Trump Applies Madman Theory For Real
An unusual diplomatic approach.
CNN (“Trump said he threatened to bomb Moscow if Putin attacked Ukraine, 2024 fundraiser tapes show“):
Donald Trump told a private gathering of donors last year that he once sought to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from attacking Ukraine by threatening to “bomb the sh*t out of Moscow” in retaliation, according to audio provided to CNN.
“With Putin I said, ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m going to bomb the sh*t out of Moscow. I’m telling you I have no choice,’” Trump said during one 2024 fundraiser, according to the audio. “And then [Putin] goes, like, ‘I don’t believe you.’ But he believed me 10%.”
Trump later claimed he relayed a similar warning to Chinese President Xi Jinping over a potential invasion of Taiwan, telling him that the US would bomb Beijing in response.
“He thought I was crazy,” Trump said of Xi, before noting that “we never had a problem.”
BBC’s Allan Little (“How Trump is using the ‘Madman Theory’ to try to change the world (and it’s working)“) had this to say days before this news broke:
Asked last month whether he was planning to join Israel in attacking Iran, US President Donald Trump said “I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows what I’m going to do”.
He let the world believe he had agreed a two-week pause to allow Iran to resume negotiations. And then he bombed anyway.
A pattern is emerging: The most predictable thing about Trump is his unpredictability. He changes his mind. He contradicts himself. He is inconsistent.
“[Trump] has put together a highly centralised policy-making operation, arguably the most centralised, at least in the area of foreign policy, since Richard Nixon,” says Peter Trubowitz, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.
“And that makes policy decisions more dependent on Trump’s character, his preferences, his temperament.”
Trump has put this to political use; he has made his own unpredictability a key strategic and political asset. He has elevated unpredictability to the status of a doctrine. And now the personality trait he brought to the White House is driving foreign and security policy.
It is changing the shape of the world.
Political scientists call this the Madman Theory, in which a world leader seeks to persuade his adversary that he is temperamentally capable of anything, to extract concessions. Used successfully it can be a form of coercion and Trump believes it is paying dividends, getting the US’s allies where he wants them.
There has been a longstanding debate in the deterrence literature about the desirabilty of ambiguity. Some argue that, for it to be maximally effective, parties need to be transparent about where red lines are to avoid catastrophe. Others counter that some degree of murkiness is preferable, lest the adversary take the red line as license to advance right up to it.
After some discussion of actions taken by Trump and his senior appointees, Little continues,
Julie Norman, professor of politics at University College London, agrees that there is now an Unpredictability Doctrine.
“It’s very hard to know what’s coming from day to day,” she argues. “And that has always been Trump’s approach.”
Trump successfully harnessed his reputation for volatility to change the trans-Atlantic defence relationship. And apparently to keep Trump on side, some European leaders have flattered and fawned.
Last month’s Nato summit in The Hague was an exercise in obsequious courtship. Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte had earlier sent President Trump (or “Dear Donald”) a text message, which Trump leaked.
“Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, it was truly extraordinary,” he wrote.
On the forthcoming announcement that all Nato members had agreed to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP, he continued: “You will achieve something NO president in decades could get done.”
Trump supporters rightly point to these concessions as evidence his Tough Guy approach is achieving its desired outcome. (Opponents rightly note the considerable costs in soft power.) But Little is unconvinced that the approach works as well with adversaries:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, an ally who was given a dressing down by Trump and Vance in the Oval Office, later agreed to grant the US lucrative rights to exploit Ukrainian mineral resources.
Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, apparently remains impervious to Trump’s charms and threats alike. On Thursday, following a telephone call, Trump said he was “disappointed” that Putin was not ready to end the war against Ukraine.
And Iran? Trump promised his base that he would end American involvement in Middle Eastern “forever wars”. His decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities was perhaps the most unpredictable policy choice of his second term so far. The question is whether it will have the desired effect.
The former British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has argued that it will do precisely the opposite: it will make Iran more, not less likely, to seek to acquire nuclear weapons.
