ABSTRACT
New energy infrastructure is gradually ‘morphing’ the Baltic Sea regional security. Infrastructure cannot be reduced to a mere technical object; rather, it should be understood as a political process. We argue that energy infrastructuring has become a preferred way of delineating Europe's material and ideational boundaries. As such, the increasingly interconnected energy networks not only enhance regional energy security but are also taken to be political projects that bring the post-Soviet states from the Baltic Sea Region ever closer to Europe. Nuclear power plants and liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals are becoming guarantors of state sovereignty and expressions of national independence from the Kremlin's geopolitical grip. The mechanisms tied to the political process of infrastructuring take on two different forms: securitization and technification. Both mechanisms work to diminish open political deliberation by defining threats or necessity, respectively, and by generating specific performative effects. The cases of the Lithuanian LNG terminal and the Polish nuclear energy project are taken as empirical examples.
