simply the starting point of quests for ontological security, but in some sense
already their result. As such, fundamental ontological security is not provided to given
state subjects but generated by constituting them, thereby reassuring not only those
who identify with these particular states – at the expense of those who do not – but also
third states which seek to preserve the state-based international order as their own
environment.
In order to problematize state subjectivity in the context of separatist conflicts and to
analyze the underlying dimension of fundamental ontological (in)security linked to state
status, the article is subdivided into four main sections. In section 2, I revisit debates on
state personhood in OSS and introduce fundamental ontological (in)security as a reflex-
ive and relational approach to state subjectivity. In section 3, I explore the position of de
facto states in separatist conflicts to illustrate their fundamental physical and ontological
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