Donald Trump says he’s ‘f***ing crazy’ – but his one big tactic is about to backfire
President Trump dramatically raises the stakes to impose fear, compelling more concessions. But is his key tactic about to backfire?
ANALYSIS
Is Trump mad enough?
What makes President Trump so different is his bargaining style. He’s deliberately irrational, analysts say. He dramatically raises the stakes to impose fear. This can compel more concessions.
But is the mercurial 47th President of the United States winning so much that his supporters are getting tired of winning?
During his first term, Trump was constrained by experienced politicians, diplomats, economists and military officers.
This term, he has done away with professionals. Instead, he’s surrounded himself with loyalists. And these enablers have unleashed the full Trump.
“We have to be unpredictable,” Trump said during his first election campaign. “I don’t want them to know what I’m thinking.”
Earlier this year, his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, gave it a more sophisticated spin: “In game theory, it’s called strategic uncertainty. So you’re not going to tell the person on the other side of the negotiation where you’re going to end up.”
Ten months into Trump’s second term of office, is the tactic that disgraced US President Richard Nixon dubbed “madman theory” proving successful?
He has threatened to seize Greenland.
He has threatened to invade Canada, Venezuela, Nigeria and Panama.
He has threatened to bomb Mexico, Colombia and Afghanistan.
He has threatened to impose prohibitive tariffs against China, India and Norfolk Island.
He has threatened to abandon treaties and alliances, including NATO.
He has threatened to jail and revoke the citizenship of his political opponents.
He has sent troops into Chicago, Illinois, Los Angeles, Memphis, Portland, and Washington DC.
He is threatening to do the same for Baltimore, New Orleans, San Francisco and New York.
He has cut funding to a multitude of international aid, trade and governance programs.
None of this is about the traditional cost-versus-benefit bargaining formula, argue security studies academics Samuel Seitz (University of Oxford) and Caitlin Talmadge (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
“A madman, after all, is mad,” they write. “He does not care about costs either because he subscribes to an extreme set of ideological views that weigh costs differently than most or because he is simply irrational and thus incapable of cost-benefit analysis.”
But is Trump mad enough?
European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) research director Jeremy Shapiro says a statistical analysis of President Trump’s decisions reveals them not to be reckless.
Instead, Trump is “deliberate in his calculations and fearful of risk, though prone to rhetorical extremes”.
“Over two presidential terms, Donald Trump has used threats to intimidate his adversaries and mostly only employed force against his weaker victims,” he argues. “This pattern of bullying provides an insight into his future decision-making”
President of Peace
“The targets of Trump’s threats would be wise to understand these dynamics,” Shapiro states. “Demonstrating weakness will only invite attack. Greenland, with only 60,000 inhabitants and no appreciable military, would qualify as weak when isolated. But a Greenland strongly backed up by Denmark and the EU would have enough strength to scare a bully.”
President Trump, 79, insists he wants peace. He’s keen to win a Nobel Peace Prize.
But his words and actions are often out of tune.
Trump has boasted that Chairman Xi Jinping would never attack Taiwan while he is President because “he knows I’m f***ing crazy”.
Then came the Iran crisis.
“I may do it, I may not do it,” he said of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. “I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”
On the surface, there appears to be little consistency.
“Trump’s unpredictability is clearly intentional,” states Columbia University public affairs academic Karen Yarhi-Milo. “The president relishes in being chaotic and understands that his threatening behaviour helps achieve certain aims.”
But Shapiro says a point-by-point analysis of President Trump’s behaviour shows he isn’t so unpredictable.
And that makes it possible to know when he actually means what he says.
“Trump uses threats and force much like a playground bully,” he argues. “While large and outwardly powerful, he actually fears the use of force in any situation even vaguely resembling a fair fight. For the bully, threats are for the purpose of intimidation rather than a prelude to violence. Actual violence only occurs against much weaker foes that have no hope of striking back.”
Trump stunned the world in 2017 when he threatened his “fire and fury” would “totally destroy” North Korea over nuclear weapons tests.
“These statements often shocked both foreign and domestic audiences, but in retrospect they were more performative than preparatory,” Shapiro notes.
Kim Jong-un didn’t back down.
Trump now openly admires Kim: “I got along great with him. Very strong guy. He is the absolute leader of his country.”
That, says Shapiro, has since proven to be a consistent pattern.
And it may telegraph Trump’s real intentions towards attacking Venezuela.
“Trump was willing to say nearly anything to establish dominance or deterrence,” he writes, “but he was unwilling to act when the consequences could involve a major war, especially with a nuclear or near-nuclear power.”
