ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the notion of national security functions in debates about international integration. It discusses what are constructed as threats to national security, how the constructions have changed, and how international integration is constituted in them. The chapter argues that, notwithstanding the variety of arguments within the Estonian security discourse, Estonia's pursuits of international integration continue to be underpinned by the notion of threat. Estonia is an illuminating example of how the notion of security is redefined and re-demarcated as the country integrates with the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Estonian state and the West are specified as the inside, against Russia as the outside. The construction of security in Estonia illustrates not the dissolution of borders under Western leadership, or even the borders with the West, but a more complex local construction of borders for varied political strategies.
