Foreign Policy Analysis (2015), 0, 118

Narrative, Ontological Security, and Foreign

Policy Change1
J E L E N A S U B O TI C

Georgia State University

While the recent IR narrative turn has greatly improved our under-
standing of how narratives influence state policy choices, we need to
deepen our understanding of how narratives explain policy change. If
state autobiographies provide such powerful explanations of why states
do what they do, how can they change their policies and practices? To
understand the relationship between policy change and state narrative
continuity, I build on existing scholarship on narrative analysis and onto-
logical security to examine ways in which state autobiographical narra-
tives are used by political actors to confront state insecurities. My
principal argument is that at times of great crises and threats to multiple
state securities (physical, social, and ontological), narratives are selec-
tively activated to provide a cognitive bridge between policy change that
resolves the physical security challenge, while also preserving state onto-
logical security through offering autobiographical continuity, a sense of
routine, familiarity, and calm. I illustrate the argument with an analysis
of Serbias changing foreign policy behavior regarding the disputed
status of Kosovo.

In March 2011, more than three years after Kosovo had declared independence
from Serbia, Serbian foreign minister Vuk Jeremi
c tried to explain to the audi-
ence at Wheaton College, Chicago, what Kosovo continued to mean for Serbia:

Well, for us, Serbs, Kosovo is like the very air we breathe. Its the beating heart of our
cultureand home to our most sacred shrines. Kosovo is the land where hundreds
of thousands of Serbs gave their lives for their country and the cause of freedom.
[. . .] [Kosovo] is in our dreams at night, and in our prayers in church. It is the apple
of our eye. It is our Jerusalem. (cited in Kuzmanovic Jovanovic 2011:36)

What Serbian foreign minister was offering was a narrativea story with
meaning, characters, and a plotline. It is also a story with a very specific political
purposeto delegitimize the separation of the heart (Kosovo) from the body
of the nation (Serbia), and to appeal to action that the heart be returned to its
rightful and suffering owner. And yet, the heart was never returned, and Serbia
somehow continued to exist. In April 2013, Serbia signed an agreement with
Kosovo, accepting the authority of Kosovos government over the entire disputed
territory, in exchange for local autonomy for the Serb minority and without the
official recognition of the new state.

1
I thank Jennifer Dixon, Filip Ejdus, Kristen Monroe, Daniel Nexon, Aaron Rapport, Shaul Shenhav, Ayse Zara-
kol, editors of Foreign Policy Analysis and three anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments and suggestions. Ear-
lier drafts of this article were presented to great benefit at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association (Chicago, IL, 2013) and the International Studies Association Annual Conference (San Diego, CA,
2012).
Subotic, Jelena. (2015) Narrative, Ontological Security, and Foreign Policy Change. Foreign Policy Analysis, doi: 10.1111/
fpa.12089
2015 International Studies Association
2 Narrative, Ontological Security and Policy Change

This turnaround in foreign policy was striking, and it came about rather swiftly
after de facto ultimatum by the European Union, which was holding Serbias EU
accession hopes hostage to the Kosovo deal. That Serbia in the end, under tre-
mendous international pressure, had to relinquish its control over Kosovo is not
surprising and is not the question that motivates this research. Instead, I am
interested in how a state preserves its identity after its foundational narrativein
Serbias case, the notion that Kosovo is what constitutes its identityis fundamen-
tally challenged. If Kosovothe core of Serbian state identityis gone, then
whither Serbia itself? If a policy change undermines the foundational state narra-
tive, then whither the narrative?
To understand the relationship between policy change and state narrative
continuity, I bring together multiple strains of international relations (IR) and
sociological theory to make a theoretical connection between identity politics
and narrative. The principal question I want to answer is, if state autobiograph-
iesstories states tell to and about themselvesprovide such powerful explana-
tions of why states do what they do and how can they change their policies and
their practices? How can they escape the narrative straitjacket they themselves
have created? My article addresses this very question by developing an analytical
framework that helps us move away from too static views of state narratives.
I build on existing theoretical interest in narrative analysis and on rapidly
expanding scholarship on ontological security (Kinnvall 2006; Mitzen 2006;
Steele 2008; Zarakol 2010), to examine ways in which state autobiographical
narratives and the domestic contestation over them are used by political actors
at time of great external stress to confront state insecurities.
My principal argument is that at times of great crises and threats to multiple
state securities (physical, social, as well as ontological), narratives are selectively
activated to provide a cognitive bridge between policy change that resolves the
physical security challenge (for example secession of territory), while also pre-
serving state ontological security through providing autobiographical continuity,
a sense of routine, familiarity, and calm.
While state narratives need to be coherent in order to become socially power-
ful, even the most dominant narratives contain inherent contradictions that dif-
ferent political actors exploit. Further, understanding narratives as schematic
templates that contain different elements and layers allows us to follow how
political actors strategically activate some elements of the narrative, while deacti-
vating others. While the policy change proposed has to fit within the overall nar-
rative schematic template to make sense to the public, it can be crafted in a way
that emphasizes some parts of the story and conveniently forgets others. It is
here that the strategic rhetorical action of political actors and narrative entrepre-
neurs comes into play.
While I understand language to be constitutive of political action (Milliken
1999; Fierke 2002), I place my argument within the now well-established
approach of strategic social construction (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998), which
demonstrates ways in which political actors strategically manipulate shared cogni-
tive (narrative) frames for their own political ends (Payne 2001). The fact that
narratives are manipulated for political purposes does not make them any less
important. In fact, it makes them critical to our understanding of what motivates
political action in the first place. The approach that understands social construc-
tion as being strategic concedes that political actors make rational political calcu-
lations, but they do so within a dense normative social environment that
constitutes their preferences and choices. In order to explain political action
more completely, I apply this understanding of the dynamic of social action and
social environment to demonstrate how political actors may pursue consequen-
tialist behavior (policy change), but it is conditional on broad acceptance of
shared narrative frames. Further, the political action these agents take then
 J ELENA S U BOTI C
13

