The Madman Theory from Nixon to Trump

Summary

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CONFLICTED Podcast: “The Madman Theory from Nixon to Trump”

Date: May 21, 2026
Host: Thomas Small
Guest: Dr. James D. Boies, political historian and author of “US Grand Strategy and the Madman Theory: From Nixon to Trump”

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Thomas Small sits down with Dr. James D. Boies to unpack the history, meaning, and modern relevance of the “Madman Theory”—a foreign policy strategy which sees leaders feign irrationality to make adversaries fear unpredictable, disproportionate responses. Rooted in Cold War nuclear anxieties, the theory has been associated most famously with Presidents Nixon and Trump. The conversation delves into the theory’s origins, its application across US presidencies, its psychological effects on observers and adversaries, and its apparent resurgence in Trump’s foreign policy. Boies’s new book forms the backbone of the discussion, providing a sober, historically-grounded lens through which to analyze the confusions of contemporary geopolitics.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Defining the Madman Theory

• Boies’ Definition:
  “The madman theory is a tactic employed by a sane leader who feigns irrationality in an attempt to convince an adversary that there is at least a 1% chance that a massive, disproportionate response will be delivered upon them if they do not acquiesce to a series of demands.” [13:02]
• The theory is not about actual madness, but strategic posturing—a performance meant to introduce doubt and fear in the mind of the opponent.

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2. Trump Derangement Syndrome and the Madness Label

• Thomas Small’s Self-Reflection:
  Acknowledges being driven “slightly mad” by the unpredictability of Trump’s foreign policy and his use of apparent irrationality, especially regarding Iran. [04:53, 11:14]
• Boies’ Response:
  Criticizes the trend of labeling leaders as “mad” simply due to policy disputes, invoking the Goldwater Rule—psychiatrists should avoid diagnosing political figures they haven’t examined. [07:48]
• Memorable Quote:
  “He could cure cancer tomorrow and his detractors would accuse him of putting oncologists out of work. That is the polarized world within which the United States is currently operating.” – Boies [06:35]

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3. Historical Origins: From Nuclear Dawn to the Madman Theory

• The theory emerged in the early Cold War, when nuclear weapons forced new geostrategic thinking.
• Under Eisenhower and Dulles, the US shifted from Truman’s “containment” to “rollback,” and relied on brinkmanship—a willingness to take conflict to the edge of nuclear war. [15:38–19:35]
• Dulles Ploy:
  This early version saw secret threats and an emphasis on the “credible threat” of nuclear use. Nixon, as VP, observed that such posturing seemingly ended the Korean War. [23:37]
• Academic Foundations:
  Theorists like Thomas Schelling and Daniel Ellsberg (before his Pentagon Papers fame) contributed to strategies involving suspended rationality and game theory. [19:35]
• Quote:
  “Eisenhower had his credible threat… Nixon’s credible threat that he believes is his career-long virulent anti-communism.” – Boies [46:15]

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4. Madman Theory in Practice: Nixon, Kennedy, and Goldwater

• Kennedy’s Response to Brinkmanship:
  Adopted “flexible response” but faced Khrushchev’s nuclear brinkmanship in the Cuban Missile Crisis, forcing even Kennedy to warn of catastrophic retaliation—a “madman” moment. [34:46–38:58]
• Nixon’s Lessons from History:
  Nixon absorbed these lessons, especially the fate of Barry Goldwater, who was painted as insane in 1964 for frank nuclear admissions. Nixon learned to perform reasonableness publicly while pursuing unpredictable, intimidating tactics in office. [40:34–44:34]
• Vietnam Application:
  Nixon and Kissinger tried the madman approach, hoping unpredictable threats and actions (e.g., bombing Cambodia, mining Haiphong) would drive Hanoi to negotiate—ultimately, the opponents called his bluff. [45:51–49:09]
• Quote:
  “I call it the madman theory. We're going to scare the bejeebas out of Hanoi. We'll have Ho Chi Minh in Paris negotiating for peace in days simply by being Richard Nixon.” – Nixon, quoted by Boies [45:51]

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5. Contemporary Echoes: Trump and Modern Foreign Policy

• Parallels Between Eisenhower and Trump:
  Both entered office claiming to right the excesses of their predecessors, seeking to reduce military overextension while leveraging “unpredictable” threats to gain leverage. [26:58–28:46]
• Trump’s style—a rhetoric of unpredictability and public signaling of “madness”—was explicitly presented in his early foreign policy addresses: “America under Obama had become totally predictable and needed to become unpredictable. He said, starting now.” [49:09]
• Effectiveness Debated:
  • North Korea: Much “fire and fury,” little substantive policy change.
  • Iran: Withdrawal from JCPOA, assassination of Soleimani—risky actions that did not spiral to war but failed to produce new agreements.
  • Trade: Use of excessive tariff threats as negotiating leverage, “Liberation Day” for tariffs—partly successful as a tactic, still debated as strategy. [54:57]
• Quote:
  “Trump is predictably unpredictable. He was telegraphing, telescoping, whatever, that he was going to be mad, officially mad from now on.” – Small [49:09]
  • Boies: “Does the Madman theory work? That's the greater question. Whether it's Nixon, Eisenhower or Trump, does this work? It's clearly a gambit, it is a tactic, but does it work?” [51:18]

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6. American Grand Strategy and Global Implications

• Boies argues that despite the radical tactics, Trump’s actions “fit in with a track record of actions in the past.” The U.S. is pursuing accessible energy, mineral resources, and technological (AI) preeminence. [60:13–63:59]
• Trump’s willingness to make extreme threats—not to genuinely carry them out, but to rattle negotiation partners—is part of a broader, somewhat coherent American-first grand strategy—even if the tactics risk alienating allies.
• Quote:
  “If you pivot the world on its axis away from looking at this from a European point of view, if you…put the Arctic at the center of your map…Greenland, access to minerals, rare earths…I think the world starts to make a little bit more sense. But that seems to be a leap that far too few people are willing to take at this point. And it's easy to say, Donald Trump's crazy.” – Boies [60:13]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trump Derangement:
  “He could cure cancer tomorrow and his detractors would accuse him of putting oncologists out of work.” – Boies [06:35]
• On Madman Theory’s Essence:
  “The madman theory is a tactic employed by a sane leader who feigns irrationality…” – Boies [13:02]
• On Kennedy’s Missile Crisis Threat:
  “If a missile is launched from Cuba… it will trigger a nuclear attack upon the Soviet Union. It is the most remarkable declaration of intent, arguably, by an American president ever.” – Boies [34:46]
• On Policy Outcomes:
  “Does the Madman theory work? That's the greater question…it's clearly a gambit…does it work?” – Boies [51:18]
• On Strategy vs Tactic:
  “The madman theory is…a tactic used to get a strategy through. The strategy is to get tariffs introduced—the tactic is the madman theory to threaten.” [58:30]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [04:53] – The psychological toll of unpredictability: Small questions his own objectivity re: Trump.
• [13:02] – Boies gives his “elevator pitch” definition of the madman theory.
• [15:38] – Boies explores the Cold War context for brinkmanship and rationality.
• [23:37] – The “Dulles ploy” and Nixon’s formative experiences in the Eisenhower White House.
• [34:46] – The Cuban Missile Crisis—Kennedy’s own madman moment.
• [40:34] – The Goldwater campaign, the politics of “madness,” and Nixon’s lessons.
• [45:51] – Nixon’s application of madman theory in the Vietnam War.
• [49:09] – Trump’s foreign policy in practice: unpredictability declared, but were the results tangible?
• [54:57] – Tariffs, “Liberation Day,” and the mechanics of madman negotiation.
• [58:30] – Tactic vs. strategy; the place of madman theory in grand strategy.
• [60:13] – The strategic view: energy, minerals, AI, and shifting axes of American grand strategy.

