Description
The crisis before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the North Korean nuclear crises in the 1990s and early 2000s displayed stark differences in Western governments' responses to the alleged threats, especially between the UK and Germany (Iraq) and the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations (North Korea). However, the extant literature fails to account sufficiently for the leaders behind those governments' foreign policies. Securitization theory demonstrates how leaders' decisions to speak of an issue as a security threat or not can lead to foreign policies that either resort to force or political solutions. But the theory's methodological collectivism inhibits explaining why some leaders carry out speech acts that securitize an issue while others desecuritize it. To answer this question, I draw on operational code analysis. I suspect that particular political beliefs concur with leaders' attempts to securitize or desecuritize because they affect threat perception and the willingness to use force. Furthermore, I test both mine and existing explanations via process tracing to identify causal relationships. My findings demonstrate how securitization causally connects leaders' beliefs to conflictual or cooperative foreign policies. Scholars and policymakers can use this knowledge to better assess the behavior of states during crises.
Keywords: Foreign policy analysis, Iraq crisis, North Korean nuclear crisis, Securitization, Leaders, Beliefs
