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Madmen rarely prevailThere is not only little evidence that Trump’s exploits have been effective, but also few examples of madman tactics actually working with other leaders. Idi Amin had little success with his provocations with Tanzania in 1978-1979. Nor did Muammar Gaddafi after he tried to annex the Aouzou Strip, in northern Chad in 1980.Research has pointed to several reasons for why madmen are often unsuccessful. For a start it’s never clear if the other people involved actually understand what the “madman” is intending to signal. And even if that is obvious, because the “madman” is deemed crazy their threats are rarely taken seriously.In Trump’s case it is also not clear if being perceived as “mad” is something to be feared or ridiculed. His unpredictability mostly played out on the world stage through a series of strange exchanges with autocrats – such as fawning over Vladmir Putin in Helsinki in 2018, where he took the word of the Russian president over his own intelligence agencies. Trump also allegedly threatened to kill Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad in 2017, but then decided to pull US troops out of Syria in December of 2018.And Trump’s antics with Iran – pulling out of the nuclear deal and threatening to bomb Iranian cultural heritage sites – seemed to do little to deter the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions. In fact, hardliners were then elected in the 2021 elections, which would have been the last thing US foreign policy planners wanted.Prior to Trump and Kim Jong Un’s “love affair,” Trump engaged in reckless threats to destroy North Korea (and was himself the recipient of insults from the opposing leader who referred to Trump as “mentally deranged”. Though Trump boasted that his summit with North Korea is one of his foreign policy wins, he accomplished no more than any past presidents and Kim Jong-un remains as much a danger to regional stability as ever.In spite of this, Trump has embraced the madman theory. But not only does appearing mad provide limited advantages in negotiating, it actually erodes a leader’s credibility and undermines their nation’s long term foreign policy interests. Madmen theory isn’t really strategic – it’s just idiotic.Natasha Lindstaedt, Professor, Department of Government, University of EssexThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Donald Trump and the ‘madman theory’ of foreign policy
