Signalling capacity and crisis diplomacy: Explaining the failure of ‘maximum pressure’ in the 2017 U.S.-North Korea nuclear crisis

ABSTRACT

In the 2017 U.S.-North Korea nuclear crisis, the Trump administration’s ‘maximum pressure’ strategy failed to achieve its objectives of the complete, irreversible, verifiable denuclearization (CVID) of the DPRK, and induced escalation pressures that brought the two countries to the brink of war. A deficit in signalling capacity (i.e. biased intelligence portfolio, lack of diplomatic-military integration, and inflexible military doctrine and war plans) prevented Washington from managing the crisis, creating the conditions for its strategic failure. The signalling capacity framework offers a comprehensive approach to explaining the outcome of the 2017 crisis, outperforming audience cost and brinkmanship theories.

KEYWORDS:

• Nuclear weapons
• coercive diplomacy
• United States
• North Korea
• signalling
• audience costs
• brinkmanship

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dennis Smith, Dennis Foster, Patrick Rhamey, Brent Hierman, and the two anonymous reviewers of this paper for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No conflicts of interest.

Notes

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Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Virginia Military Institute.

Notes on contributors

Spencer D. Bakich

Spencer D. Bakich, Ph.D. (University of Virginia 2006) is an associate professor of political science and the Director of the National Security Program at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, VA. Specializing in strategic studies and American foreign policy, he teaches courses in grand strategy, U.S. national security policy, U.S.-China relations, and strategy and cybersecurity. Bakich is the author of Success and Failure in Limited War: Information and Strategy in the Korean, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, and Iraq Wars (Chicago, 2014), as well as book chapters, articles, and essays on wartime diplomacy and strategy, civil-military relations, maritime strategy and doctrine, and cybersecurity.