Abstract
This article reinvigorates the societal security dilemma by utilising the insights from Social Identity Theory (SIT), and it applies this to Ukraine’s contested search for a national identity (Ukrainisation) between 1991 and 2014 to reveal the interplay between actor and structural agency. Applying SIT to the societal security dilemma reveals that in understanding how competing interpretations of identity can assume a tit-for-tat dynamic of their own, we need to be not only conscious of political actors’ discourse, but also our human disposition to compare our status to others. SIT reveals we do this when in groups and our in-group favouritism can, much like a security dilemma, initiate and sustain a tit-for-tat dynamic that leads to discord. While the focus in the case study is on Ukrainian contestation, this does not exonerate Russia for starting the war, which begins in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea. Nations contest their identity; it is a natural part of how identity is understood by the populace and how it evolves. Tragically for Ukraine, Russia aggravates this contestation for its own imperial ambitions placing the culpability for the war at Moscow’s door.