Narrative Deactivation and Policy Change

The challenge to Serbian political leaders, therefore, was to preserve this idea of
Kosovo while at the same time continuing with EU integration and reaping polit-
ical, economic, and cultural benefits EU membership would bestow. Since 2010,
the Serbian government began to gradually abandon its claim of effective territo-
rial control over Kosovo through a series of EU-sponsored Serbian-Kosovo talks.
At the same time, the official position that Serbia will never recognize Kosovo,
the core of its national identity, and the source of its ontological security,
remained unchanged.
In March 2013, Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Daci
c displayed this contradiction
by claiming, first, that the Serbian people have for years been lied to that Kosovo
is ours (NIN, March 7, 2013). Later that same day, in a different outlet, he stated
that Serbia would never accept Kosovos independence (Balkan Inside, March 7,
2013). Clearly contradictory, this position however was representative of Serbian
public opinion, as 63% of Serbian citizens recognized that Kosovo was, in fact,
independent, while at the same time 65% demanded that the government keeps
Kosovo as part of the Serbian state (Balkan Insight, March 5, 2013).
Bridging this cognitive divide required some creative use of existing narrative
tropes. The Kosovo narrative already contains the plot that Serbs lost in battle,
but they sacrificed themselves for the greater good. As the EU ratcheted up
pressure on Serbia to relinquish its territorial claims on Kosovo in exchange for
EU accession negotiations, Serbian political actors began to activate the sacrifice
element of the state narrative, while deactivating other narrative features
(for example, that of imminent return). Vuk Draskovi
c, the same novelist who
was the first to activate the Kosovo is Jerusalem narrative trope, now called for
Serbias recognition of Kosovos independence. However, the rhetorical pivot of
this new argument is notable: killing of Serbia for the sake of preserving some-
thing that only exists as a mirage must stop (B92, March 25, 2012). Again, Serbia
is being killed, sacrificed, for a spiritual illusion (Ejdus and Suboti
c 2014).
Serbia and Kosovo finally signed an agreement on April 19, 2013. The deal
requires Serbia to accept Kosovo governments control over the entire territory,
while Kosovo was to grant significant autonomy to Serbs concentrated in the
countrys north. The deal also allows Serbia to continue to refrain from officially
recognizing Kosovo as a state (Ejdus and Suboti
c 2014).
This remarkable policy change was now to be somehow presented to anxious
and scared population, who was told for years that Kosovo was always to remain
Serbian. Senior church leaders and a few thousand Kosovo Serbs organized a
protest rally in Belgrade, where one of the bishops carried out a ceremonial
burial of the Serbian government, and another accused Serbian leaders of trea-
son, because there is no Serbia without heavenly Serbia (B92, May 10, 2013).
Serbian politicians responded mostly by minimizing the magnitude of Serbian
concessions (Ejdus and Suboti
c 2014). They used a variety of rhetorical tools to
discursively deny that any real policy change had in fact taken place. Serbian
President Tomislav Nikoli
c pledged to the public, we would never cut our wrists
and commit suicide by giving up Kosovo (B92, May 17, 2013). More signifi-
cantly, the Serbian deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vuci
c again activated the
sacrifice narrative trope, when he said,

The agreement is the only way for Serbia to survive, for us to stay united and
solve our problems together in the future. . . This is a difficult agreement, causing
many problems for the Serbian people, but it was the only possible solution at
the moment. . . Sometimes we must make difficult decisions, but a state cannot
survive without its people, and the people cannot survive without its state.
(Radio Free Europe, May 12, 2013)
4 Narrative, Ontological Security and Policy Change

Narratives in IR
Scholars in other disciplines, notably history and psychology, have explored the
implications of collective narratives on social groups in much detail (in history,
see the path-breaking work on historical memory in Chile by Steve Stern in Stern
2004; in psychology, see the work of James Wertsch on collective remembering
in Wertsch 2002). A movement in historical sociology has used narrative to chal-
lenge the meanings of causality and explanation in sociohistorical inquiry
(Gotham and Staples 1996). Questioning linear understandings of causal infer-
ence, narrative analysis was used to explain social phenomena by showing how a
particular social act happens because of the order and position it has in a story
(Griffin 1993:1099).
Within IR and foreign policy research, much of the work done on memory
and narrative has explored how analogous reasoning from past events affects
evaluations of current foreign policy issues (Neustadt and May 1986; Khong
1992; Record 2002). Levy demonstrated ways in which leaders learn from the
past and make foreign policy decisions accordingly (Levy 1994). More recently,
Saunders has argued that policymakers develop internal or external orienta-
tions toward threats, or they perceive threats as arising from regime types or
other states foreign policy choices, based on the memory of their past policy
experiences (Saunders 2011). Wittes demonstrated how collective memories of
past traumas impact ongoing negotiating styles between, for example, Israelis
and Palestinians (Wittes 2005).
We also know that policymakers construct security narratives to make sense of
the strategic environment and perceived national security threats, but these nar-
ratives also shape how these actors think about policy challenges, enabling as
well as constraining possibilities of policy shifts (Homolar 2011). States over time
create national security cultures, which are in part constructed by national
mythologies of past events and relationships with historical friends or foes
(Katzenstein 1996; also Berger 1998; Soeya, Tadokoro, and Welch 2011; Welch
2002). Narratives, for example, of a Western civilization, served as boundaries
to demarcate desirable security communities and exclude others (Jackson 2003).
Explanatory power of narratives, therefore, is best understood as providing
cultural cognitive boundaries which sanction or constrain activities of political
actors (Hart 1992). It is not in providing linear causality of political action, but
instead of making action possible, allowing for some practices and policies, while
foreclosing possibility for others. This further reproduces and entrenches domi-
nant policies while marginalizing alternative ones (Autesserre 2012:6). Narratives
are social structures that create expectations, interests, and, ultimately, behaviors
(Mattern 2001). They create opportunities for action, as well as taboos that make
certain action unimaginable.
Most of the current narrative scholarship in IR, however, assumes a certain sta-
sis to narratives. We can explain policy choices, but we have a harder time
explaining policy change. If narratives are foundational cognitive frameworks
that give meaning to political action, then how can the policies narratives had
informed ever be rejected, amended, or replaced? Here is where the growing
research agenda in ontological security studies can offer much help.

