Reactive Re-Bordering, Geopolitics and Biopolitics: Estonia at Europe’s Eastern Flank

Abstract

This contribution to the Forum intends to shed light on the most recent changes in Estonia’s policies towards Russia, Belarus and Ukraine after February 24, 2022. I intend to show how the Russian–Ukrainian war transformed Estonia’s relations with its eastern neighbors. I start the analysis with a general account of spatiality and bordering in Estonia’s foreign policy thinking, with the ensuing distinction between its geopolitical and biopolitical aspects particularly boosted by Russia’s military interference in Ukraine. I discuss both the hegemonic and the counter-hegemonic discourses on re-bordering with Russia and de-bordering with Ukraine, and finalize the essay with research-based conclusions largely pertaining to the deconstruction of Eastern Europe in Estonian regionalist imagery.