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a measured, historically informed dissection of the madman theory's use in American foreign policy, linking Nixon’s and Trump’s tactics to both deep-seated strategic dilemmas and performative politics. Dr. Boies persuasively argues for seeing these apparent departures from rational statecraft as recurring, if risky, features of American power. While the effectiveness of the madman theory remains debated, the episode’s nuanced perspective provides valuable clarity for anyone seeking to understand the unnerving logic of American power in the age of unpredictability.

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Recommended for listeners who want:

• A historical lens on Trump-era geopolitics
• An informed, nonpartisan treatment of high-stakes statecraft
• Practical insight into the mechanics and risks of the madman strategy
• Clarity on why “madness” and strategy often mingle in global affairs

Further Reading:
“US Grand Strategy and the Madman Theory: From Nixon to Trump” by James D. Boies

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

VRBO has spacious summer stays for every group size and budget. That's vacation rentals done right. Start exploring on VRBO and book your next day. Now, Is Donald Trump mad, or does he merely want the world to think he's mad? If the latter, then he would be a practitioner of the madman theory, a tactic of coercive statecraft first theorized at the dawn of the nuclear age. The when American statesmen found themselves in charge of the bomb, an invention which completely revised the standard geostrategic playbook. James D. Boies is a political historian and author of US Grand Strategy and the Madman From Nixon to Trump. He argues that the madman theory is not madness, but the performance of madness, a tactic by which a sane leader feigns irrationality to make an adversary believe there is even a 1% chance of overwhelming, disproportionate force. In this conversation, James helps us understand where the theory came from, how Nixon used it, why Trump revived it, and whether it explains the strange, unnerving logic of American power today. Perhaps the chaos of Trump's foreign policy is a calculated attempt to make America's enemies and allies fear what he might do next. I'm Thomas Small. This is my Conflicted Conversation with James Boies. Hello, James. It's really nice to meet you. Thank you so much for coming on Conflicted.

[B]

Well, it's wonderful to meet you. Thank you so much for having me.

[A]

James, your new book, US Grant Grand Strategy and the Madman Theory, I found to be not only very informative, but as I've told you already, a kind of tonic for the soul in these very confusing times, because you set out with great clarity, mustering a lot of facts, a lot of very cogent and clear analysis, that the situations we find ourselves in now, especially those of us who pay attention to geopolitics and American politics and stuff, is not so historically unprecedented. And so getting that objectivity, getting a bit of distance, as it were, from the present, was very helpful to me because I've been being driven a little bit crazy of late, especially over the Iran war. So thank you for writing the book. Thank you for coming on and talking to me about it.

[B]

Well, thank you very much. I mean, what else could I ask? Maybe we should stop the conversation now because it can't get any better than that, quite frankly. It's very gracious of you and I do appreciate it. You know, writing a Book like this has taken many years. I began working on it five, six years ago when Donald Trump was in his first term in office. And, you know, the world seemed quite an interesting place then. Clearly it's only gotten more interesting since I wrote it. And the publication has been particularly well timed. I think we live in such a polarized world when, you know, what one believes reflects upon what one sees and then that has an echo effect. And we are all, to some extent, I think, guilty of living in silos. And one of the things I try to do with the book, which I hope I've done successfully, is not to take a political stance on this and to come at this with an anti Trump, anti Nixon perspective or conversely, you know, to lionize either of them, but to say, look, you know, there is this concept out there called the madman theory. I kept seeing it being misapplied, misunderstood. When I used to teach the subject in London, my students were incredulous, thought I was making the concept up, I think. And there was no single book to sort of send them to and say, well, no, no, no, no, have a look at this and you'll realize what this is all about. So I realized after a couple of years that no one was going to write the book, so I should do it myself. And so consequently I did. And it is actually a book that tries to do two things. Explain what the madman theory is and where it comes from and then try and explain how it is that it has been u by successive American presidents, including the current occupant of the White House.

[A]

Well, you do that very well. It is very objective. I wouldn't say that I didn't sense any bias at all in your presentation. That was also a tonic for the soul. Now listen, James, before we talk about the history that you tell in the book, I wanna ask you a question. What is Trump derangement syndrome and how do I know if I suffer from it? I ask you that because, and I do think this is to the madman theory which you'll unfold for us. But I have recently, because, you know, forced as I am because of this podcast, to think about the Iran war all the time, I have recently become very frustrated with the Trump White House. And I was expressing maybe in some non diplomatic language, my frustrations with Donald Trump. I was pontificating a bit on his moral character, on his possible mental derangement. Somehow proximity to Trump's decision making process had made me frankly a little bit angry. And a lot of my listeners, I think, got angry at me and were accusing me of suffering from Trump Derangement syndrome. So what is it when you say in the book, actually that Trump may be many things, but he is certainly not mad. So you don't think that Trump is a madman and you're going to explain to us what madman theory is. But I suppose one possible consequence of a statesman using madman theory is that he will drive some people, people mad. Because dealing with a madman, I mean, if you're not actually mad, but you're acting like one, mad men cause madness in others, you know, so what is Trump Derangement syndrome and how do I know if I have it?

[B]

That's a great question. And clearly we're going to be talking today about definitions, etc. Etc. And we'll come on to define what the madman theory is shortly, I'm sure. But let's unpack what you just asked me. What is Trump derangement syndrome? Donald Trump in 2015 famously said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. And that was true for his supporters. But conversely, and I think this directly answers your question about Trump Derangement syndrome, he could cure cancer tomorrow and his detractors would accuse him of putting oncologists out of work. That is the polarized world within which the United States is currently operating. And you're starting to see more and more around the world. I think no matter what Donald Trump does, does or says, it will never be enough for those who fundamentally oppose him to say, oh, okay, that was something good that has come out of the White House.

[A]

Okay, James, that's true. But right now, in the thick of this war, I'm not sure that what Trump is producing out of his mouth and through his actions are on the side of convincing his detractors that he's sane. You know, right now we're in the thick of madman theory, aren't we? Have behaving in an erratic and unpredictable way.

[B]

Well, one of the interesting things, again, which we need to address is this concept of defining someone as mad. In 1964, and this is detailed in the book, Barry Goldwater ran for the presidency of the United States against Lyndon Johnson. And prior to that, nobody had ever questioned Barry Goldwater's sanity. He had served with distinction in the Second World War. He'd been duly elected the first Republican member of the Senate out of Arizona. And indeed, he was on very friendly terms with John F. Kennedy. And there had been discussions about how they might campaign together potentially in quite a high minded, debate driven process in the 64 election clearly, John F. Kennedy did not live to fight that campaign. And Goldwater almost didn't bother running in the end because he realized the nature of the fight. He would be meeting with Lyndon Johnson, who basically accused him of being mad. And as a result of that campaign, the American Psychiatric association, the apa, basically put out a ruling which becomes known as the Goldwater Rule, which basically says that you should not try to define anybody who is not in your care as mad. And that held for many, many years, until about 2015, when one Donald J. Trump descended into Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for the presidency. Whereupon all of a sudden, apparently it became appropriate for people in that line of work and journalists and academics to accuse a candidate of being mad. So much so that the APA was forced in 2017 to reiterate its findings that this should not happen. So I think we have to be very, very careful not to accuse someone of being mad just because we disagree with their policies, philosophies, or approach to a certain part of the world with which we might not agree or understand.

