Grand strategy and reputational security: Evaluating the strategic narratives of Global Ireland 2025

Governments implement public diplomacy campaigns to manage foreign perceptions and build reputational security. We examine Global Ireland 2025 as a case of grand strategy in political public relations, designed to repair the reputational damage of Ireland’s 2008–2018 economic collapse and financial crisis. Focusing on organizational storytelling, we use a discourse analysis to identify and map the strategic narratives the government employed to cultivate perceptions of a stronger, more secure Ireland. Based on policy documents, the Irish government adopted a cooperative grand strategy, emphasizing identity narratives of global citizenship, system narratives of interdependence, and intermestic issue narratives speaking both to domestic and foreign publics. This reinforced Ireland’s cultural identity as forged from historical trauma to rebuild the national self-confidence and project that strength abroad to repair the reputational damage inflicted by the European Union’s bailout. This lends a perceived authenticity, legitimacy, and credibility with which Ireland can effectively counter adversarial narratives, persuade skeptics, and mobilize allies in pursuit of its security and prosperity. This expands public relations scholarship by contextualizing public diplomacy as the securitization of reputation management and trauma as a foundation for national identity formation and projection. Further, it informs public relations practice by demonstrating how grand strategy campaigns can be evaluated.