Narratives and Ontological Security

The rapidly developing scholarship on ontological security is too large to fully
summarize here, but the main premise of this literature (which builds much on
Giddens 1984) is that states care as much about their ontological security, the
security of a consistent self, as about material, physical security, the traditional
purview of IR inquiry. In fact, states may be willing to compromise some aspects
 J ELENA S UB OTI C
5

of their physical security in order to maintain their identity, their view of self
(Wendt 1994). States need predictability and order; they thrive for routine and
secure relationships with others (Huysmans 1998; McSweeney 1999). It is
through these routinized relationships with their significant others that states
construct their identities (Mitzen 2006).
The work on ontological security has already made much use of the concept
of narrative. States construct their biographical continuity through internal
efforts to maintain their self-reflexive narratives, their positive views of self, at
times of crisis (Steele 2008). When in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in
2004 the United States was internationally shamed for being stingy in offering
foreign aid, the ontological security rupture this accusation created in the Ameri-
can sense of self-worth led to rapid change in policy (Steele 2007). Narratives
are important for state ontological security seeking because they provide autobio-
graphical justification and continuity with the good past. States need to feel
good about themselves and about their past action in order to continue to func-
tion in international society. This is why, for example, states such as Turkey and
Japan continue to deny their historical wrongs as a way of preserving both their
biographical continuity and their place in the contemporary international system
(Zarakol 2010).
States, therefore, construct autobiographical identity narratives to make
sense of their own behavior in the international system, to give their actions
meaning (Innes and Steele 2014:17; also Berenskoetter 2014). Just as individuals
exist and find out who they are and how they should act through the stories they
tell about themselves, so do the states (Ringmar 1996; Lang 2002). At its strong-
est, this literature argues that states not only use biographical narratives to pur-
sue certain policies, but that states are, in fact, biographical narratives themselves
(Berenskoetter 2014).
Reconceptualizing states as existing through narratives then helps explain
autobiographical change, as well as continuity. As states move through inter-
national society, enter new relationships with other states, and experience
momentous events, their stories change and incorporate new elements. This
does not necessarily mean that a state narrative, its autobiography, must be
fundamentally altered. Instead, new events are interpreted in line with specific
elements of the narrative, emphasizing some aspects of the narrative and dis-
regarding others. Therefore, a coherent narrative can include all sorts of
change as long as a sensible link from before to after is maintained
(Berenskoetter 2014:279). Most significantly for my purposes here, not all
action is guided, or made meaningful, by one single narrative. A master nar-
rative is sufficiently vague to exist alongside more specific, derivative narratives
that can be either layered or interwoven, and that can be strategically
employed without hurting the coherence of the basic discourse (Berenskoet-
ter 2014:280).
It is specifically at times of great stress or trauma that autobiographical narra-
tives are needed to provide comfort and relief (Kinnvall 2004). Traumas or pro-
found ontological crises occur when external events cannot be neatly placed
into the ontological security narrative because they represent a challenge to the
state internal or external identity (Innes and Steele 2014). And while Innes and
Steele expect states to revise and rewrite their collective narratives in response to
the external trauma, I show instead how at times of great crises the state autobio-
graphical narrative can remain essentially the same, but the policy change
brought on by the crisis is narratively explained by activating some elements of
the broader narrative template and deactivating others. In the face of crisis, a
familiar narrative then preserves a sense of well-being and provides a form of
ontological self-help (Ejdus 2014).
6 Narrative, Ontological Security and Policy Change

In unpacking this narrative process, I agree with the criticism of ontological

security theory as being at risk of homogenizing the national Self (Delehanty
and Steele 2009:526) by not paying due attention to competing autobiographical
narratives, such as different gendered narratives that constitute the Self in very
different and consequential ways. My interest, however, is not to present an
explanation of narrative competition, but instead of the complexity and multidi-
mensional character of the state narrative itself, which political actors selectively
activate and deactivate at times of great ontological stress. My research therefore
provides the missing linkthe explanation of how this narrative gets reconsti-
tuted at times of trauma to discursively bridge the gap between solving a physical
security challenge that requires a policy change, and the continuation of the bio-
graphical narrative necessary for preserving state ontological security. I offer a
response to the invitation by ontological security scholars for new investigations
into the relationship between trauma and national narratives, how such narra-
tives smooth out the opened traumatic space or rupture, or how they can serve
to reopen past traumas (Innes and Steele 2014:28). It is to this process that
I now turn.

Narratives and Policy Change

Narratives come in varieties of form and depth and breadth of salience. Not all
narratives will be equally important for understanding state action. In this pro-
ject, I choose to look at schematic narrative templates (Wertsch 2008), narra-
tives of general patterns across space and time, reflecting a single general story
line, instead of focusing on specific narratives of individual events. I want to
show how multiple individual historical narratives can merge into one, larger,
narrative, which then becomes a frame for understanding both the past and the
present in a simplified, schematic, and linear fashion. These larger narratives are
used in unreflective, unanalytical, and unwitting manner (Bartlett 1995:45 in
Wertsch 2008:124) and are particularly prone to state control, production, and
consumption. They represent basic plotlines for the most significant events of a
states history (for example, the persistence of the narrative of expulsion of for-
eign enemies in Russian collective memory as analyzed by Wertsch 2008) and
are cognitive molds that impose a shape on how people remember their past
(Bruner 2002). A focus on multilayered schematic narrative templates can help
provide a more empirically useful understanding of what narratives actually do,
politically speaking, and how they can be used to set up a policy in place, as well
as justify its change at times of great ontological stress.
State narratives are constructed through an active and elaborate process that
involves multiple political and cultural agents. Over time and with infinite itera-
tion by narrative entrepreneurspolitical leaders, elite intellectuals, education
establishment, popular culture, the mediaand everyday social practice, a partic-
ular state narrative template (of past events, or of the general place of the state
in the international system) fixes the meaning of the past and limits the oppor-
tunity for further political contestation. A constructed narrative reaches a tipping
point threshold when a critical mass of social actors accepts and buys into it as a
social fact. This state narrative then becomes an uncontested rhetorical com-
monplace (Jackson 2003). It becomes hegemonic. Using discursive coercion,
akin to what Bially Mattern calls representational force (Mattern 2005), politi-
cal actors rhetorically trap each other into the existing narrative. Identity claims,
then, become a form of power enacted through the narrative gun (Mattern
2001:352). Alternative narratives stop making sense; they do not sound coherent
and are not compelling. This meaning making then reduces political space for
debate and conflict (Krebs and Lobasz 2007:410). Narratives, in other words,
produce their own lock-in effects (Goddard 2006).
 J ELENA S UB OTI C
7

