Even before Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, at least two concurrent challenges presented themselves in the international arena: an increased geopolitical great power competition and a set of new transnational shared threats, like climate change, pandemic, or terrorism. Whether the world finds itself now, a year into the war in Ukraine, at an “inflection point”, or “between orders”, there is a commonly shared belief both among international relations scholars and policymakers that today’s events are going to prove decisive for the decades to come. Inside of this geopolitical struggle, the United States has been reaffirming its stance in the world, and centered its new National Security Strategy, issued in October 2022, around the need for US leadership in the “strategic competition to shape the future of the international order.”
With the war in Ukraine, the focus of US foreign policy has shifted during the last year to put an increased emphasis on Eastern Europe. Despite facing some criticism at home, both at the beginning of the war for not taking even more decisive actions, and lately from the far-right opposed to more funding, the US support for Ukraine has been consistently bipartisan in Congress and has benefited from large public approval. The US has provided almost $25 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration and has vouched to support Ukraine “as long as it takes”.
The aim of this paper is to use the qualitative tool of discourse analysis to identify the main themes of US foreign policy in regard to Ukraine, how they translated into actions during the first year of war, and what this could mean for the future of US interests in the region.
Keywords: war in Ukraine, US foreign policy, discourse analysis, Eastern Europe
Author description: Iulia Huiu is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science/ International Relations at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA). Between 2017 and 2022 she served as a diplomat at the Embassy of Romania to the US in Washington DC, where she had extensive experience with American politics and foreign policy, including working with Congress. Prior to this, between 2014 and 2017 she was State Advisor to the President of Romania. Starting February 2023, Iulia Huiu teaches “American Politics and Foreign Policy” at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration. She co-authored two books analyzing Romanian post-communist politics.