Art of the Deal, or TACO Aftertaste?
“Traditionally, leaders seek bargaining advantages by entering negotiations from a position of strength. Being stronger means they can impose more costs on the opponent than the opponent can on them, granting them leverage,” Seitz and Talmadge argue in their Lawfare analysis.
“Of course, for this logic to work, both sides must care about costs.”
But Columbia University’s Yarhi-Milo says keeping US friends and foes off balance is a ploy to secure quick wins.
“Trump also thinks that unpredictability affords him greater wiggle room in international affairs by ensuring that allies and adversaries are always second-guessing his next course of action,” she adds.
But does it work?
“Madman strategies face serious credibility problems because it is difficult for leaders to persuade anyone that they are truly mad,” Seitz and Talmadge argue. “Unless a leader is consistent in acting erratically and with complete disregard for costs, it is unlikely that foreign observers will find the act believable.”
President Trump’s recent meeting with China’s Chairman Xi Jinping is a case in point.
Trump threatened the rapidly emerging world power with overwhelming tariffs to counterbalance a significant trade imbalance.
Xi retaliated, imposing debilitating restrictions on the export of vital rare-earth minerals.
Both leaders backed down when they met last month.
Both leaders declared ‘mission accomplished’.
“That is an improvement, but it was not progress,” argues Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) economics analyst William Reinsch. “It was the predicted ‘small deal’ that left all the serious issues in the relationship still outstanding.”
The tariffs are gone. Rare-earth elements are flowing again. But the trade imbalance remains.
The US-China trade clash is the ultimate test of Trump’s ‘madman’ politics, Reinsch adds.
“Trump’s bullying approach doesn’t work with China, which knows it has leverage and has learned how to use it,” Reinsch argues. “To borrow a term from the experts, this latest agreement demonstrated that neither side has escalation dominance.”
The risk of political cost has caused Trump to change course several times this year. Especially when it comes to the US economy.
He backed off on his “Freedom Day” mass tariff move when Wall Street markets fell.
And he has now admitted that his trade war with China is unsustainable.
“Trump is developing the reputation not of a madman but of a reckless yet still cost-sensitive president,” argue Zeitz and Talmadge. “Indeed, some observers on Wall Street allegedly refer to his behaviour as TACO, which stands for ‘Trump Always Chickens Out,’ hardly a moniker one wants when entering high-stakes negotiations.”
Performative art
“These utterances captured headlines, spooked adversaries and thrilled his political base,” notes CSIS’s Shapiro. “Indeed, such threats often seemed aimed at domestic audiences and were more about asserting dominance and invoking a law-and-order image than initiating military crackdowns.”
And Trump, a former reality-TV host and real estate salesman, is in full swing.
But beneath the bluster is an emerging pattern.
“When provoked but politically safe, Trump will act,” Shapiro states. “When stronger powers are involved or outcomes uncertain, he likely will not. And when the cameras are rolling, his threats may say more about political optics than military intentions.”
It all makes for a political nightmare for foreign leaders.
Does Trump say what he means? Does he mean what he says?
How can one avoid his “fire and fury”?
“Trump thinks that he can frighten and thus deter opponents by appearing unhinged,” argues Yarhi-Milo. “Fear, anger, disappointment, and revenge are now common drivers of American statecraft. It is a fact many countries have discovered the hard way.”
Some stand firm. Others attempt to appease. Then there are those who seek to flatter.
“Flattery, however, quickly loses its value as more leaders deploy it,” Yarhi-Milo adds. “Ultimately, none of these tactics have delivered more than temporary success. Trump continues to shift his approach to the world almost minute by minute, depending on how he feels.”
And that may be the greatest weakness of ‘madman theory’.
“Madman tactics suffer from communication problems,” say Seitz and Talmadge. “Unsurprisingly, behaving erratically can create doubts about one’s intentions and demands … If a leader is consistently inconsistent, erratically changing tactics and reneging to squeeze out further concessions, negotiating partners have no incentive to concede. Indeed, they have strong reasons to stand firm.”
But Shapiro believes Trump’s behaviour is not truly unpredictable. Nor should it be unexpected.
It’s about minimising risk. It’s about political cycles. It’s about appearances.
“This is not a new observation about Trump,” Shapiro argues. “Indeed, back in the 1980s, Trump was the model for American culture’s quintessential bully – the Biff character in Back to the Future.
“Bullies like to perform for an audience, but they back down when challenged. Just ask Biff.”
Originally published as Donald Trump says he’s ‘f***ing crazy’ – but his one big tactic is about to backfire
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