Narratives, however, are social constructswhich means they are activated and
deactivated all the time. Political actors use narratives strategically and purpose-
fully. Through the use of framing, agenda setting, and discursive practices, politi-
cal actors activate narratives or specific messages within narratives, to justify policy
shifts, and deactivate those elements that no longer serve the policy purpose. As
stories change over time and space, the identities of social actors embedded in
these stories also change, shifting their preferences and interests. They may
reconstitute their identity as political leaders by offering a new political path that
draws a clear boundary with past practice. Their use of narratives will then be
strategic. A new policy will be justified by some elements of the hegemonic nar-
rative, while other parts of the story will be deemphasized.
Traumatic events such as wars or other political disasters are particularly useful
windows of opportunity for selective narrative activation. Crises are events that
are not only disruptive and consequential, but are intersubjectively interpreted
as necessitating change (Widmaier, Blyth, and Seabrooke 2007:748). Political
actors then respond to such interpretations of crises by designing a policy
change. Narratives play a critical role in providing a cognitive bridge between
necessary policy change (which resolves the physical threat brought on by the
crisis) and uninterrupted state autobiography by preserving a well-established
sense of self-identity. Narratives provide intersubjective meaning to policy
change. They make policy change comprehensible and acceptable.
Narratives therefore bridge the rupture created by the external trauma
between multiple desired securities of the state. As they pursue ontological secu-
rity, states also pursue social security, security of their membership in interna-
tional society. It is not enough for states to feel secure in their view of self; they
also need to feel secure in the company of other states (for example, by being
considered European, modern, or democratic). Narratives help provide
these securities during challenging times. They rhetorically link what needs to
be done (policy change) with why it is done (because we are a good state or
because we are European or because this is a heroic sacrifice that we have
historically been asked to do over and over again) and why the policy change
should be accepted.
But, how are state narratives measured? How do we know that they are
broadly shared and deeply embedded in a group? We can begin by assessing the
salience of a particular narrative by assessing the degree of diffusion and inter-
nalization among both the elite and the general population (Langenbacher
2003:4950). I do so by conducting personal interviews with elite actors, but also
relying on public opinion surveys of the general public, as well as conducting a
careful textual analysis of selected media reports, as well as a thorough reading
of historiography, memoirs, government documents, popular culture (novels
and films). Using historiography as a source is always fraught with danger, partic-
ularly of selection bias, omissions, and errors of interpretation (Thies 2002).
While I take these concerns seriously, I have to accept that there will always be
disputes about the truthfulness of a particular interpretation, especially since I
carry out the interpretation of the interpretation. I am careful to use strategies
to minimize selection bias (mostly be expanding the pool of data and texts to
analyze), and to be upfront about potential inconsistencies and biases in the
interpretation.
Serbia is selected here as a hard case. A hard case is a useful theory testing
technique because it presents the most unexpected outcome in relation to
existing theories, therefore increasing our confidence in the theory that can
explain the case (Bennett and Elman 2007). Considering Serbias deep attach-
ment to the idea that Kosovo represents its core territorial identity, the policy
outcomeSerbia giving up effective control of the territory and accepting
Kosovos de facto secession in 2013must be explained. A cultural explanation
8 Narrative, Ontological Security and Policy Change

based solely on the fundamental importance of narratives in guiding policy

choices cannot explain Serbias policy about-face. Conversely, a purely incentive-
based explanation that focuses on international coercion or material benefits
Serbia received as part of the Kosovo deal cannot explain Serbias continuing
invoking of the Kosovo narrative even after the territory was, effectively, gone.
In what follows, I trace the process by which different elements of the domi-
nant Serbian schematic narrative template were selectively activated and deacti-
vated to provide a cognitive bridge between physical insecurity (the looming loss
of Kosovo) and continuing biographical continuity of the state.

Kosovo: The Politics of Space and Place

Serbias foreign policy choices since the 2000 ousting of Slobodan Milosevi
c have
been puzzling. Serbias unwillingness to arrest war crimes suspects has led to
much delay in its EU accession process. So has its refusal to accept Kosovos dec-
laration of independence in 2008. These foreign policy decisions make little
sense. Why would Serbia hold on to Kosovo, at all cost, when the territory does
not provide any material benefit to Serbiait is extremely resource poor, is
inhabited by 90% Albanian population that has grown increasingly hostile to the
Serbian state, and has always been a drain on already limited Serbian resources?
But however irrational and unstrategic Serbias policies are, they continue to
make sense to large majorities of Serbias citizenry and to its elite policymakers.
If we want to understand why, we need to unpack the state narrative that shapes
Serbias view of self, its purpose in the international community, and its contem-
porary policy choices.
In what follows, I first describe the Serbian state narrative template of victim-
ization and historical injustice, which is derived from the foundational Kosovo
myth. I then discuss the political activation of this narrative as it shaped both
Serbias rhetorical refusal to let go of Kosovo and its de facto acceptance of
Kosovos independence.

