Photo credit: Richard Nixon Foundation
The madman theory is a political theory commonly associated with the foreign policy of US President Richard Nixon and his administration, who tried to make the leaders of hostile Communist Bloc nations think Nixon was irrational and volatile so that they would avoid provoking the US in fear of an unpredictable attack.
Some international scholars have been sceptical of the madman theory as a strategy for success in bargaining. A study found that madman theory is frequently counterproductive, but that it can be an asset under certain conditions. Another study found that there are both bargaining advantages and disadvantages to perceived madness.
Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman wrote that the then-president had confided to him:
“I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, “For God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry – and he has his hand on the nuclear button” and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”
In October 1969, the Nixon administration indicated to the Soviet Union that “the madman was loose” when the United States military was ordered to full global war readiness and bombers armed with thermonuclear weapons flew patterns near the Soviet border for three consecutive days.
the administration also employed the “madman strategy” to force the North Vietnamese government to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War.
Some have characterized former US president Donald Trump’s behaviour towards allies and hostile states as an example of madman theory. During the KORUS FTA renegotiations Trump told US trade negotiators to warn South Korean diplomats that “if they don’t give the concessions now, this crazy guy will pull out of the deal”, which Jonathan Swan of Axios characterized as a “madman” approach to international relations.
Another example of madman theory has also been attributed to President Vladimir Putin of Russia. In 2015, Martin Hellman said, “nuclear weapons are the card that Putin has up his sleeve, and he’s using it to get the world to realize that Russia is a superpower, not just a regional power.” Hellman said, “This use of the madman theory was something which the West had not properly caught on to.”
In 2022, days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Gideon Rachman argued in the Financial Times that Putin’s “penchant for publishing long, nationalist essays” about Ukrainian and Russian history, his plans of nuclear weapons exercises as well as his image of “growing incessantly out of touch and paranoid” and isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, could have been the use of madman strategy. Rachman stated that Putin “is ruthless and amoral. But he is also shrewd and calculating. He takes risks, but he’s not crazy”.
Source: Wikipedia
