Crafting Security Expertise: Toward an International Political Sociology of the Entanglement between Think Tanks, NATO, and the Image-building of Russia

Security organization such as NATO appears to be the last type of
organization prone to let civil society inside its walls. Indeed, the
Alliance, which deals with “high politics” in Europe, is more likely to
keep its information sources secret. Yet, as this dissertation explores,
NATO is not completely shut off from external inputs, and in
particular, the influence of think tank(er)s. While few authors have
undertaken an in-depth analysis of this relationship, this dissertation
demonstrates the ways in which NATO engages with think tank(er)s.
Specifically, this dissertation identifies the epistemic practices behind
major international security decisions. It does this by drawing on
securitization theory and the sociology of expertise and professions,
as well as, empirically, by building upon two-dozen interviews with
NATO employees and think-tankers, an ethnography in a Brussels based think tank, and an analysis of think tank reports.
To delineate this research, the analysis of the expertise of think
tank(er)s and NATO practitioners is centered on NATO’s 2016
decision to send—as part of its enhance forward presence (EFP)—four
battle groups in the Baltics and Poland to “deter a newly assertive
Russia”. This deployment of troops represented one of NATO’s major
decisions in the post-Cold War era, as it attempted to strike a difficult
balance between protecting NATO’s eastern border and its new allies,
deterring a resurgent Russia, and avoiding unintentional escalation
with Moscow.
This dissertation thus shows how different habitus within international
organizations, and NATO specifically, can lead to the mobilization of
various forms of expertise. Specifically, I explore how these habitus
simultaneously relate to different problematizations of Russia. For this
reason, I propose four archetypical images of NATO’s relations with
Russia. I then demonstrate how different actors structure their
interactions around these models. In addition, and as a by-product of
this research, I show the structural intertwining of NATO practitioners
with think tank(er)s and the involvement of the former in the latter’s
development of expertise.
In summary, this research provides a comprehensive and structural
overview of the gearing behind the crafting of security expertise