Serbian Narrative Template

The dominant Serbian state narrative template is built on self-identity of a vic-
timized people, engaged in an honorable, but often futile self-defense against
great-power enemies. The saturation of the public discourse with this national
story has been overwhelming. If the salience of a group narrative is measured by
the degree of diffusion and internalization among both the elite and the mass
population (Langenbacher 2003), then the Serbian narrative of the nation vic-
timized by malevolent global powers has firmly penetrated all aspects of Serbian
political life (Suboti
c 2013).
As is well documented, much of this victimization narrative is constructed on
historical memories of Serbian martyrdom, especially the constitutive myth of
Serbian martyrdom at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389.2 Much research exists on
the development of the Kosovo myth in Serbian epic literature and historiogra-
phy (for example Malcolm 1998; Judah 2008; Djokic 2009), so I will not dwell
on this for too long.
For my purposes here, it is enough to remind the reader that on June 28,
1389, a battle took place on the Kosovo (Black birds) field between Serbian
Christian forces and Ottoman Turks. The exact outcome of the battle has
remained historically unclear, but it is known that among the heavy casualties
both the Serbian prince and the Ottoman Sultan were killed. Significantly for the
purposes of narrative creation, the Kosovo battle has come to be remembered as
2
This historical account of the emergence of the Kosovo myth builds on Ejdus and Suboti
c 2014.
 J ELENA S UB OTI C
9

a momentous Serbian defeat and the beginning of 500 years of Turkish rule
(Djokic 2009:6).
Central to the Kosovo narrative is the concept of sacrifice. As the legend has it,
the night before the battle, a holy prophet visited Serbian prince Lazar and
presented him with a choice: an empire in heaven or an empire on earth. Prince
Lazar chose a heavenly empiresecuring earthly loss in battle, but eternal life in
heaven for the Serbian people. This plotline is important because this ideathat
there is something noble in foregoing practical political victories for an imagined
spiritual benefithas become one of the central tropes in subsequent Serbian state
narrative, a way of making sense of events and justifying political decisions that
otherwise do not bring much material gain. It represents, from the very beginning,
the idea that for Serbia its ontological security trumps its physical security needs.
The second significant trope of the myth establishes in the narrative an under-
standing of the Serbian people as victims of major foreign powers. What began
with the defeat at the hands of the mighty Ottomans has then continued
throughout history as Serbian defeat or control by the Habsburgs, Croats and
Slovenes (in the first kingdom of Yugoslavia), Germans in World War II, then
again Croats and other Yugoslav nations (in the communist Yugoslavia), followed
by Albanians (in Kosovo), Bosniacs (in Bosnia), Croats (in Croatia), NATO
(during 1999 war), and most recently the European Union (in its attempts to
legitimize Kosovos secession from Serbia). In all of these battlesreal or imag-
inedSerbian narrative positions Serbs as victims of outside powers, losing in
political life, but gaining in righteousness and morality.
The third element of the Kosovo story that is relevant for Serbian state narra-
tive template is the message that Serbs will rise again, that what is lost will be
vindicated, what has been mourned will be celebrated. In this sense, the Kosovo
myth establishes a historical continuity between the contemporary Serbian
nation and the Serbs of the Middle Ages, suggesting a perennial nation
(Bieber 2002:96). There are multiple historical examples of the use of this aspect
of the Kosovo myth to celebrate or motivate Serbian heroes to avenge the
Kosovo loss and bring back Serbian glory, for example, the decorative medals
to the avengers of Kosovo that Serbian soldiers received after marching into
Kosovo in 1912 during the First Balkan War (Djokic 2009). In fact, it was exactly
this call for Serbs to rise up that Slobodan Milosevi
c activated in his notorious
speech at the Kosovo field on the 600th anniversary of the Kosovo battle on June
28, 1989, which propelled his consolidation of power and political use of Serbian
nationalism that soon led to war (Bieber 2002).
This narrative construction was, of course, not a coincidental development.
After being relatively dormant during the communist era (especially 19451987,
before Milosevi
cs takeover of the ruling party), since the mid-1980s, as national-
ism replaced communism as the principal ordering ideology, the story of Kosovo
and the ideas it represented became more openly activated. Leading Serbian his-
torians published hugely popular books linking the Kosovo myth to Serbias con-
temporary political anxieties, such as the fundamental insecurity about Serbian
national interests being threatened by other nations in the Yugoslav federation.
Kosovo became tied quite directly to core Serbian national identity, as in the fol-
lowing excerpt from the book For a Heavenly Kingdom by a noted historian:

Nations have their metaphysical core, with some this is impulsive and with others
it is hidden, sometimes even powerless. . .. The Kosovo orientation is not [only] a
national idea, but also a trait of character which makes a Serb a Serb. (Samardzi
c
1991, 14, emphasis added)

The political purchase of the Kosovo myth for the Serbian nationalist endeavor
of the 1990s was to eliminate the historical distance between past and present
10 Narrative, Ontological Security and Policy Change

and, in effect, equate contemporary political leaders such as Slobodan Milosevi
c,

with historical Serbian figures (such as Prince Lazar), and also group contempo-
rary enemies (such as Kosovo Albanians or Bosniacs) with historical enemies
(such as the Ottomans). The vindication component of the Serbian state narra-
tivethat Serbia will avenge its historical lossesto a great extent helps explain
Serbias war efforts in the 1990s. Historical vindication, as we know, is never a
bloodless sport, and this pursuit of historical justice goes a long way in explain-
ing the narrative meaning making behind Serbias brutal wars in Croatia, Bosnia,
and Kosovo.
In 1999, NATO intervention against Serbia further solidified Serbian feeling
of victimhood and a great sense of injustice at the hands of great powers (Jansen
2000). In fact, a succession of Serbian governments post-1999 consciously
decided to promote the memory of Serbian victimhood during the 76-day NATO
air war as if it were the central motif of the wars in the 1990s (David 2013:191).
This sense of collective victimhood persisted even after the Kosovo war, and
even after Milosevi
c was ousted from power in 2000. Serbian media relentlessly
covered revenge attacks by Kosovo Albanians and the persecution of Serbs by
the Kosovo Liberation Army, as well as real and documented destruction of
Serbian cultural sites. The stories about renewed cycle of persecution of the Serb
minority permeated Serbian public discourse, once again confirming the preex-
isting notions that Serbs were right to fear Albanians and that Serb suffering will
continue in the new, non-Serb controlled Kosovo (Bieber 2002:105). The
Serbian Orthodox Church continued as the primary incubator of this narrative.
This particular state autobiography of injustice, victimization, and need for
vindication created a cognitive model for Serbia to understand and interpret its
world. It designated political action by historical foes (Slovenes, Croats, Bosniacs,
Kosovo Albanians) as threatening, a continuation of a timeless and perpetual
struggle of the Serbian nation for survival. It also reconstituted elements of the
Serbian national identity. This was clear already in the inaugural speech of presi-
dent-elect Vojislav Kostunica on the eve of Milosevi
cs defeat in 2000: There are
those who did us wrong, who bombed us. We cannot forget the damage or the
crimes [against us]; Serbs will lose their identity if they forget those crimes (B92, Octo-
ber 6, 2000, emphasis added). This narrative created a quite distinct sense of a
historical time in which national enemies fought over many decades and even
centuries, creating direct, living connection with the past (Colovi
 c 2002:5; also
Lieberman 2006).

