Neither security nor development? Czech and Hungarian identities and interests in the provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan

Ondrej Horký-Hlucháň, Balazs Szent-Iványi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This article builds on the securitisation and post-development literature and it scrutinises the Czech and Hungarian legitimising discourses of the two countries’ respective Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in the Logar and Baghlan provinces of Afghanistan from 2007 to 2013. In spite of the hybrid civil–military character of the PRTs, their security–development nexus was absent and they were respectively securitised and “developmentalised” only indirectly and to a varying extent. The PRTs were mostly justified by the Czech Republic's NATO membership as an identity issue and they were justified as a Hungarian national interest and as both an obligation and an opportunity. Rather than merely importing NATO's arguments as suggested by the previous literature, the depoliticisation and positive connotation of the intervention in Afghanistan was constructed by the domestic NATO-related identities and interests in the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)388-406
Number of pages19
JournalEast European Politics
Volume31
Issue number4
Early online date5 Oct 2015
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015

Bibliographical note

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in East European politics on 04/03/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/21599165.2015.1078792

Keywords

  • securitisation
  • development
  • security-development nexus
  • provincial reconstruction team
  • Afganistan
  • Czech Republic
  • Hungary

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Neither security nor development? Czech and Hungarian identities and interests in the provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this