ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses trends in the verbal politics concerning threat framing from the second year of independence up to the year 2000, focusing on policy-makers in the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The instability in Russia's economic and political situation and the unpredictability of its foreign policy during the 1990s lends credence to claims that formalised security cooperation with the 'good' democracies of the Western world represents the only feasible security policy for the Estonian state. Estonian policy-makers are thus reframing security as well as their identity and historical experience. A great power is always concerned with counterbalancing another great power, and may do this at the expense of a neighbouring small state's independence. The post-Cold War history of Estonia can be divided into three phases: the proto-independence mobilisation under the last years of Russian occupation, the first years of formal independence, and the nation-building phase.