Serbian State Narrative Activation

The construction and staying power of the narrative should by now be clear.
The more important question, however, is how does this narrative continue to
shape Serbias contemporary policy choices and how does it explain policy
change.
Serbias position on Kosovo is not very well understood, while it is very broadly
assumed and often mentioned as fact in international policymaking. Most analy-
ses of Serbias resistance to even negotiate, let alone recognize Kosovos indepen-
dence, explain it as an issue of territorial integrity (sovereignty claim) or ethnic
chauvinism (nationalism claim). In his famous review of learning in foreign pol-
icy, Jack Levy mentions in passing and without problematizing that Kosovo
drives the Serbs (Levy 1994:279), as an example of the importance of history to
contemporary foreign policy. Even advocates of Kosovos independence uncriti-
cally state that Kosovo is Serbian ancestral homeland (Kupchan 2005: 14), as if
that is somehow a real and observable social fact. This idea that Serbian claim to
Kosovo is historical, while Albanian claim is romantic, and therefore not
equally legitimate, is also a frequent trope in Serbian contemporary
 J ELENA S U BOTI C
11

historiography (Di Lellio 2009:375). To a great extent, therefore, the Serbian

state narrative about Kosovo has been internationalized and has shaped interna-
tional responses to the territorial dispute.
Ever since the end of the NATO war in 1999 and the placement of Kosovo
under international protection, the international community primed Serbia
for Kosovos eventual independent status. The prospect of losing Kosovo was
deeply felt and widely perceived as a profound blow to Serbian identity and
the Serbian state. For most of Serbian elites and the Serbian people, this was
an unacceptable political outcome. In a 2011 poll, 65% of the population
declared that Serbian government should never recognize Kosovo because it
would compromise Serbian identity and national honor (Belgrade Center
for Security Policy 2011). This strong opposition to Kosovos independence
holds even in the face of clear political costs. In the same poll, 54% of
respondents were aware that Serbia could not join the EU without giving up
its claims on Kosovo, but still overwhelmingly opposed Serbias recognition of
Kosovos independence. This national sense of loss, tragedy, and betrayal was
shared across the entire Serbian political landscape, and enveloped conserva-
tive nationalists as well as moderates and reformers. The crisis over Kosovos
declaration of independence created multiple insecurities for Serbiaa sense
of physical insecurity (loss of significant part of territory) and a sense of onto-
logical insecurity (loss of self-identity).
For example, Serbian reformist president Boris Tadi
c lamented:

Kosovo is where my nations identity lies, where the roots of our culture are. . .
Kosovo is the foundation of Serbias history and this is why we cannot give it
up. (B92, May 25, 2007)

Serbian foreign minister Vuk Jeremi
c, another self-declared political moderate,

made an even more emotional statement:

I stand before you this afternoon as a proud European, and as an ashamed Euro-
pean. . . I am ashamed because if recognition of this ethnically motivated act of
secession from a democratic, European state is not wrongthen nothing is
wrong. (B92, February 20, 2008)

The Serbian governments claim to Kosovo from Serbias position as a Euro-

pean state is not accidental. It builds on a constant trope in the Serbian state
narrative, which delineates a clear opposition between the crescent and the
cross, the Islamic East (of Kosovo, of Muslim Bosnia), and the Christian West (of
Serbia and of Europe, or more precisely of Serbia in Europe). In this sense, the
external crisissecession of Kosovoalso threatened Serbias social security, the
security of its membership in the society of European states.
Serbias former president and prime minister Vojislav Kostunica made this link
between Serbian narrative and contemporary policy even more clear in a speech
on February 15, 2008, 2 days before Kosovo declared its independence from
Serbia:

Whoever has heard about Serbs and Serbia knows that Serbia is in Europe and
the Serbs are a European nation. And two centuries ago it was not just Serbia
who discovered Europe but Europe discovered Serbia as well. And when it did
that, it found within Serbia European ideas and values and Kosovo as a synonym
for the most valuable contribution made by Serbia to the Christian civilization.
Therefore, no one can integrate Serbia into Europe or leave it out, and Serbia
should enter the EU whole, just as all its other member countries did.
(Kostunica 2009:207)
12 Narrative, Ontological Security and Policy Change

Kostunicas party, the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), then directly linked
Kosovos independence with Serbias EU bid and called for Serbias withdrawal
from EU membership process. In its official party platform, DSS says:

The European orientation of Serbia should be called into question for a very
simple reason: who in Serbia is ready to believe that someone who is part of the
hostile context, notably the process of establishment of Kosovo status, may in any
other matter have friendly intentions. Advice like Let go of Kosovo, ahead of
you is European future is unacceptable for Serbs. (NIN, February 8, 2007)