[A]

I'm going to hold up my hand here and say, over the last three weeks on this program, I have a few times called Donald Trump mad and also suggested that he be suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. Now this is the stuff that's in the air. So I return to the original question. What is Trump derangement syndrome and why do I have it? And am I a victim of a political genius who is employing madman theory? So he's not mad, but he's employing the theory. And I recognize we haven't defined it yet, but just let's get there first. Am I being driven mad by a man adroitly employing madman theory?

[B]

Well, I think that the challenge is that Donald Trump has never really made any great effort to reach out to people who are not his natural supporters. He has constantly had a base level of support, which I think is underrated in the polls because he has obviously won elections, which means he has to have a greater degree of support than is often revealed in polling. But you know, if you were to, if you watched the media in the uk, if you watch the BBC, if you watch sky, if you watch the networks over here, I think there is an inbuilt propensity to report everything that Donald Trump says through a negative lens. There is a lack of objectivity, I think, across all networks because they don't understand him. I don't think they've ever really made a concerted effort to understand him. And to be fair, to them, it's. He has not helped the situation by referring to them, obviously, as fake news and attacking the press on a regular basis.

[A]

But again, listen, this doesn't apply to me, I promise you. First of all, I don't get my information about Donald Trump from the mainstream media. I hardly even consume the mainstream media. I think that I have been someone for many years trying not to be deranged by Trump, trying to see him objectively, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. And I kind of instinctively sympathize with a movement that grew across the 2000 and tens that began to speak out against the neoliberal, you know, liberal internationalist establishment that Barack Obama's period in office symbolized or practiced, especially in terms of the Middle east, which is my metier, because I saw the Middle east kind of falling apart. So I'm not like someone that would be predisposed to hate Donald Trump in that way. And yet I think it's, well, we can go to the theory, because basically, I'm watching this war in Iran unfold. I'm trying to make sense of not just what has happened, which is hard enough, but also maybe what might happen, which is actually impossible, because part of the way Donald Trump practices politics is this radical unpredictability where you feel like you're reading the tea leaves based on this or that tweet, and then he does something else or. Or whatever, or you think, clearly, America's national interests lie in one direction. And then Trump suddenly, though he gave lip service to that, suddenly swerves and pursues something else. So I guess this is just madman theory in action. This is certainly your argument, and I have been driven slightly mad by it. So I'm going to take a step back and allow you now to help me, as you did when I read your book, to help the listener then kind of recover from this madness. So what is madman theory? What do people get wrong about it when they employ the expression? And what is it in reality?

[B]

Okay, so here's the elevated pitch for what the madman theory is in a nutshell. The madman theory is a tactic employed by a sane leader who feigns irrationality in an attempt to convince an adversary that there is at least a 1% chance that. That a massive, disproportionate response will be delivered upon them if they do not acquiesce to a series of demands. End of quote. So that is what the madman theory is. Unfortunately, if you unpack that, what you've seen since certainly Donald Trump ran for the presidency in 2015 onwards is people suggesting that this is a madman employing a mad strategy, policy, whatever you want to define it as. And if you just simply understand that the heart of the madman theory, it is a feigned irrationality, you have to be sane to deploy this tactic. And so as soon as people start saying, well, Donald Trump's mad and he's employing the madman theory, immediately that undermines their understanding of what the madman theory is. You can say if you want to. And again, that's one of the reasons I wanted to write the book, so that we can talk about the madman theory and understand the whether or not it applies in this case. And again, you know, this is not done to lionize nor demonize Donald Trump, but merely to say, look, this approach is there. We've seen it play out in the past. Can we see examples of it where Donald Trump is using it? Yes. No. And if so, has he done so successfully? And it's up to the reader then to determine whether he has or not. I think.

[A]

I think you make a very persuasive case that Trump is intentionally employing this theory in his own way, based on his own personality and character. Whether or not he's employing it successfully, that's what we'll discuss at the end of this conversation. Let's start with the history. So I'd like you to explain the history of the theory, and if you could start by just kind of painting a picture for us of the world in the early 50s into the mid-50s. This is a world in which the nuclear bomb exists. The nuclear bomb has been used once in war, 1945, by the United States, and that that introduction of this massive destructive weapon transformed geostrategy, transformed the way in which states practiced geopolitics. So I think, if I've understood your book correctly, that the madman theory evolves out of this fundamental question, what do we do now that the nuclear bomb exists?

[B]

You're absolutely right. One of the lovely things about living here in Boston is it's given me access to the local academic community and to an environment within which the madman theory was actually developed. I'm sure the good liberal folk of Massachusetts will be delighted to know that Donald Trump's grand strategy tactic actually has its origins here across the river in Harvard. And I look forward to discussing it with them when I get the opportunity to do so. So Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected president in the election of 1952, along with his vice president, who was the second youngest of vice president at that point, Richard Nixon, and the two of Them over the next eight years preside over a very important era in US grand strategy and international relations. When, as you say, the nuclear bomb is the heart of the policy of massive retaliation. What you see happening with the Eisenhower administration when it comes in following the Truman White House is to alter the approach that Truman has taken. Truman has introduced the concept of containment. That is, yes, there are Soviet influences around the world, but we're going to basically hold them where they are and we'll accept a sphere of influence approach. Dwight Eisenhower and Nixon come in and they say, you know what, you know, the Republicans have been out of power at that point for 20 years since FDR had been elected. So you've got an entire generation of Republicans out of office and they want to have a new approach. So they campaign on a concept called rollback. And there's a belief that you're going to start getting sort of wars of revolution to push back the Soviet influence. Now that of course becomes virtually impossible once the Americans lose their nuclear monopoly.

[A]

So this happens. So in 1949 the Soviets drop their bomb and then by 1953, it seems quite likely that they can deliver the bomb successfully. There was a sort of four year window, I think, between the first dropping of a Soviet bomb when the Americans really had to reckon with the fact that now the Soviets will be able to use the bomb in war.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. So by the time Eisenhower is sort of in office and figures out exactly, you know, where the bathrooms are in the White House and, and how they're going to operate within that new setting, the Russians have the bomb. And very clearly, you know, Eisenhower is looking for a way to define a new strategy to replace containment. So what you have is, along with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, this concept of brinkmanship, of basically trying to take the world to the edge of war in an abid, to sort of negotiate from a peace through strength position, which we can start to see, I think percolate throughout successive administrations. There is a recognition that this is bordering on insanity. Because if you take the world to the edge enough times with a nuclear weapon, at some point it's going to go wrong and brinkmanship will not work and you will not be able to pull back from the abyss. So you have a series of intellectuals across the country, including one Thomas Schelling up here at Boston, at Harvard, who starts to develop new approaches through this idea of game theory and how it is that you can potentially have an alternative proposition for the American President between doing nothing or going nuclear. And so you start to See this idea of like, well, how can we do this? What can we do to develop strategy and policy? So Schelling starts coming up with this idea of well, maybe we could suspend rationality in negotiations. And this idea of when he articulates this in the strategy of conflict, for example, how can we try to convince our adversaries that rationality is not necessarily how we're going to approach these things? So you have Schelling developing this idea of suspended rationality. He has an apostle, if you will, a young man, Daniel Ellsberg, who was

[A]

very well known because he's the man eventually who leaked the Pentagon Papers in the end of the 60s, very much discomforting the Pentagon and the White House. So he's famous for that. And I did not know before reading your book that before that he was famous for what you're now going to describe to us Plank, as it were, in the intellectual foundation of the madman theory.

