Framing the Baltic States in the US Security Policy Discourse During Donald Trump Administration

Abstract

For decades the US has been a cornerstone of the security of the Baltic States. It has played an important role in regaining independence in the 1990s as well as strengthening the deterrence and defence posture in the region. Until Donald Trump’s presidency the relations between both sides weren’t questioned and, at some point, even taken for granted. Donald Trump’s perception of America’s role and the cooperation with the closest Allies made several external “shocks” to the security environment that was built and strengthened by previous US administrations. This approach extensively affected the perception of security within and of the Baltic States. Understanding how Donald Trump and other main security policy discourse agents frame the Baltic States and what is the role of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia in the overall US security policy, affects the overall security of the Baltic States. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to analyse how the US security policy discourse agents formulated the Baltic States and what was the “framing” of the Baltic States in the discourse of US security policy during the Trump administration. This paper is based on the qualitative content analysis of primary sources. It analyses official documents and speeches made by the US security policy discourse agents (president, vice-president, state secretary and secretary of defence). The conducted analysis outlines that: a) an official US security policy discourse during the Trump’s administrations towards the Baltic States has been resistant to internal and external “shocks”, b) involvement of the US in the Baltic States can be described as “conditional” depending on the financial commitment of the Baltic States - the framing of the Baltic States have been interconnected with their commitment to devote the necessary resources to the defence, c) the analysis concludes that Baltic States haven’t had a “special” role in the US security policy discourse.