The narrative continuity in this policy choice is clearthe withdrawal from

Europe may be a short-term political loss, but it will be a heroic sacrifice for
the greater goodthe preservation of Serbias identity, its political soul. This
theme of Kosovos indivisibility, the unimaginable demands for Kosovos sepa-
ration from the Serbian body politic, is also evident in a prevalent theme in
the Serbian Kosovo narrative that equates Serbia with Jerusalem (Ejdus and
Suboti
c 2014). The Kosovo/Jerusalem analogy first appeared in the Serbian
public consciousness in 1985, when the novelist Vuk Draskovi
c wrote, Serbs
are the thirteenth, lost and the most ill-fated tribe of Israel (quoted in Zivk- 
ovi
c 2011:199). The Kosovo/Jerusalem meme has since become a common
rhetorical heuristic by Serbian social actors. For example, Serbian foreign
minister Jeremi
c used the Kosovo as Serbian Jerusalem metaphor in multi-
ple speeches at the United Nations, interviews, and public events on numer-
ous occasions (Ejdus and Suboti
c 2014). The Church has been the persistent
generator of this theme, as in the statement by a high-ranking bishop that
Kosovo should stay our spiritual and cultural cradle, our Serb Jerusalem.
What Jerusalem is for the Jewish people, Kosovo and Metohija is for the Ser-
bian People (quoted in Di Lellio 2009:380).
While Serbian emotional attachment to Kosovo is well documented, I suggest
a better way to understand Serbias position here is to consider that Serbias
claim to Kosovo is really not about Kosovo at all. Kosovo, the actual, real Kosovo,
the land, the territory, and the people are not what drives the Serbs. It is the
idea of Kosovo, what Kosovo represents in the collective memory of Serbias past
and present that is the driving force of Serbian political action. The idea of
Kosovo is the memory of Serbias past greatness, its victimization and suffering at
the hands of great powers, and the desire to rectify the injustice and to make
wrong right. The much-discussed Kosovo myth is, therefore, not a myth of
territory, but a myth of future action. It is forward looking, not backward look-
ing, and this is why it is directly relevant for Serbias foreign policy choices.
Serbia could not give up Kosovo because Kosovo represents foundational
myths that provide the state its continuing ontological securitythe myth of Ser-
bias glorious past as a regional power, the myth of Serbias cycle of defeat at the
hand of empires, and, most important, the myth of Kosovo as the territorial epicen-
ter of Serbias identity. This is what Serbian politicians mean when they say, there
is no Serbia without Kosovo. What they really mean isthe biographical narrative
about what Serbia is, what its past was like, and what its future holdscannot exist
the same way without Kosovo, or better yet, without the idea of Kosovo.
The hegemonic state narrative that has been constructed over decades has made
the Kosovo issue indivisible in the minds of Serbias public as well as its elites, in
much the same way as comparable narratives in Ulster and Jerusalem (Goddard
2010). The narrative did not leave any room for policy compromise. Kosovos inde-
pendence and secession from Serbia have become unimaginable not just because
of territorial claims, but also because of the tropes of the narrative that have
become constitutive parts of Serbian national identityvictimization, injustice,
and national revival.
 J ELENA S U BOTI C
13

Narrative Deactivation and Policy Change

The challenge to Serbian political leaders, therefore, was to preserve this idea of
Kosovo while at the same time continuing with EU integration and reaping polit-
ical, economic, and cultural benefits EU membership would bestow. Since 2010,
the Serbian government began to gradually abandon its claim of effective territo-
rial control over Kosovo through a series of EU-sponsored Serbian-Kosovo talks.
At the same time, the official position that Serbia will never recognize Kosovo,
the core of its national identity, and the source of its ontological security,
remained unchanged.
In March 2013, Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Daci
c displayed this contradiction
by claiming, first, that the Serbian people have for years been lied to that Kosovo
is ours (NIN, March 7, 2013). Later that same day, in a different outlet, he stated
that Serbia would never accept Kosovos independence (Balkan Inside, March 7,
2013). Clearly contradictory, this position however was representative of Serbian
public opinion, as 63% of Serbian citizens recognized that Kosovo was, in fact,
independent, while at the same time 65% demanded that the government keeps
Kosovo as part of the Serbian state (Balkan Insight, March 5, 2013).
Bridging this cognitive divide required some creative use of existing narrative
tropes. The Kosovo narrative already contains the plot that Serbs lost in battle,
but they sacrificed themselves for the greater good. As the EU ratcheted up
pressure on Serbia to relinquish its territorial claims on Kosovo in exchange for
EU accession negotiations, Serbian political actors began to activate the sacrifice
element of the state narrative, while deactivating other narrative features
(for example, that of imminent return). Vuk Draskovi
c, the same novelist who
was the first to activate the Kosovo is Jerusalem narrative trope, now called for
Serbias recognition of Kosovos independence. However, the rhetorical pivot of
this new argument is notable: killing of Serbia for the sake of preserving some-
thing that only exists as a mirage must stop (B92, March 25, 2012). Again, Serbia
is being killed, sacrificed, for a spiritual illusion (Ejdus and Suboti
c 2014).
Serbia and Kosovo finally signed an agreement on April 19, 2013. The deal
requires Serbia to accept Kosovo governments control over the entire territory,
while Kosovo was to grant significant autonomy to Serbs concentrated in the
countrys north. The deal also allows Serbia to continue to refrain from officially
recognizing Kosovo as a state (Ejdus and Suboti
c 2014).
This remarkable policy change was now to be somehow presented to anxious
and scared population, who was told for years that Kosovo was always to remain
Serbian. Senior church leaders and a few thousand Kosovo Serbs organized a
protest rally in Belgrade, where one of the bishops carried out a ceremonial
burial of the Serbian government, and another accused Serbian leaders of trea-
son, because there is no Serbia without heavenly Serbia (B92, May 10, 2013).
Serbian politicians responded mostly by minimizing the magnitude of Serbian
concessions (Ejdus and Suboti
c 2014). They used a variety of rhetorical tools to
discursively deny that any real policy change had in fact taken place. Serbian
President Tomislav Nikoli
c pledged to the public, we would never cut our wrists
and commit suicide by giving up Kosovo (B92, May 17, 2013). More signifi-
cantly, the Serbian deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vuci
c again activated the
sacrifice narrative trope, when he said,

The agreement is the only way for Serbia to survive, for us to stay united and
solve our problems together in the future. . . This is a difficult agreement, causing
many problems for the Serbian people, but it was the only possible solution at
the moment. . . Sometimes we must make difficult decisions, but a state cannot
survive without its people, and the people cannot survive without its state.
(Radio Free Europe, May 12, 2013)
14 Narrative, Ontological Security and Policy Change

