ʙʢʚʡʢРА / CULTURE, 13/ 2016 ʹͲ UDC ͵ͷͷ.ͷͶͳ.ʹȋͳͲͲ-͸ʹʹʜАТʝȌ NATOǯS SECUR)T)ZAT)ON PROCESS AS )DENT)TY FORMAT)ON AND CULTURAL SYSTEM Giovanni Ercolani University of Murcia, Spain Abstract: This paper gazes at the recent US Army and NATO operation ‘Dragoon Ride’ (20 March – 1 April 2015) which was performed in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine (March 2014). It argues that the aim of this military exercise, which has been fabricated and staged as a security ritual, is to interpellate the NATO citizen. However, this security ritual is to be understood inside the transformational process which NATO has initiated after the implosion of the Soviet Union in order to survive in the new global insecurity environment as a power-knowledge-security structure. At the end the paper shows that NATO while it is developing a ‘comprehensive’ securitization discourse in which the existential threat is not only a non-military threat, at the end it plays the same Cold War emotional card of a Russian military attack to NATO’s nations. Keywords: NATO, interpellation, security, securitization, ritual. ). )NTRODUCT)ON The North Atlantic Treaty OrganiНation ȋNATOȌ, since the implosion of the former Soviet Union ȋͳͻͻͳȌ and the disappearance of its supposed mortal enemy, on whom it constructed its own military, geopolitical and warring space, has been re-fabricating its own identity and functions. And has struggled to retain its status quo ante power position inside a changing global security environment in taking an active part in various conflicts ȋsecurity operationsȌ around the world. )n this transformative exercise the Alliance has modified its security language and narrative employing a Critical Security Studies language, and in this process has adapted its language, its security dilemma, and its securitiНation process to its own subjective reading of the Ǯout there security/insecurity realityǯ in order to reproduce itself as a human structure. )n this workout the Alliance operates as a power- knowledge-security-total institution structure which is interested to produce and sell to its own NATO audience an insecurity-security self-referential narrative which permits to make itself indispensable for the maintenance of security in NATOǯs territories. This means that as a power-knowledge-security-total institution structure ȋͳȌ it has legitimate power to get X to do something that X would not otherwise do, and has power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they