[B]

Oh, very much, very much so. And again, you know, liberal defenders of Dan Ellsberg, I think will be horrified to discover that not only is he an architect of the madman theory during his intellectual years at Harvard and RAND Corporation, not only does he give a vital public address at Boston Public Library in which he discusses the political uses of madness which lays out in very fine detail how one goes about utilizing the madman theory. But then having delivered that, he gets on the radar of one Henry Kissinger who was also at Harvard at that point. Kissinger has developed his ideas along with others of the idea of a limited nuclear war, which sounds remarkable but that was something which was very much on vogue at that time period. So that when Nixon becomes president and electricity, you have this remarkable confluence which is one of the most incredible things I discovered when I was writing the books at the Hotel Pierre on the island of Manhattan in Christmas 1968. You have Kissinger meeting with Schelling and Dan Ellsberg and others from the RAND Corporation, basically concocting what will be Richard Nixon's grand strategy to apply to Vietnam. So Ellsberg is there from the beginning of the Nixon administration. He is a key tenant of the madman theory. And remarkably enough, if you want one, is to extrapolate this to the nth degree. One can see therefore how the madman theory will not only be a key tenet of Nixon's foreign policy but will also be vital to his downfall because as you rightly mentioned at the top of that question, it is the Nixon administration's determination to go after Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers and Kissinger's attempt to cover his rear end. That leads to the break in of Ellsberg psychiatrists by the plumbers leading directly to the Watergate crimes as well as the bombing of Cambodia which was part of the madman theory which was one of the four articles of impeachment which was leveled against Nixon which leads to his removal from office.

[A]

Yeah, it's a great story. Dear listeners, I really recommend this book. Anytime you are reconfronted with that history, the 50s, the 60s, you're reminded of what an epic melodrama it was as America was in its first flush of global empire. But I don't want to move to the 70s yet. I want to say in the 50s the Eisenhower administration there, as you say, Richard Nixon is already around. He's the Vice President. I was reminded from your book that he was a unusually active Vice President. Sometimes I think he was called co president because he was so important in the running of the White House, especially its foreign policy. Given that Eisenhower was old, he suffered a heart attack, he suffered a stroke over the course of his eight year presidency. Nixon was very close, but also keeping a keen eye watching things, learning how America was going to govern the world by manipulating the world as best it could in the new nuclear age. Now one thing I loved is you describing how Eisenhower, who entered the White House with this very strong, noble, honorable reputation, having led the forces in Europe in the second World War and so on. He played good cop to his secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, bad cop, something that I think Nixon really learned from. And John Foster Dulles had this thing called the Dulles ploy which I was really interested to learn about. It's kind of like the first inkling of the madman theory in action. What was the Dulles ploy?

[B]

The dullest ploy is a shorthand code for the madman theory. And this expression comes out in the tapes and the transcripts of Nixon's time in the White House. When he's discussing doing just this with Kissinger, he refers to the Dulles ploy. And the Dulles ploy is this concept of going around the world making a series of secret threats effectively and taking issues right to the brink of conflict in an attempt to scare the living hell out of an opponent out of fear that, you know, the nuclear arsenal that the United States has at its disposable will actually be utilized. In large part this comes down to what I call the concept of the credible threat. And you rightly point out General Eisenhower's personal credible threat. He had been Supreme Allied Commander of European forces During World War II, the nation had a credible threat. It had only recently deployed the nuclear arsenal against Japan. So you've seen a nation and its leader demonstrate a willingness to utilize the nuclear bomb in the final analysis. And so when Eisenhower comes in and he inherits the Korean War, for example, Nixon's belief in the madman theory comes from a belief that Dulles and Eisenhower have made a secret offer, effectively a warning to the Korean leadership through India, that if the Korean War is not ended imminently, then the administration will have no option but to start reconsidering which weapons to utilize, which, of course is a code for the nuclear weapon will be on the table. And Nixon sees this as vice president through a series of National Security council meetings through 1953, which I describe in the book, and sees how this threat of ultimate force can act as a deterrent to conflict. And, of course, he sees the Korean Armistice as coming in very, very quickly thereafter and therefore views it as a success. Therefore, the belief in the success of this is a justification for its continued adaptation around the world.

[A]

So there's a question as to whether it actually did succeed.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

But nonetheless, Nixon thought it had. He thought the reason the Korean War ended was because we had threatened to use nuclear weapons.

[B]

Absolutely. So you have this bizarre concept with the madman theory, where I'm the first to admit as an academic, this is very troubling. You're trying to look at something and define something where there isn't a paper trail. And, you know, academics, they love paper trails. And if you can't see a paper trail, is it there? Well, you have to look at transcripts of conversations. You have to sort of read the tea leaves a little bit. You've got to read between the lines and understand what's being said and what isn't being said. There is an article of faith to this. I'm the first to recognize that. But it's an article of faith that Richard Nixon embraces as vice president. And therefore, the idea that it is believed to have worked, therefore gives it traction in Eisenhower's mind and then, most importantly, in Nixon's mind, so that when he eventually becomes president, which is, of course, eight years later than he wished, he can then say, I saw General Eisenhower do that. He teams up with Henry Kissinger, who, of course, is his own ideas about this developed from his days at Harvard, and then they try to employ this in the Vietnam War.

[A]

The resonances with today throughout the chapter on Eisenhower's term in office were really remarkable to me. So, as you said, Eisenhower comes to office, having inherited the Korean War, but also after Truman's time in office, during which he pursued this containment strategy. And Eisenhower felt that that was no longer the right approach, especially because he felt that the American armed forces were overstretched across the world. America was spending too much money on its military. He both, at the same time, wanted to draw back America's military commitments while increasing America's threat posture to get its will done on the world stage. Now, this is exactly the sort of world that Donald Trump was living in when he became president, both times because, let's say, relative to Iran, Obama and Biden were pursuing containment strategies. They were putting into place a venerable tradition within American foreign policy of containing the Islamic republic. Trump feels, for whatever reason, that that's not working. He wants a more robust strategy. But Trump is also saying that there's too much American empire, that American nation abroad is taking up too many national resources, that America is spending too much money on its military, that its NATO allies aren't spending enough, and so on. So the same exact dynamic is in play. Just one of these many resonances showing, I think, that Trump and his politics are existing in an intelligible framework. It's not just out of nowhere. It's part of, you know, the realities of American power. It's one pole of a bipolar American power thing, which then when Kennedy becomes president, Kennedy tries to shift back a bit.

