Vicarious Identification as Foreign Policy Strategy

The chapter reinterprets the United Kingdom-US special relationship through the lens of vicarious identification. It demonstrates how historical proclamations of the special relationship have responded to recurrent British anxieties related to its postwar, post-imperial, and now, following Brexit, its (impending) post-(EU)ropean decline. Vicarious identification with the United States is seen to offer the chance to reaffirm core narratives of self-identity central to British ontological security and which when successful enable the country to avoid serious reflection on its current situation. The chapter highlights the historical continuities of this move but also shows how vicarious identity promotion operates as a foreign policy strategy designed, not only to legitimize the special relationship, but also to entice the United States and its citizens to reciprocate in kind. Beyond exploring the temptations of vicarious identification as a form of foreign policy strategy, the chapter also explores its vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities crystallized during the course of the Trump presidency.

Vicarious Identity

Departing from established social psychological understandings the chapter provides a re-theorization of vicarious identity that identifies it as a form of ontological security seeking that can best be captured through drawing on Lacanian understandings of subjectivity. The chapter explores vicarious identity as an everyday phenomenon and practice, focusing on why vicarious relationships are tempting for subjects, but it also considers the norms that circumscribe the legitimate limits of vicarious identification in different contexts, which can make it both highly controversial and politicized. A methodological discussion further considers how vicarious identification can be recognized by considering the strategies that subjects adopt when vicariously identifying with others.

Introduction

This book focuses on the largely unexplored politics of vicarious identity in international relations (IR). Vicarious identity refers to the processes by which actors (individuals, groups, and states) gain a sense of self-identity, purpose, and self-esteem through riding on (and appropriating) the achievements and experiences of others. Although the concept of vicarious identity has been studied in social psychology (e.g., ...

Aspiring for Vicarious Identity Through Engagement in War

The chapter explores Denmark’s post–Cold War reorientation in foreign policy, where a previous emphasis on laying low and a reluctance to engage in military actions has been replaced by a willingness to support activist military engagement. The transformation has entailed a fundamental reappraisal of the Cold War past, where a once comfortable and ontological-security-affirming narrative has been recast as a betrayal of Denmark’s true being and its responsibilities for upholding a norms-based international order. The chapter argues that such self-shaming is designed to elicit anxiety and ontological insecurities that can only be salved through activist engagement. However, lacking sufficient resources itself, Denmark’s redemption is possible only by establishing a vicarious bond with the United States and partaking in American wars. In Denmark’s case, vicarious identification has therefore been central to driving change and reconstituting selfhood anew, rather than reaffirming extant identities as might be expected.

US Vicarious Identity with Israel, 1967–2020

The chapter explores the United States’ vicarious identification with Israel, arguing that since the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel has served as a positive identity proxy. Two features of Israeli military might have proven attractive for the United States’ vicarious identification with it: its preemptive military actions and its resounding military successes. Using generational analysis the chapter surmises that the increased connections made to Israel in the 1990s and 2000s by the United States are a result of the US Baby Boomer generation’s admiration of Israel as heroic, right, and assertive and where this image served as a formative experience for that generation at the same time as the United States was at its military, moral, and cultural nadir in Vietnam amid the broader tumult of the 1960s and 1970s. This generational take may also explain the increased tensions between the two countries and even the unraveling of the United States’ vicarious identification with Israel hereafter.

Vicarious Identity in International Relations

The chapter identifies vicarious identification as an overlooked yet key constitutive practice in international relations that can be theorized through a rereading of debates on ontological security, status, and recognition dynamics. It demonstrates how vicarious identification is often central to how subjects (re)gain a sense of self-certainty and self-esteem, with the chapter paying particular attention to the contexts within which an emphasis on vicarious identity is more likely to emerge. Three arenas that make vicarious identity relevant for global politics are posited. First, in its manifestation between individuals, often transnationally, in response to major international events. Second, in how citizens generate a sense of ontological security and self-identity through processes of vicarious militarized nationalism, with governments supporting this through processes of vicarious identity promotion. And third, in how states vicariously identify with other states and broader regional and civilizational communities in their pursuit of status, national self-esteem, and ontological reaffirmation.

Conclusion

The chapter reviews the findings of the preceding theoretical and empirical chapters before moving to a broader assessment of what insights a focus on vicarious identity might provide in a context of significant change and uncertainty in international politics. The chapter argues that the proliferation of practices of vicarious identification and vicarious identity promotion are likely to be connected to the relative prevalence of competing fantasies of world order, fantasies variously characterizing the nature of international politics in terms of autonomous units, a bloc-based system, or a normative world order.