Prof Desch agrees. “I think it’s now highly likely that Iran will make the decision to pursue a nuclear weapon,” he says. “So I wouldn’t be surprised if they lie low and do everything they can to complete the full fuel cycle and conduct a [nuclear] test.
There’s also the question of sustainability:
Looking ahead, unpredictability may not work on foes, but it is unclear whether the recent shifts it has yielded among allies can be sustained.
Whilst possible, this is a process built largely on impulse. And there may be a worry that the US could be seen as an unreliable broker.
“People won’t want to do business with the US if they don’t trust the US in negotiations, if they’re not sure the US will stand by them in defence and security issues,” argues Prof Norman. “So the isolation that many in the MAGA world seek is, I think, going to backfire.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for one has said Europe now needs to become operationally independent of the US.
“The importance of the chancellor’s comment is that it’s a recognition that US strategic priorities are changing,” says Prof Trubowitz. “They’re not going to snap back to the way they were before Trump took office.
“So yes, Europe is going to have to get more operationally independent.”
Which, in the short term, is very much what Trump has signaled he wants. A more robust European defense capability has been a longstanding, bipartisan US foreign policy goal. It’s even more desirable as our focus shifts to the Indo-Pacific. But I fear Trump’s approach will come at the cost of alliance cohesion.
Further, it’s not at all clear to me why a mercurial approach to foreign and defense policy will deter adversaries. Certainly, Putin has seemed completely undaunted by these threats, as he continues to escalate his illegal war in Ukraine.
Sanewashing. The various writers are looking at chaos and indecision and trying to make it make sense. Why, in the first story, does anyone believe Trump told Putin he’d bomb Moscow just because Trump said he said it? Did Trump have a devious plan to up NATO spending or is it just clear to Europe they’re on their own? Is there an “unpredictability doctrine” or just unpredictability?
One big challenge with Trump is, given his tenuous relationship with the truth–not to mention his long track record with bullshitting (in the technical sense)–can we even trust this conversation happened?
Are on all other counts James
@gVOR10: Uñtimately unknowable.
Nothing makes Trump happier than having an academic proclaim there is a method to his madness. gVOR hit the nail on the head – sanewashing with a side dish of taking the world’s foremost liar at his word. The only thing Trump has in common with Nixon is the moral vacuum.
There’s no theory at work here, they’re retconning to rationalize Trump’s instability and limited intelligence. The character in the narrative – Trump – is not capable of anything deeper, he’s just an ignorant and lazy old man reacting temperamentally, as his fawning courtiers try to make sense of it.
As for it working, no, it isn’t working and it’s not just the reckless sacrifice of eight decades of trust in the United States. Two scenarios for L’il Kim: 1) If he attacks South Korea the whole weight of American military power will come crashing down on his head, and South Korea can trust us to do just that. 2) Maybe, maybe not, who knows? Has grandpa had his oatmeal?
Same for Putin and the Baltics. Scenario 1: He invades Estonia and we shit-hammer Kaliningrad and hand the remains over to Poland. 2) Maybe we do something, maybe we don’t, who knows, did grandpa have a bowel movement this morning?
How about Taiwan. Xi has a choice. He can wait until a rational administration arrives which will make promises it will keep, or he can move now while Captain Crazy dithers over what, if anything, to do.
And it’s not just madman theory, there’s corruption theory: What would it cost to convince Trump to abandon South Korea, Europe or Taiwan? Seriously, in dollar terms, what would it cost to buy this flagrantly corrupt and amoral president?
It’s not hard to understand. I offer you two scenarios: 1) I shoot you in the head, and 2) there’s a 50/50 chance I shoot you in the head. Choose one. See how easy that is?
“Unpredictability Doctrine” aka the “I don’t know WTF I’m doing Doctrine.”
It’s one thing for a rational person to act erratically on purpose to create ambiguity and uncertainty in their opponents. It’s a very different thing to have a literal madman in charge.
