Paul Jacob explained the “Madman Theory” of “diplomacy” and warcraft on Wednesday:
Buried in his book about being a wheeler-dealer, Mr. Trump notoriously advances a notion eerily similar to Nixon’s Madman strategy. Trump likes to keep those with whom he is negotiating “guessing.”
He says this often. We cannot be shocked, then, if we’re all kept guessing about his Iran strategy.
But if President Trump has explained it, and confessed it — can it really work?
In The Washington Monthly we read a negative answer: “Our data pool may be small, but the available evidence suggests that presidential adherents of Madman Theory are more mad than great theorists.”
Robert Tait’s op-ed in The Guardian, on the same date, quoted the same H.R. Haldeman-Nixon explanation, and — after further history lessons — noted that as “victories go, it look distinctly pyrrhic — shades of Nixon and North Vietnam in 1972.”
Newsweek’s editorial worries that the madman ploy “by design, compresses time. It can produce rapid breakthroughs, but it leaves little room for prolonged stalemate.” And that, it appears, is what Iranians are prepared to play: the long game.
Liz Peek at The Hill, published two days later, expresses some incredulity at the critics’ negative reactions. “Amazingly, after a decade or more of dealing with the blustery businessman, Democrats are still clueless about how Trump operates. Have they not read The Art of the Deal? Do they not understand that the president always leads with maximalist demands and then, having shaken his adversary, withdraws to a more moderate and desired goal? Apparently not.
Democrats howling for the president’s head are also appallingly ignorant of history. Trump is not the first commander in chief to use dire threats to end a war. “Madman” Richard Nixon and former President Dwight Eisenhower forged that diplomatic path years ago.
As it happens, Trump’s apocalyptic threats may have pushed the regime in Tehran — or what’s left of it — to agree to a ceasefire. His warning that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” was meant to terrify. It was, admittedly, excessive, as was his crude demand that the mullahs “Open the F—in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH!” Those demands, directed at officials in Tehran and posted to Truth Social, proved effective.
No one should be surprised that the mullahs, or the remaining heads of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, took Trump’s threats seriously. He has purposefully cultivated an aura of unpredictability. . . .
Ms. Peek concludes confidently: “Democrats’ sensibilities may be offended, but future generations will be grateful.”
