The Global War on Terror and Macrosecuritisation: An Analysis of U.S. Discourse at the United Nations General Assembly Post-9/11

Abstract

Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the global and political discourse on security changed. The systems-level macrosecuritisation of terrorism, under the umbrella of the Global War on Terror, began a new era of security politics. Soon, most nation-states around the world had considerations and opinions about terror and what to do about terrorist threat, not just as individuals, but as a collective, international community. In an attempt to dissect this macrosecuritisation, this dissertation focuses on the process of securitisation that considers speech acts as securitising moves against perceived threats. This dissertation aims to discover if the United States made macrosecuritising moves against terrorism, using universalist language, on the platform of the United Nations General Assembly. Using NVivo software and discourse analysis, speeches made by U.S. representatives, Presidents George W. Bush, and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, are analysed.