[B]

Yes, you're absolutely right. And again, one of the ideas I tried to talk about throughout my career is to say, okay, yes, Donald Trump is a particular kind of character, but people who try to suggest, oh, this administration is somehow totally out of kilter with every administration that's come before it are deliberately, I think, missing a trick. I remember 20 years ago, the exact same thing was said about George W. Bush. Oh, he's an aberration. At some point, he will leave office and will return to normality. And of course, many people would say, well, Barack Obama's first term could almost have been W's third term. In fact, I think Time magazine said as much categorically on its cover. So this idea that Donald Trump is somehow totally removed from the wide arc of American grand strategy and foreign policy, I think is something which we need to put a lid on and say, well, okay, let's address this in reality, and not just out of a sense of, I don't like Donald Trump, so I will dismiss him and look forward to his eventual removal from office. Because as you rightly point out, you can see a track record here going back over Decades in terms of how to address foreign policy issues. Certainly he does so in a very robust manner in terms of his vocabulary and his style, for example. But the parallel you draw actually with Eisenhower moving into office following 20 years of Democratic rule under FDR and then Truman is an accurate one. You know, what Trump tries to do is to say, look, I'm going to be not Biden or Obama. These are the reasons I take issue with them, not only on a personal level, but at a policy level. They were not robust enough. They were too eager to please people overseas, and they were not willing to demonstrate America's military capacity adequately enough.

[A]

And too predictable. Too predictable, not mad enough, basically, yeah.

[B]

And what you see, I think this is what drives journalists and academics mad, is because Donald Trump has said all along that he is not going to telegraph what he will do in terms of foreign policy. And he makes that distinction with Biden and Obama, who he says were too reasonable, too logical and too willing to tell the world, well, we're going to do this. We're going to bomb this building at 3 o' clock next Wednesday. You've got until then to clear out. And again, this comes back to something I repeatedly try to get across, which is that Donald Trump, like him or dislike him, he has maintained an adherence to three key points throughout his entire career. First of all, that America's been ripped off by its allies and its enemies for decades. Secondly, that diplomats negotiate poorly by telegraphing their intent before negotiations have even begun. And thirdly, that Iran has posed an existential threat to the United States that needs to be addressed. And the issues that we're seeing right now prove a confluence of those three issues, which I think all too many people misunderstand, and they think there is no strategy or coherence to Donald Trump's approach to officers.

[A]

Let's return to the history. So when Kennedy becomes president in 1960, he has decided that the sort of nascent madman theory, if you like, the nascent madman theory style of governing that Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles and Vice President Nixon had pursued during Eisenhower's eight year presidency, he was going to adopt a different strategy. And then, weirdly, during the Cuban Missile crisis, he found himself as the American president, facing Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, himself practicing madman theory by putting nuclear weapons or threatening to do so in Cuba. So suddenly, the next American president is facing a strategist who is adopting madman theory. Tell us not just that story, but what Nixon from the sidelines, looking on, having lost the presidential election to Kennedy in 1960 Nixon, looking at what he would have learned from this.

[B]

Well, you're right. It's a remarkable series of events that you move away from Eisenhower and his embrace of a massive deterrence brinkmanship approach. John F. Kennedy comes In January 61, and along with Robert McNamara, the Defense Secretary makes a concerted effort. We're going to ditch that because the American President cannot be left with either an alternative of doing nothing or risking the beginning of the Third World War. So they adopt this concept called a flexible response, which is a deliberate attempt to present the President with a series of escalating maneuvers options during any military engagement. Now, of course, ultimately, one could make an argument that that leads to the war in Vietnam on the basis that this faith in covert action, the Green Berets, special advisors, et cetera, is a slippery slope. And that you can't always understand. Exactly. Well, how on earth did we get to this point? It seems so logical, and now all of a sudden, we've got 25,000 Marines lying at Da Nang.

[A]

But to do justice to them, to try to find some other strategy other than the brinkmanship that had been practiced before, does make sense as well, because the fundamental weakness of brinkmanship is that if you basically say, do what I want or I'm going to drop all my nukes on you, there are only two possible outcomes there. Either you drop all your nukes on someone or you reveal that you were bluffing, so you have no other options. In fact, again, some resonances now with the Iran war and the way that Trump may have misapplied brinkmanship, but we can get to that at the end of the. So continue. So the Cuban missile crisis.

[B]

So you have a very cool, logical, quite detached approach under McNamara and Kennedy about how we're going to do this. And they wish to move away from the very brinkmanship they want to pull back from. The bridge, from the abyss. This idea of mutually assured destruction is something that they are horrified by and want to get away from. The problem then they find is that actually they're faced with someone who is quite happy and willing to engage in the madman theory. And indeed, one of Richard Nixon's remarkable observations as he leaves the White House is that his faith in the madman theory does not just come from Eisenhower's attempts to utilize it with regard to the Korean War. He has been in conversation with Syngman Rhee, the South Korean leader, who talks about how his own willingness to try and seem extreme and to threaten the North Koreans. He believes that has helped save South Korea from an invasion he also talks about how Nikita Khrushchev has demonstrated his repeated apparent craziness during the 1950s. So Nixon already believes that Khrushchev is one of the most important leaders in the world and the most powerful individuals, despite the fact that he disagrees with him vehemently from a political point of view, he respects him and sees what Khrushchev has done. And then, of course, you get the ultimate test of this. Khrushchev has talked about moving into Berlin potentially, and in the autumn of 1962, begins to deliver nuclear weapons to the island of Cuba, which places the Kennedy White House in an almost impossible position. It cannot accept the shift in the status quo and allow the Soviets to maintain a missile capability 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Likewise, how on earth is it going to get those missiles out without causing nuclear war either in Cuba? Or, as Kennedy is most fearful about, if we move into Cuba, does that trigger a Soviet response in Berlin, which then leads to Article 5 and NATO and war again on the European continent? So there's a lot of triggers going on here. And in a remarkable incident, I think you see Khrushchev utilizing the madman theory with regards to moving those missiles into. Into Cuba. But then I think everybody, quite frankly, who's watching this should go back and look at the address that President Kennedy gives from the Oval Office at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which he basically says, you know, it'll be the policy of the United States government to regard any missile launch from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union upon the United States, requiring a full military response upon the Soviet Union. If you unpack that, people will have heard it, seen it. But I actually ask everybody, just think about what President Kennedy is saying in that moment. If a missile is launched from Cuba against anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, it will trigger a nuclear attack upon the Soviet Union. It is the most remarkable declaration of intent, arguably, by an American president ever, I think. And its severity needs to be totally understood. In that moment, I believe Kennedy realizes I have to play the madman theory card myself almost, and say, we can play this. We don't want to. It's not the approach we wish. We have to meet power with power effectively. And in that moment, you see that. And immediately after that, you get Kennedy pulling back, and you get the speech of June 1963 in which he talks about trying to live with the Soviet Union. You get the Test Ban Treaty and a move towards peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union, which, of course is short lived in part due to the assassination in Dallas that November.

[A]

I think it's important to point out, in terms of the madman theory that people might have thought it's very unlikely that Kennedy would actually treat any missile strike from Cuba as an attack on the United States, et cetera. But the point about the madman theory is it only needs to be 10% possible.

[B]

1%. Only 1% even.

[A]

Oh, just 1%. Well, 1% possible, absolutely. So if there's just the smallest doubt in your mind that maybe this guy is going to do it, then it works, or can work. And because Nixon ultimately becomes the first, let's say, accomplished practitioner of the madman theory, fully conscious that that's what he was doing, at least that's certainly what your book seems to prove. You know, it's important to remind people that he's paying attention to all of this. He is learning how he feels the world is best governed by the United States. He saw in 1954 when the French suffered that tremendous defeat at Dien Bien Phu, which, you know, I was fascinated to be reminded of in your book. The Americans were already so involved in Indochina. France was the biggest recipient of American military aid as early as the 1950s. You know, I think like a billion dollars. You say in that time. And there had been some discussion about employing brinkmanship in that theater by the United States early to protect the French there. It was not employed. And Dien Bin Phu happened and the French were fatally weakened. So Nixon is learning these lessons. And finally, the final lesson I want you to explain that Nixon learned is Barry Goldwater. Now, you mentioned Barry Goldwater. He ran for president in 1964. You say nobody thought that Barry Goldwater was insane before that presidential election. What was Barry Goldwater's fatal mistake? And what did Nixon learn from it?