@Matt Bernius: One of my wife’s late grandmothers would often recount conversations she had with her friends. It was always quite clear that those conversations never happened the way they were recounted. They may have been things she wanted to say, but she wouldn’t have had any friends if she had, in fact, talked that way.
This reminds me of her. I don’t believe he said those things. For one thing, if he had, he would have been touting in public more than he did, and we wouldn’t just be finding out about it now from a tape at a fundraiser.
@gVOR10: @Michael Reynolds: I agree that assigning any grand strategizing to Trump for this “doctrine” is giving him too much credit (altough, there is some pattern over time of his behavior that can be seen to be some kind of process, lame thought it may be). But what James is describing is a legitimate attempt within an existing (decades-old) framework.
Keep in mind a theory to model Trump’s behavior and its effects on the global system is not the same thing as saying Trump himself is creating the model or even giving his behavior a lot of thought.
Nixon was a fan of the crazy President theory. Nixon’s presidency had two major international outcomes, the opening of diplomacy with China and the most ignominious defeat of the United States in Vietnam. You are all invited to mark your scorecards.
During the Cold War, the credibility of nuclear threats was a huge concern. How do we make our adversary believe that we’d actually drop atomic bombs, given the armageddon it would unleash on all parties involved? Across all the scenarios (If the Warsaw Pact invades Western Europe, do we escalate to using nuclear weapons? Do we massively retaliate against a small-scale nuclear attack? Do we threaten nuclear war in a crisis if we think we have the advantage in nuclear weapons? etc. etc.), there was always the problem of making it seem credible that we’d initiate (or continue) the apocalypse.
Generations of strategists have tried to figure out the answer to this problem. Thomas Schelling said that you had to make it seem as if you had no choice, like throwing out the steering wheel of our car in a game of chicken. It’s then completely up to the adversary to back down. The Madman Theory was Nixon’s way of removing choice from the equation, by pretending to be a complete lunatic who had no self-control.
Lots of very, very smart people noodled over this problem for a very long time. From the Defense Department to think tanks like RAND, they analyzed the nuclear conundrum from many angles. They came up with a strategy of deterrence that apparently worked during the scariest moments, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Able Archer incident. That successful strategy did not depend on the President ever acting like a deranged psychopath.
Credibility, not unpredictability, was the ingredient that made this strategy work. The Soviets had to believe that the United States would drop nuclear bombs, not if. They also had to be clear on the conditions where the US would do so, such as a conventional invasion of the NATO countries.
Now we have the current occupant who knows nothing, who listens to no one, stating that his policy is to act like the proverbial madman. He’s setting up the conditions for undermining America’s deterrence strategy: making an outrageous threat, and then backing down from it. That, of course, is something he’s already done in other spheres. Again, it’s all about credibility, not uncertainty.
@Kingdaddy:
This is worth emphasizing. He has a known pattern of behavior. It is also one that is ill suited to the very serious business of international relations.
Indeed.
@gVOR10: @Michael Reynolds:
I would emphasize that all the sanewashing and retconning isn’t about trying to make sense of Trump, but rather providing cover to Republicans who have supplicated themselves to him. Trump is Trump is Trump, but the story of our times is that one of our major political parties follows this nutjob and while they should be humiliated or ashamed by that choice, they somehow aren’t. Trump must be something better than what he presents as or they must be craven monsters to follow him.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I understand the theory, but I’ve never bought it.
Let’s say you and I are in an armed stand-off. If I am a rational actor and you are a madman, I should shoot first, because I preserve the initiative, and your madness means that no peaceful deal can be trusted. Your madness gives me incentive to kill you pre-emptively. That is not to the advantage of the madman.
If we were rational – and entirely amoral – we should nuke North Korea today and eliminate the threat posed by a madman. Israel would be behaving rationally if it were to expel or even kill all Gazans, since no deal struck with a genuine madman can be trusted and there’s no other way to be sure of eliminating the Hamas madmen. Let’s not conflate rational and moral.