Serbian political actors therefore linked a dramatic policy shift, a change that
is rhetorically unimaginable, with the existing and broadly understood elements
of the Serbian state narrative. Again, they implied, Serbs are sacrificing their
earthly kingdom for spiritual rewards such as national unity, justice, and love.
The second narrative trope Serbian leaders activated in the run up to and in
the immediate aftermath of the 2013 Kosovo deal was the idea of great-power
control. As presented earlier in the article, that Serbia has been historically victim
of great-power manipulation and injustice is one of the constitutive elements of
the Serbian state narrative with broad reach and massive popular acceptance. In
addition to the sacrifice trope, the great-power element of the narrative was par-
ticularly useful in justifying Serbian foreign policy change to the confused public.
The idea that it was the great powers that made Serbia give up Kosovo was
everywhere in the public discourse. Serbian Prime Minister Daci
c, for example,
said,

It was the great power meddling that contributed to the disagreements in the
Balkans. So, which great power has the most influence in the Balkans? Not just
one, but each one a little, because each great power has its people in the Bal-
kans. We do the others bidding instead of working for ourselves. (B92, Decem-
ber 5, 2012)

Serbian president Tomislav Nikoli
c similarly argued, the international

community doesnt have a plan [for Kosovo], it just follows the great powers
(B92, March 25, 2013). Serbian Patriarch Irinej called upon Russia, as a
great Slavic power, to help resolve the Kosovo problem in Serbias favor
(B92, July 23, 2013). During this period, a great deal was made in the
Serbian media about famous foreign experts declaring the Kosovo problem
was the consequence of great-power politics. Some of the usual suspects were
called upon to comment. So, Noam Chomsky, whom the Serbian interviewer
introduced as the most important and most influential world intellectual and
the most famous United States dissident declared that Serbia is forced to
give up Kosovo under Western pressure because the world is fundamentally
ruled by force, not by law (Prelevi
c 2013). This interview got a tremendous
amount of play in the Serbian media because it directly confirmed the great
powers narrative trope that was so important for the justification of the
Serbian Kosovo policy shift.
Similarly, a foreign policy expert from the Moscow Institute for International
Relations was broadly cited in the Serbian media for arguing that the state of
Kosovo was the creation of great-power interests who needed a proxy to control
international financial flows (Mondo, February 18, 2013). Finally, the obsession
with great powers so saturated the media discourse that even unrelated news
items, such as US Secretary of State John Kerrys statement, the international com-
munity is ready to talk to Iran (US Department of State 2013) got translated by
the official Serbian news agency and then reported by every single media outlet
as the great powers are ready to talk to Iran (B92, February 8, 2013). Great pow-
ersthey truly were everywhere.
It is during this process of difficult policy change and the recognition that
some form of loss of Kosovo is inevitable that Serbian political and social
actors strategically activated some elements of the Serbian master narrative
(sacrifice and great power injustice) and deactivated others (inevitable
return). Putting the two strands of the narrative together, the loss of Kosovo
was narrated as a major Serbian sacrifice, the result of another deep historical
injustice at the hands of great powers, this time the European capture of
Serbian territorial and spiritual core. The narrative lives on, but its political
implications change.
 J ELENA S U BOTI C
15

Conclusion
At times of great external stress, such as the secession of territory, familiar narra-
tives help bridge the gap between a difficult policy change that is necessary for
state physical security, and the need to maintain state biographical continuity
and ontological security. During the period of high anxiety, political actors do
not create new narratives from scratch, nor do they significantly rewrite the exist-
ing ones. Instead, they use the wealth of multiple narrative tropes that exist in
dominant state narratives to activate some elements of the narrative and deacti-
vate others. This process manages to preserve the larger narrative template, thus
maintaining a sense of order, stability, and ontological peace.
But, if actors have constructed the narrative differently, or used different parts
of it, the outcome would have been different. For example, if the Serbian politi-
cal actors activated the inevitable return part of the Kosovo narrative, the after-
math of the Kosovo war would have looked quite different than if they
understood and projected outward the narrative of sacrifice and historical
injustice. This dynamic process of narrative activation and deactivation should
not imply that these narratives are fickle and malleable to the point of becoming
meaningless. Instead, this proves once more that there are always more stories
to tell and more ways of telling them (Gotham and Staples 1996:493).
But an explanation based on narrative also needs to address possible alterna-
tive explanations. In the Serbian case, could the policy shift be explained as sim-
ply Serbian political defeat under tremendous international pressure and
consequent face saving in front of an angry public? While I do not depart from
the material explanation that Serbia had to make the Kosovo deal if it was to
continue its EU accession, this explanation only gets us so far. If this was really
such a straightforward deal for Serbia to make, then why not simply go out and
frame it as a victory of Serbian foreign policy that created a path toward Serbias
EU membership? Why did this policy change take so longKosovo has been
under international protection since 1999 when Serbias territorial control effec-
tively dissolved? Why did the Serbian government not frame the Kosovo deal as
good riddance of a resource poor and hostile territory and population? None
of these outcomes occurred. Instead, political actors faced a continuing need to
maintain the idea of Kosovo being constitutive of Serbian identity even after the
infected appendage has already been amputated. A rationalist explanation can-
not account for these discursive choices. A focus on biographical continuity
through narrative activation/deactivation I presented here can. The persistence
of the Kosovo narrative in the Serbian national consciousness, therefore, did not
cause either Serbian rejection of Kosovos independence or its ultimate de facto
acceptance. Rather, what the Kosovo narrative meant to political actors shaped
the particular form that the policy change took, and consequent ways to inter-
pret it within the intersubjectively shared narrative frame.
While the empirical focus of this article was on Serbia, this analysis can be
applied to great benefit in other cases. For example, the ongoing narrative bat-
tleground between Russia and Ukraine would be a particularly fruitful case for
analyzing the process by which multiple tropes of the Russian schematic narra-
tive template (such as, foreign invasion, reconstitution of the lost empire, or pur-
suit of international status) were activated or deactivated as was necessary to
pursue Russian foreign policy at times of clear and profound ontological stress
the Russian state is experiencing in early twenty-first century. This analysis, there-
fore, is not limited to only small or weak states. All states have narratives and all
states face threats to various aspects of their security. My argument then, viewed
more broadly, provides an illustration of the necessary analytical synthesis of con-
sequentialist behavior of political actors and normative social frames that guide
political action. It also helps move the scholarship on ontological security
16 Narrative, Ontological Security and Policy Change

forward, by presenting another possible mechanism for integrating narratives

more directly into the study of state ontological security-seeking behavior.

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