[B]

So 1964 rolls around and Barry Goldwater emerges as a candidate for the presidency. And unfortunately, Barry Goldwater has a unique approach, which is he's gonna tell the truth. He's going to lay on the line and say, you know what? America is militarily engaged in Vietnam. You are being lied to by Johnson and McNamara, who tell you that there is nothing going on in Vietnam. We are militarily engaged and we should fight to win. Point number one. Point number two, he states that local NATO commanders should have authorization over nuclear weapons. In the final analysis, and he is criticized by Johnson and the White House for saying, oh, this is ridiculous. You're going to start dishing out nuclear authority to NATO commanders. And as he points Out. And as Time magazine reminds its readers, actually, this is standard military procedure. Kennedy inherited it from Eisenhower, Johnson inherited it from Kennedy and whoever became the next president, this would be standard operating procedure. That if the White House cannot be reached in times of a Soviet invasion, local commanders had the right to release tactical nuclear weapons at their discretion. So Goldwater was stating policy, the White House was denying it, and portraying him as crazed for suggesting that nuclear weapons could be sort of like fired off willy nilly, like fireworks effectively, and tried to portray him as a cowboy because of his Arizona background. Then, of course, the fatal flaw is in the 1964 Republican convention, he deliberately updates a quote from Cicero in which he basically says that I'm going to get the quote right. Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And in that moment, it's believed that he encapsulates this idea that he is crazed, that he's untried. And the Johnson campaign jump all over this and for the remainder of that full campaign are driving the idea that Barry Goldwater is crazed. He's like a fruitcake. He should not be trusted with America's nuclear power. And you see the. The one and only time it's ever run what's known as the daisy commercial, black and white piece of film of a young girl picking a daisy, counting. She picks off the petals. And as the camera zooms into her mind's eye, you see a nuclear countdown. A nuclear bomb goes off, and we have the soothing voice of Lyndon Johnson basically saying, these are the stakes. We either must love one another or we must die. Vote for President Johnson. The stakes are too high, not too effectively. And as Barry Goldwater recognized at the time, in that moment, my campaign was dead. They had succeeded in convincing the world that I was a madman. And Nixon sees this and realizes that one of the great casualties of American politics from that point onwards is truth. In a year of election, people do not need to be told the truth. If a comforting, soothing lie will get you elected, let's go that route. And so as a result, from that point onwards, who on earth in their right mind would be honest about what they would do in office if it's going to prevent you from winning that office in the first place? And I think Nixon is the first person to really recognize that, so that when he runs for office again in 68, you see him being very, very, very mindful to learn from Goldwater's mistakes, to basically present a very nuanced approach to what he would do in Vietnam if he. To win the Office, whilst all the time behind the scenes, I should point out, being very problematic in terms of what it is that's going on in terms of back channels with regard to Kissinger, a woman called Anna Chennault, and seemingly undermining the American negotiation position with regard to the war in Vietnam.

[A]

I mean, certainly President Trump, everyone knows, admires Richard Nixon, believes that Richard Nixon was calumniated and I think maybe has modeled himself a bit on Richard Nixon. Nixon, in the same way that Trump is accused of being, and I think probably rightfully so, was willing to bend rules, break rules, break laws behind the scenes in order to further his political interest, but also in his mind to further this employment of the madman strategy, which though in the 1968 campaign he hid from the electorate, presenting himself as a more nuanced, reasonable statesman. He was already in 1968 consciously prepared to employ this strategy, especially in Vietnam. He wanted to get America out of Vietnam without it being seen as a defeat. So again, facing a similar situation that Eisenhower had faced and maybe Trump had faced when he came to office as well, a desire to kind of end an inherited geopolitical problem without it being seen as weakening. So briefly, really, how did Nixon, Kissinger, his entire foreign policy team, how did they employ madman strategy in terms of ending the war in Vietnam?

[B]

So you're absolutely right. And at the height of the 68 campaign, Nixon is quoted by his aide and future White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman as saying, you know, I call it the madman theory. We're going to scare the bejeebas out of Hanoi. We'll have Ho Chi Minh in Paris negotiating for peace in days simply by being Richard Nixon.

[A]

So, so similar to what Trump said.

[B]

You got it. Absolutely. You know, I mean, you can draw so many parallels and again, demolish this idea that Trump is sort of a unique president. It all comes down to again, what I said earlier on about a credible threat. Clearly, Eisenhower had his credible threat. Nixon's credible threat that he believes is his career long virulent anti communism. The fact that the security services know that he has gone behind the White House back in terms of trying to undermine the negotiation position of the United States with regards to the Vietnam War, sending back channel back to the Vietnamese about what would happen if he would become president as soon as he is elected, he begins conversations with Kissinger about, okay, what are we going to do? We need a major move into Cambodia, for example, which of course was not within the purview of the parameters that have been provided to the presidency by Congress for the war. You see Kissinger and Nixon again. This is on transcripts. You don't take my word for this is all on the, the foreign relations United States transcripts. It's on the taping system that came out of Nixon's White House to some extent a little bit later on, talking about how it is that the United States is going to devise a new approach to foreign policy in Vietnam by basically taking the brakes off, talking about the systematic bombardment of public sites, public works dikes, issues across the North Vietnam, bombing Haiphong mining, Haiphong harbor, for example, potentially bombing Hanoi. There's a series of incidents throughout Nixon's first term in office in which you see this madman theory, this mad bomber approach, if you will, that Nixon talks about and sending Kissinger around the world to speak with the leadership in the Kremlin in Vietnam and basically say, listen, you've got to help me. I am. I thought I was working for a sane president. Richard Nixon is not sane. We have to work together here. Otherwise Nixon's going to drop the big one. And this is all planned in the White House. You go do this, you say, and Nixon is giving Kissinger his marching orders. The challenge ultimately that Nixon faces and why it doesn't work, I believe, is that fundamentally people did not believe that Nixon was mad enough to do this. He had Kissinger going around the world trying to sell it. But ultimately I don't think that it worked as they would have hoped because Brezhnev, the leadership in Hanoi never quite, I think, believed that all evidence to the contrary, that he would actually do something. And you look at the tonnage that's dropped over North Vietnam, for example, under Nixon, and the loss of life and the lives that Nixon appears to be willing to sacrifice to end that war and give peace with honor. It is really quite remarkable the extent to which they tried.