Thought experiment: Greenland has a secret capability to kill with only a very small risk of being found out. They’d have no incentive to use it against a rational Biden, and every reason to use it against a mad Trump.
The rational dog* gets kibble; the mad dog is killed.
*Not sure there is a such a thing.
@Kingdaddy:
Coincidentally, on the drive to work today I got to the part of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Richard Rhode’s book about the hydrogen bomb (Dark Sun).
Curtis LeMay not only advised bombing the missile sites in Cuba, but also launching a full-blown preemptive nuclear attack on the USSR.
frustratingly, Rhodes says a lot about what the US military did during the infamous 13 days, but little about what Soviet forces were doing. assuming the latter dialed up to the level of readiness as the former, then that would have been the worst possible time to launch an all out attack.
good thing LeMay was obsessed about his Strategic Air Command fiefdom, and never got it in his head to run for president like Eisenhower did.
@Jen:
The tragedy is that for some measurable portion of the electorate, DKWTFID is a feature not a bug.
@Michael Reynolds:
if it were to hang Bibi and the more extreme members of his cabinet from a lamppost, like the Italians eventually did with Mussolini.
@Kathy: Bombs away with Curtis LeMay!
@Matt Bernius:
….. I’ll take A 99% CHANCE THIS NEVER HAPPENED for $800, Alex.
I will grant there’s a 1 % chance this happened. It could’ve happened if Trump had a sense of humor, which he does, however it’s dark and comes only at the expense of others.
I believe that Trump sees Putin (and Russia) in a Cold War kind of way – as an equal in power on the global stage. He has only open disdain for Zelenskyy (and Ukraine) of whom he views as an annoyance, barely tolerated while he seeks to get rid of them by brokering a negotiation wherein he sells Ukraine out. Putin is not going to accept a Trump-negotiated peace wherein Russia leaves Ukraine completely without territorial gain.
IMO this is just Trump’s usual real-estate negotiating style/method templated onto foreign affairs. Threaten, bluster, never commit decisively to anything, be outrageous and shameless, and keep your opponent wondering. This is the whole “do you take him seriously or literally or both” debate. When he says something, many remain unsure how seriously to take it or how to decipher his style to distinguish between what is genuine and what isn’t, despite having years of data to analyze, and Trump using the same MO.
Once again, I’ll go back to my longstanding argument that actions matter more than words. Trump may say he’ll bomb Moscow or Beijing, but both countries observe the status and readiness of our forces very closely, and they can see that no such preparations are taking place. By contrast, we took his threat to bomb Iran seriously because the preparations for it were observed, significant, and strongly indicative of his true intentions.
Things that never happened for $500, Alex.
@Andy:
It is his usual style, but I see scant evidence its working. 90 deals in 90 days? How about fuck-all in six months? Once people figure out that you’re bluffing, said bluffing becomes increasingly ineffective. He keeps pushing off the deadline and then, mortified by the TACO thing, he’ll do something impotent like this latest round of ‘strongly worded’ letters.
The companies and institutions that bent the knee preemptively were fools. Trump is a weak man straining to prove he’s strong, and every time he does he’s revealed as weak. If Trump were president in October 1962, there would be Soviet nukes in Cuba.
@Michael Reynolds:
And yet, many people thought he was bluffing on Iran, but he wasn’t. Lots of people (me included), didn’t think he’d really do some of the extreme things he’s done so far. Others assumed the worst in other areas, and that has not come to pass. He’s good at keeping people off balance and guessing. Not even his supporters know what he’s doing – it’s sadly funny watching them flip-flop on mutually contradictory justifications for the tariffs, for example.
I don’t know if his style is “working” or not because it’s not clear to me what the goals are. Sometimes I wonder if he even has real goals at all, or whether he just wants to strike out in a certain direction he likes to see how far he can get. My sense is the man has few real convictions or principles other than feeding his own ego.
@gVOR10:
Exactly.
