| Summary/Abstract |
The geopolitical discourses of hegemonic actors dominate the inter-state system and are significant determinants of how international politics play out on the world stage. Particularly in terms of security discourses, peripheral nation-states are often considered to be pawns moved (or not) at the will of dominant nation-states across the grand chessboard of the world. This assumption, however, ignores the ability of peripheral and peripheralised nation-states to influence geopolitical agendas. Through a critical analysis of the US and Estonian discourses present during President Barack Obama’s 2014 visit to Tallinn, Estonia, immediately preceding the 2014 NATO Summit in Wales, this paper argues that historically peripheralised nation-states can leverage historical context, “good geopolitical citizenship,” changes to the international status quo, and security goals that are complementary to those of more powerful actors to influence geopolitical agendas and become important players in geopolitical strategy and action. Drawing on Ó Tuathail’s theory of geopolitics as a drama played out on the world stage and Gee’s “building tasks of language” framework for discourse analysis, this paper investigates how the complementary security discourses of President Obama and President Toomas Ilves of Estonia produced a kind of “cooperative” geopolitical agenda that advanced both US and Estonian goals for NATO’s 2014 Summit and NATO’s future plans for addressing Russian action in the post-Ukraine Crisis environment. Specifically, the analysis suggests that peripheralised countries, such as Estonia, can and do exercise agency in geopolitical processes even while dominant security discourses, such as those of the US and NATO, seek to manage them according to hegemonic priorities.
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