Trump's madman theory
A "chaos president" version of Richard Nixon's failed conceit
Nixon’s Madman Theory was basically a tactic he used in his foreign policy to project an image of unpredictability and irrationality so as to intimidate adversaries. This tactic became most notorious in Nixon's approach to the Vietnam War.
Nixon proposed the Madman Theory during his 1968 presidential campaign, expressing a desire for North Vietnamese leaders to believe he was capable of extreme, out-of-the-blue actions. He wanted to convince them that he might resort to anything, including nuclear weapons, to achieve U.S. objectives in the war.
In 1971, Nixon instructed National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger to tell the North Vietnamese government that the U.S. might use nuclear weapons if negotiations did not advance.
That, of course, was a crazy threat. You threaten nuclear war only in the case of nuclear attack, because that’s the whole purpose of having nukes: i.e., capping great power war by clearly designating a “ceiling.” America has used that approach time and again. We did it with Saddam and we did it recently with Putin, letting both know that any use of nukes (or chemical weapons in Saddam’s case) would trigger an overwhelming response (implied to include nuclear). Our threats carry some serious weight because we are the only nation to have actually used nukes, and because, as the world’s Leviathan, everybody knows we could — and would — get away with it, just like we did with Imperial Japan.
But, as we’ve seen with Putin’s attempts to wield the same threat power in his Ukraine war, this approach doesn’t work by proxy (an old ruleset from the Cold War) and doesn’t work against a non-nuclear opponent with nothing to lose. Ukraine qualifies in both regards, so, when the Kremlin threatens all sort of nuclear destruction, those calls have zero impact.
There has to be symmetry in the implied oh-yes-I’m-willing-to-go-there threat. When there isn’t any, the threat is simply not plausible.
That’s the reality.
Back to the theory:
The Madman Theory relies on psychological manipulation intended to alter the decision-making calculus of opponents, compelling them to make concessions or adopt more conciliatory stances due to fear of escalation. It is thus a form of escalation dominance — just bluff-heavy in that poker-like way America tends to approach crisis.
While Nixon believed that this strategy could compel adversaries into compliance, it’s historically clear that it never really worked when he attempted it and — ultimately — that game never went his way in actual practice.
Thus we have — outside of the nuke-on-nuke realm — this theory that works perfectly in theory but consistently fails in practice.
Trump, who takes so many of his presidential cues from Nixon, and Roy Cohn (legal/PR approaches), and … yeah … Hitler in terms of demagoguery, has long embraced this as a negotiating tactic in his various business ventures, effectively pairing it with Cohn’s approach to litigation (deny, distract, delay). He routinely scare-bargains counterparties down by signaling his gonzo willingness to — in effect — “go nuclear” in legal terms.
The problem with Trump using this approach today is that there’s no “ceiling” to the threats he wields in trade. The Madman Theory works in nuclear crisis mode — theoretically — because there’s this firm and mutually recognized ceiling: namely, the presumption of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).
In our legal system — if one has enough money, one can threaten to “go nuclear” with little fear of the ultimate consequences. Trump is a master of that and he gets away with it because judge after judge, respecting the system and the law, can only do so much to stop or gag him.
But, again, there are no such guardrails in international affairs — other than the nuclear MAD and that is a very specific situation. Indeed, outside of MAD in the nuclear realm, the great “ceiling” in the US-created-and-led world order since WWII has been America itself. No matter how badly anybody else behaved, the world has operated with this underlying confidence that America — the most powerful nation in the world — plays by known rules.
You know the movie scene where the villain, seemingly trapped by the hero, sneers about that hero is forced to do the right thing instead of giving into his worse impulses (i.e., killing the bad guy on the spot). You go far back enough in US cinema and TV and that was a staple moment but also one that elicited self-pride, as in, Yeah, we are the good guys!
That notion has largely disappeared from our popular culture, in large part because of how cynically so many of us citizens now view the power of government. Reagan started a lot of that, but Nixon really kicked it off: this belief that government is the problem, the threat, etc.
So, when Trump promises to be the “chaos president” or the “madman,” the problem is, he truly means it, because, in that resulting tumult, he sees his power growing (his fascist impulse, which is very strong) — consequences be damned.
And yeah, right now that makes Trump hugely dangerous to our republic, our democracy, and our world order — shaky as it may today seem.
If Trump gets back into power, his behavior will play into the hands of our competitors (e.g., China) and enemies (Russia, Iran, NorKo, etc.) by signaling to the wider world that America has really lost it as a trusted market-maker (a role we’ve been running away from since 2008) and is now no different from any of them — just more hypocritical.
China’s whole sales job throughout the Global South is that Beijing can provide stability, and growth, and security (as in, a domestic surveillance state) in ways that America claims to provide but really doesn’t (beyond bromides and demands for better behavior). The return of Trump’s behavior — particularly coming after the Biden interregnum — will clearly signal that this is America’s firm trajectory within global affairs. That signal is very much one of every nation for itself and to hell with the consequences.
With that historic American ceiling thus removed, Trump’s chaos approach will yield only more chaos. Worse, and as all of our enemies know, Trump is easily manipulated along such lines. Show him something to lose his mind over and he will most definitely lose it in the most predictable manner.
That’s the sad joke of Trump’s promise/threat to be the chaos president: in truth, counterparties can steer him to wherever they want him and — by extension — America to go. Despite selling his madman theory as this huge advantage, it is actually a huge disadvantage because it fools no one but Trump himself, along with his MAGA base.
The man has never been a winner, just a con artist of the highest order.
That ability of foreign dictators to play Trump like a violin will further destroy our reputation as the world’s ultimate control function — the break-in-case-of-emergency fail-safe for the system.
And that will result in one very scary and dangerous ride, triggering outcomes and conditions we will spend decades repairing — if they can ever be repaired.
I detest fear-mongering and yet suspect that anything less than such declarations actually undersells the threat here posed by our potential embrace of a “chaos president” at a point in history when that tactic will be supremely damaging to everything we’ve accomplished as a superpower these past 7-8 decades.
Yes, given enough rope to hang himself and the US economy, Trump can send us down the path of national economic suicide. It’ll be such a predictable ride and painful lesson, but we can survive that.
What we may not be able to survive is the national ideological suicide Trump triggers with his movement’s ambition to leave “failed” democracy behind and embrace those powers necessary to keep America White and Christian dominated. Once that reductionist choice becomes our predominant “face” to the outside world, all bets will be off and we’ll learn what true chaos in the world system actually looks and feels like.
And we will regret that pathway.
