National identity construction from non-alignment to Nato membership

Abstract: How can we understand the historical development of the Swedish national identity construction in terms of non-alignment and internationalism in the media discourse on Nato membership? Since the end of the Cold War, Sweden has been conducting increasing cooperation with Nato, putting its non-alignment and related internationalist identity narrative into question. Starting from the social constructivist assumption that national identity narratives interact with foreign policy through constructing boundaries for possible behavior, I argue that insights about the Swedish advancement towards Nato can be gained from studying how its national identity is constructed in the newspaper debate. I employ critical discourse analysis to illuminate discursive strategies that construct, perpetuate, transform and dismantle aspects of the Swedish national identity to produce ideological effects. My material consists of 88 editorials from two of Sweden’s biggest newspapers, Dagens Nyheter (favoring a Nato membership) and Aftonbladet (opposing a Nato membership) from 1994-1995, 2014-2016 and 2021-2022. My main conclusion is that the non-alignment and internationalist identity narratives are gradually disconnected from each other over time through discursive strategies that increasingly connect them to national security concerns, as tensions increase in Europe. This in turn creates a national identity narrative with which Nato membership is compatible.