Donald Trump’s Securitizing Speech Acts and the United States Maximum-Pressure Strategy towards North Korea in 2017

Abstract

Intersubjective process of international communication may shape security issue which requires extraordinary policy. This article aims to analyze how speech acts of a country leader securitize an issue and result in an extraordinary or distinct foreign policy. Donald Trump, the 45 th President of the United States of America, demonstrates his blunt talkativeness through social media and formal speech acts, including on the North Korean nuclear issue during his presidency term. Despite the regular focus placement of North Korea’s nuclear in the United States’ foreign policy since the 1990s, Trump leaves the issue during his campaign. Nevertheless, in 2017, the first year of his term, he shifted to expressing his enmity in line with the enaction of the maximum pressure strategy, the heaviest sanctions ever enacted on North Korea. This study utilizes securitization theory by analyzing three assumptions that support Trump’s political communication style: the centrality of the audience, the co-dependency of agency and context, the dispositif and the structuring forces of practices. Using the qualitative-deductive-method, this article finds that Trump’s speech acts in 2017 securitized the North Korean nuclear threat as an unprecedented threat requiring an extraordinary policy of maximum pressure strategy.