La notion de « tiers » est complexe et relève d’une grande transdisciplinarité. Les définitions afférentes ont cependant pour trait commun de l’envisager comme qualifiant la posture d’un Etat à l’écart d’un processus politique ou juridique. Relégué ainsi à un rang subsidiaire, le tiers semble désigner l’Etat considéré comme étranger au mécanisme principal à l’œuvre. Le propos de ce travail de recherche a été de s’interroger sur l’acception stratégique du tiers en tant que dépassement de la posture passive classique. Ainsi, le tiers incarne l’expression d’une identité stratégique médiane pour certains Etats développant une réponse particulière à l’égard des contraintes auxquelles leur environnement les soumet. La voie du tiers s’affirme alors comme une alternative à la lecture classique des logiques de puissance en relations internationales. Rétablissant le tiers dans sa dimension stratégique, il s’agit d’écarter la vision d’un Etat tiers exclusivement subi et d’en appréhender les différentes déclinaisons, du tiers objet au tiers sujet.Dans cette perspective, trois modèles de tiers sont convoqués à titre illustratif. La neutralisation de l’Autriche, la finlandisation de la Finlande, et la neutralité de la Suisse. Ces trois cas d’étude ont pour vocation de démontrer de la capacité stratégique de la dénomination d’ « Etat tiers » par la mise en pratique de la grille d’analyse théorique élaborée en première instance. / The notion of "third party" is complex and pertains to a certain transdisciplinarity. The concerned definitions have however for common line to envisage it as qualifying the posture of a State away from a political or legal process. Relegated so to a supplementary rank, the third-party seems to indicate the State considered as foreign to the main mechanism at work.The purpose of this research work was to wonder about the strategic dimension of the meaning of the third as overtaking of the classic passive posture. So, the third embodies the expression of a median strategic identity for some States developing a particular answer towards the constraints to which their environment submits them. The way of the third asserts itself then as an alternative in the classic reading of the logics of power in international relations. Restoring the third in its strategic dimension, it is a question of deviating from the vision of an exclusively undergone third State and of considering the various declensions, from the third as object to the third as subject.In this perspective, three models of third are summoned to illustrative title. The neutralization of Austria, the Finlandization of Finland, and the neutrality of Switzerland. This three study cases have for vocation to demonstrate of the strategic capacity of the category of "third State" by the implementation of theoretical framework established at first instance.

During the Cold War, Norway was a member of NATO, Sweden was neutral but depended on Western support in the event of a crisis, while Finland's foreign policy priority was to win and retain the Soviet Union's confidence. The purpose of the thesis is to study whether the three small states' different foreign policy choices had consequences for the ways in which the Soviet Union and the USA were depicted in school textbooks for history, geography, and social sciences in the period 1930 to 2004. To this end, a theory derived from small states' strategies to maintain their independence was applied to textbook production. The study demonstrates that there was a link between small state foreign policy and textbooks' accounts of the USA and Soviet Union. Swedish and Norwegian textbooks portray international conflicts from a legalistic perspective, taking the part of small states exposed to superpower aggression such as Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Finnish textbooks, however, an interest in defending small state's rights yielded to the need to demonstrate their goodwill towards the Soviet Union, which was described in far less critical terms than in Swedish and Norwegian textbooks. In time, in the name of neutrality, depictions of the USA also became increasingly uncritical. All three Nordic states had government authorities charged with inspecting and approving school textbooks. Foreign policy's chief influence on textbooks was not effected by direct oversight, however; instead, it was established indirectly by means of the social climate, which determined what was considered politically correct in the three countries, and it was to this that the textbooks' authors adapted their work. Textbooks are often said to be conservative and slow to change, but the thesis shows that in parts they were politically sensitive, rapidly adapting to changes in what society held to be politically correct.

<p>During the Cold War, Norway was a member of NATO, Sweden was neutral but depended on Western support in the event of a crisis, while Finland's foreign policy priority was to win and retain the Soviet Union's confidence. The purpose of the thesis is to study whether the three small states' different foreign policy choices had consequences for the ways in which the Soviet Union and the USA were depicted in school textbooks for history, geography, and social sciences in the period 1930 to 2004. To this end, a theory derived from small states' strategies to maintain their independence was applied to textbook production. </p><p>The study demonstrates that there was a link between small state foreign policy and textbooks' accounts of the USA and Soviet Union. Swedish and Norwegian textbooks portray international conflicts from a legalistic perspective, taking the part of small states exposed to superpower aggression such as Vietnam and Afghanistan. In Finnish textbooks, however, an interest in defending small state's rights yielded to the need to demonstrate their goodwill towards the Soviet Union, which was described in far less critical terms than in Swedish and Norwegian textbooks. In time, in the name of neutrality, depictions of the USA also became increasingly uncritical.</p><p>All three Nordic states had government authorities charged with inspecting and approving school textbooks. Foreign policy's chief influence on textbooks was not effected by direct oversight, however; instead, it was established indirectly by means of the social climate, which determined what was considered politically correct in the three countries, and it was to this that the textbooks' authors adapted their work. </p><p>Textbooks are often said to be conservative and slow to change, but the thesis shows that in parts they were politically sensitive, rapidly adapting to changes in what society held to be politically correct.</p>