Discourses of danger are a significant part of security and identity politics. They serve well for analysing the construction of both, security through identity politics, and identity through security policy. In this article, the declaration of the Vilnius Group of February 2003 is used as a point of departure. The author discusses the construction of state and national identities in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania throughout the 1990s by means of security policy, danger discourse, and mechanisms of exclusion. He argues that the replacement of Russia as a threat to Baltic security (in documents and policy manifestations) is a reflection of a relaxation of Baltic-Russian relations as well as an ingredient of the pre-accession strategy towards NATO. Political-military threats are replaced by cultural ones, while Russia, hitherto frequently represented as a concrete danger, gives way to abstractions such as „international terrorism“.

Cette thèse porte sur les initiatives et les stratégies de recherches de solutions politiques au conflit nord-irlandais, engagées par les gouvernements britanniques et irlandais depuis les années 1970. L’enjeu est d’expliquer les possibilités de solutions en privilégiant l’angle d’approche de sortie du conflit, adopté par Londres, Belfast et Dublin. L’espoir de paix en Irlande du Nord s’amorce avec le cessez-le-feu de l’IRA de 1994 qui marque un tournant dans l’histoire du conflit. Dès lors, la recherche d’une issue est engagée dans la voie du compromis [partage des pouvoirs entre la minorité catholique et la majorité protestante et lutte contre les systèmes de discrimination et d’inégalités]. Avec l’engagement de ce processus de paix et l’implication de l’Union européenne, à travers des programmes de paix et de réconciliation va émerger un désir de réconciliation intercommunautaire [entre catholiques et protestants]. L’examen de l’Accord de paix du Vendredi Saint de 1998 a révélé que l’expérience nord-irlandaise fournit un mode opératoire de négociation de sortie du conflit par un compromis suis generis. Cette configuration de la paix multidimensionnelle est devenue une métaphore européenne sur les principes de prévention et de règlement des conflits. L’émergence d’un « paradigme » nord-irlandais constitue l’objet de cette étude sur les formes de mobilisation pour la paix et la prévention des conflits dans l’Union européenne. / This thesis deals with political initiatives and efforts to achieve solutions to the Northern Irish conflict, by examining policies instituted by the British and Irish Governments since the 1970s. The purpose is to explain how possible solutions to the conflict were envisioned by focusing on differing approaches to conflict resolution as adopted by London, Belfast and Dublin. The hope for peace in Northern Ireland is interconnected with the ceasefire of the IRA in 1994 that marks a turning point in the history of the conflict. Therefore, the quest for a peaceful outcome involved engagement in the path of the compromise and power sharing between the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority as well as the fight against discrimination and inequality. With the commitment of this peace process, the involvement of the European Union through peace and reconciliation programmes helped to foster a desire for inter-community reconciliation. The examination of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 reveals that the Northern Ireland experience provides a procedure to negotiate the end of the conflict by sui generis compromise. This multidimensional approach and configuration of peace process has become a European metaphor for conflict prevention and resolution principles. The object of this study is consequently to show the emergence of a Northern Irish « paradigm » that can provide the basis for forms of mobilization for peace and conflict prevention in the European Union.