[A]

And in the end it didn't work because America withdrew from South Vietnam and had conceded that North Vietnamese troops could remain in South Vietnam. That was initially a red line which the Americans just ditched. So clearly in that case, the madman theory didn't work. But, you know, coming towards the end of your book, which covers the whole Trump presidencies in great detail, at least up to the point that you were able to, obviously his second term is unfolding as we speak. It made me wonder if the madman theory, whatever its cogency on a theoretical level, may be whether it works at all. I mean, on 27 April 2016, Trump delivered a major foreign policy address this is where he said openly that America under Obama had become totally predictable. He said totally predictable and needed to become unpredictable. He said, starting now. And so he has pursued this very open. So he was sort of like, he is predictably unpredictable. He was telegraphing, telescoping, whatever, that he was going to be mad, officially mad from now on. And yet his first term, at least it's not a huge litany of triumphs in terms of foreign policy success. I mean, if you can, you know, if the listeners can remember, there was a lot of hullabaloo about North Korea during Trump's first term. You know, there were some big photo op moments, there were some, you know, unprecedented diplomatic, you know, engagements. But North Korea still has a nuclear arsenal. Its premier gained actually legitimacy as a result of all of that negotiating with him directly on Iran. You know, it remains to be seen, though, Trump withdrew from the jcpoa, assassinated Qasem Soleimani. You know, it didn't cause an expected regional war, perhaps, but it certainly didn't produce anything like a nuclear agreement that was any better than the one that had come before Islamic State in terms of trade with NAFTA and stuff. I mean, in a lot of instances, it's questionable whether Trump's employment of the madman theory in his first term did anything. What do you think?

[B]

I think it's important to distinguish between his first term and his second term in terms of how he's embracing this, which I'm very pleased that you ask about me, that, that specific question, because very clearly you can see examples of how Trump attempts to utilize the madman theory in his first term. And the most clear example is the fire and fury threat against North Korea, which I think suddenly is an alarm call to a lot of people. Oh, my goodness, what's going to happen here? We are seeing a president make an extreme threat against a nation which either has or is developing nuclear weapons. What is going on here? And then, of course, that leads to three meetings between the president and Kim Jong Un, and you have to ask, well, what's the upshot of that? What does it lead to? And the answer, basically, is nothing. It is a great nothing in many ways. You have the threat, you have the fury, but all that happens is you have a photo op, and it doesn't really lead to anything. Trump will say, oh, well, you know, we've got this out of this out of it. And there is really nothing substantial coming out of the dealings with North Korea in that first term. So it does look like bluster. And I'm the first to concede that. And again, you know, I think this is part of the interesting thing about the book. It's not saying, oh, you know, Donald Trump is this mastermind of foreign policy. Look what he's doing. He's playing as all the fools, he's doing this. But does the Madman theory work? That's the greater question. Whether it's Nixon, Eisenhower or Trump, does this work? It's clearly a gambit, it is a tactic, but does it work? And part of the book is trying to walk through not only the establishment of it, but look, this is when it was believed to be employed. Does it work? Does it believe to have worked? Does it believe not to have worked? And on case by case throughout the book, hopefully the reader will discern their own findings from this and say, well, yeah, fair enough, it worked here, it didn't work here, maybe it worked there. And in Trump's first term, I think it's difficult to look at issues on a case by case basis and say, yes, it fundamentally, clearly worked here. Now, there were incidents, and you rightly point out, the assassination of Soleimani, whereby that was done. It was feared at the time it would lead to something huge, you know, a war with Iran. And of course it didn't. America removed what it saw as a threat to its national security interests, and nothing happened. There was not that catastrophic series of events that many people feared would follow. And I think Donald Trump took something from that, which is, I can threaten, I can strike, if not necessarily with total impunity, but with near impunity. And maybe American presidents have been far too hesitant to deploy force. And I think you're seeing that borne out in his second term where he, I think, and his team have been more successful, dare I say, in utilizing the madman theory and in understanding how to deploy American force around the world.

[A]

So give us a few examples from the first year of Trump's second term where you feel, on balance, employing the Madman theory has been a success. I know it's hard to know for sure because these policies, you know, they take a long time for their fruits to be born, whatever those fruits are. So what you know, which like, for example, there could be any Liberation Day, the way he's been treating NATO over Greenland, Venezuela, all these things, there's all these options you could employ. So walk us through that first year of Trump's second term.

[B]

The issues that spring to mind most clearly are the tariff policy and the NATO strategy. So with regard to the tariff approach, Donald Trump has long, again, I mentioned the Three facets of his long standing beliefs, the first of which is that America has been ripped off by its friends and its allies for decades. And he has always wanted to talk about addressing that. And the way he sought to do that economically was through the introduction of tariffs. From the White House point of view, they see the United States being ripped off by its trading allies around the world, who the White House believe are being allowed to import into the United States carte blanche. And yet the United States faces tariff burdens when it tries to export into its country directly or through an entity like the European Union. And so Donald Trump's team come up with this idea of reciprocal tariffs and Liberation Day about this time, just over a year ago. To do that, they threaten through with, I believe, the use of the madman theory, excessive tariffs. And again, it varied from case to case. But we saw tariff threats of 80, 90 over 100% in some cases, depending upon the nation in question. The threat is made of a disproportionate excessive tariff, which all of a sudden blows away traditional negotiation positions of the United States who want to come in and be very tactile and only ask for what they want. And Donald Trump's philosophy is, you do not ask for what you want. You ask for something astronomical, because then you can start negotiating. If you just start the negotiation positions with what you want, anything in terms of a compromise is less than you want. And his argument is, that's what America has done previously. Now, whether that's true or not is irrelevant. That's what the White House believes. Therefore, that's the approach it's taking towards this. So you introduce, I'm going to choose a figure 80%. We're going to threaten up from nothing to 80%. If the recipient of that threat can start negotiating that down from 80% to anything, quite frankly, to just 40%, then the white House can rightly say, okay, we've got you from zero to now giving us 40%. The other country will say, oh, my goodness, we were faced with 80%. We've got them down to 40%. Hurrah. The White House can now say, right, we're going to be drawing in 40% tariffs. The other country thinks, well, crikey, we thought we had to pay 80%. We both win. Now, of course, this leads, as you can see, where this is going to go to impossibly to the argument of Taco. Trump always chickens out. And his critics will say, oh, well, you know, the President promised us that we were going to be getting 80% tariffs. We've only got 40. Look at him. He always chickens out, which is a total misreading of the White House negotiation strategy, which is you deliberately ask for an excessive amount, you build in this huge window to negotiate within on the basis that whatever you get is going to be substantially more than you were already getting. Therefore it's a huge win.

[A]

I think it's important to point out that as a tactic, the madman theory in itself isn't a way of adjudicating whether the policy that the tactic is being used to promote is any good. So on Liberation Day and with the Trump White House over tariffs, they might have used the madman theory in this instance to get these tariffs across the line. Now, that doesn't mean that imposing tariffs in this way is good and will have good long term effects. It just means that it can be a successful negotiating strategy.

[B]

I just got to jump in there because we've got to be careful about phraseology. There is a difference between a tactic and a strategy. The madman theory is, as I said at the beginning, a tactic used to get a strategy through. So that you use the madman theory tactic to support passage and advancement of the strategy. The strategy is to get the tariffs introduced. The tactic is the madman theory to threaten.

[A]

Okay, that's clear. Yeah. And I probably throughout this conversation have not used the right words, which is a shame. And to bring this fascinating conversation to a close, I do want to talk about strategy, because grand strategy is there in the title of your book. And looking at the Iran war, looking at American geostrategy at the moment, it seems, and God knows, nobody knows what's going to happen, but it seems to be in a bad way. It seems that the Iranian regime has successfully countered the madman tactic in this case by playing for time, utilizing its own tactics, which it has perfected over the years of different diplomatic streams of lying, of cheating, of whatever, and possibly employing a version of the mad, mad tactic of its own in its just its ideological embrace of strange millenarian religious ideas. Who knows? So what is your estimation now of the Trump White House's grand strategy? How is it going? How in the last three months, say, has Trump's embracing of the madman tactic worked to further that strategy?