“Trump claimed…”
“Trump said…”
If the red flags didn’t go up immediately one hasn’t been paying attention. When it comes to fund raising, one of the most shameless liar who has ever lived.
Trump’s relationship with Putin was hunky dory at that time, and Trump is all about buttering people up. He loved Lil Kim, he did something like that with Xi too. That he would issue dire threats to Putin at that time would’ve been highly out of character. His super power is sensing what the people in front of him at the moment wish to hear and saying it.
I just pressed some key combo that ate my post on El Taco’s insane 50% tariff on Brazil to keep his boyfriend out of prison.
One item Brazil makes is the E175 regional jet. Currently there’s a backlog for it in the US, and there’s no ready substitute for it.
The other salient point is the US has a trade surplus with Brazil.
@Andy:
I would guess his real goals are about his fears, and I would guess he has the usual fears with his own emphases. He’s a 79 year old man and he’s still looking for his father’s respect. Afraid of the deterioration of old age, the loss of control, as we all are. That will be bad for him because he’s brittle. He’s not a guy who has thought much about death, so he fears it, and like so many people he imagines that power will make him immune. Accumulate power and manipulate death itself. He thinks if he gets a Nobel he’ll defy time. He wants to be on Mount Rushmore. He wants things named for him. He’ll be increasingly frantic, he’s already frantic, searching for immortality.
When he’s struggling for those last few breaths do you think he’ll realize how futile it was to imagine immortality? I suspect I’ll be much more at peace when it’s my time. I’ll be happy for Marley to drop by.
It’s not apparent why Trump would have bombed Moscow in 2020 had Russia opted for all-out war in Ukraine back then, but bent over backwards to play nice with Russia in 2025 after it actually had opted for all-out war in Ukraine. On the contrary, Trump’s assertion about his earlier threats is quite incompatible with what he has actually done about Russian aggression in both his presidencies:
• Said Crimea ought to be part of Russia as far back as 2015
• Deplored Russia’s ejection from the G8 as far back as 2019
• Did absolutely nothing in his first term to end the war
• Chortled about Putin’s “genius move” in launching a full-scale invasion in 2022
• Pals around with people like Vance and Carlson, who openly advocate Ukrainian capitulation to Russian demands
• Spared Russia from his universal 10% tariff because he didn’t want to make them angry •
• Frequently speaks enthusiastically about all the wonderful opportunities America has to partner Russia
• Displays constant ambivalence about whether Ukraine in general and Zelenskyy in particular are worth supporting
• Sent absolute fool Witkoff as his personal envoy to negotiate an end to the war, who promptly told reporters his biggest challenge was persuading Ukraine to surrender.
Consequently I don’t believe a word of his latest windbaggery. But if the Chinese have taken note, they will have concluded that Trump’s threats to bomb other countries are all bluster. He wouldn’t even risk sending two planes over Iran until the IDF had wrecked the country’s air defences. The idea he’d be willing to lose God knows how much of America’s air strength trying to penetrate Chinese air space in a gesture of support for Taiwan is a joke.
@Ken_L:
Fantasizing about bombing Moscow would make perfect sense if Putin has something on Trump.
It’s cute how Trump keeps making noise about standing up to Putin but always TACOs out. And it’s revealing how Putin just laughs at him. Laughs at the so-called Leader of the Free World.
@Michael Reynolds: You are misunderstanding the point.
I am talking about analysts trying to map out behavior.
Doing so is not a judgment of whether the behavior is a good idea or not.
@Michael Reynolds: You are misunderstanding the point.
I am talking about analysts trying to map out behavior.
Doing so is not a judgment of whether the behavior is a good idea or not.
@Steven L. Taylor: To take another example, I could come up with a rough model for how certain commenters on this site are likely to react based on past patterns. Or I could create a typology of commenter types.
Doing so would not be a value judgment about those types or behaviors.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I hear you.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Hey, I said I hear you!
@Michael Reynolds: Ha!