[B]

Well, you talk about the position adopted by the Iranian regime and its leadership. I'd suggest to you that there are 40 individuals who used to be part of that regime who aren't around anymore to argue with what it is that Donald Trump is doing due to the successful decapitation of that regime. So it's very Difficult to understand at this point, frankly, who is responsible for negotiating from the Iranian position quite what is going to transpire. We are clearly right in the middle of a highly fluid situation with regard to Iran and the Gulf of Hormuz, for example, and that's going to have huge ramifications domestically for the President as you move into the holiday season with gasoline prices where they are. However, let me come back to the question about grand strategy. I think all too often people look at a series of singular events and don't want to see things patched together. A lot of people also within the international relations community, be the academics, people work writing for newspapers, are of a certain age, they all went through the same schooling, they read the same books, they had the same teachers and they were very happy recognizing a certain Western European centered approach to the rules based system that has governed international relations for the last several decades. There is, I think amongst some people a recognition that that is shifting. If you look at the reaction to Donald Trump's national security strategy that came out was that November last year, there was horror within Europe because Europe was not at the heart necessarily of US grand strategy moving forward. Forward, guess what? The United States was at the heart of US grand strategy moving forward. Donald Trump has always talked about an American first approach domestically and economically. And we are seeing that borne out, I think, in this second term. If you look at that national security strategy, if you look at what America has done and is attempting to do and you take the blinkers off and say, well, you know, I'm not just going to look at this from the position of London or Paris or Berlin, for example, and say, well, what does this look like from, from Washington? If we shift the world on its axis and say, right, well let's look at this from a different point of view. Why is the United States moved into Venezuela? Why is the United States talking about trying to get access to, to Greenland? Why is America trying to leverage events in Ukraine? What is going on in Iran? Does any of this have any semblance of a strategy together? Is anything that underpins it all? And I believe that there is, I believe without putting the words in the mouth of the administration, my own view on this is this has a great deal to do with access to energy supplies, an attempt to diminish China's economic growth potentially going forward. It has a lot to do with the development of AI moving forward. People are going to talk about AI from a technological point of view, focused upon the technology, but there's always going to have to be an awful lot of power available to power these platforms. And I think what you're seeing Trump try to do is gain access to the oil supply coming out of Venezuela. You look at the mineral wealth that could be very well within Greenland. If you look at the oil supply coming out of Iran and where that is going, that isn't going to the United States. That's ostensibly going out to China. So, again, if you pivot the world on its axis away from looking at this from a European point of view, if you. If you put the Arctic at the center of your map and see where the US Sits with regards to itself, Greenland, access to minerals, rare earths, for example, I think the world starts to make a little bit more sense. But that seems to be a leap that far too few people are willing to take at this point. And it's easy to say, Donald Trump's crazy.

[A]

We're willing to take it here. I mean, we did an episode back in November, December talking about the new security strategy, and on paper, I see it. It makes a certain sense. It certainly makes sense of what the administration has been doing. It's always too early to tell. But I just wonder at the moment if the tactics that Donald Trump and his White House are employing to get that strategy achieved are the right ones. Whether, for example, the madman theory. Let's just say that summarizing now, the tactical position of the White House, if it alienates allies to such an extent that America finds itself unable to use the soft power, the diplomatic power, and the basic alliance power of its imperium, if it no longer can get consensus, can move wills in other states, then it's weak, then it's just weaker, and then it will certainly not be able to achieve these very ambitious aims. And especially when it comes to Iran, which I don't know, it seems like Iran has played a good game of cards here, and America's objectives in that theater now are to essentially try to return to the status quo ante before February.

[B]

Yeah, well, as you rightly repeat several times, we are clearly in the middle of a highly fluid situation with regard to Iran. But to come back to your initial point about weakness, I believe what you can see in the Trump administration's approach is a recognition that what was done in the past is no longer sufficient, that too many administrations, be they Republican or Democrat, were too willing to acquiesce to the wishes of its allies overseas who were not strong enough in terms of. Of defending American power and influence around the world, and that you're seeing a more muscular approach adopted on the simple basis that what worked in the past was not sufficient. And Donald Trump has, I think, arguably acted where the presidents have taught since the reigning revolution. Successive American administrations have talked about Iran being an existential threat that has to be removed from Tehran. We've seen this by Democrats, Republicans. We've seen it by Democratic candidates for president, including Hillary Clinton. Trump is arguably acting where they spoke. If you look at his actions with regards to Greenland, for example, you know, this is not the first time an American president has sought to gain access to Greenland. When Alaska was purchased, there was inquiries about whether Greenland could be brought in. At the same time, Harry Truman in 1946 talked about trying to gain control over Greenland because of the Cold War and the Atlantic sea lanes. So this fits in with a track record of actions, I think, in the past. The difference, arguably, is that Donald Trump, utilizing this more extreme form of negotiation, will go in and say, maybe we have to take it by force. You raise the level of threat on the basis that what we'd like to do is probably just buy Greenland, because whatever they pay for it will be cheap in the greater scheme of things. So, you know, we haven't seen the end of this yet. I'm the first to admit that Donald Trump does appear to flip from one issue to another. Today, it's Iran. There is a lot of speculation that Cuba is going to be next.

[A]

Cuba? Yeah.

[B]

Briefing by Marco Rubio yesterday at the White House was not insignificant. Very clearly, the United States is looking to establish greater control over events within what it now calls the Gulf of America, where that's Venezuela, by that, Cuba, and extending that sort of greater North American continent shelf to Greenland for a variety of tactical and economic reasons, I think. And Donald Trump isn't going to tell you or me or anybody else what he's doing, because that would be a complete contradiction of his stated goals. And I was delighted that you mentioned his speech from 2016, by the way, because that, I think, is a very key document, one that far too few people listen to or go back to. And if I have a critique of Donald Trump's critics, it's that they haven't. And don't take the time to study what he has said, because time and again, he does lay this material out there about what his broader ideas are, if not necessarily how he's gonna go about doing them, because that would give the game away from Trump's point of view.

[A]

Well, Dr. James D. Boies, thank you so much for coming on Conflicted. I mean, your book is Excellent, Dear listeners. You gotta read it. It really is great. I mean, just because the history is great, the characters involved are great, you get to know Nixon in a way that I hadn't really appreciated. It's balanced. You definitely see that you're dealing with interesting characters, to say the least. Donald Trump is one of those. I think we can say now with some certainty that Donald Trump is a character. There may be elements of his character that are unpleasant, that are erratic, maybe that are even slightly damaged. Who knows, but that he is not mad, but he is employing the Madman theory. So, Dr. James D. Bois, thank you for laying that out for us. I really appreciate you coming on the show.

[B]

It's been a blast. Thank you so much.

[A]

That was James D. Boies, senior research Fellow at University College London and the author of US Grand Strategy and the Madman Man Theory. It is available from all good booksellers. And remember, for deeper dives into the ideas we explore on this show, including extended conversations and Q&As with my CO host, Eamon Dean. Check the show notes for details on how to join the conflicted community. I'm Thomas Small. Conflicted is a message Heard Production. Our executive producers are are Jake Warren and Max Warren. This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.