Trump plays Madman. Will the threats work?

The Z Factor

In 1968, in the middle of the Vietnam War, US President Richard Nixon wanted to play the role of a lunatic to bully the Vietnamese into a negotiation.

“I call it the Madman Theory, Bob,” Nixon told his chief of staff. “I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war.” Nixon argued that if the Vietnamese felt that he was crazy enough to press the nuclear button, “Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”

Nixon failed. There was no stopping the North Vietnamese guerrilla forces. Communist rebels continued to devastate US troops in the killing fields of Vietnam. America suffered a humbling defeat that wrecked its psyche for generations to come and Vietnam became a textbook case of bad foreign policy.

Yet, decades later, Donald Trump seems to want to follow in Nixon’s footsteps. Trump has returned to the White House this year with a long litany of grudges, complaints, and fire and fury. Most of those are personal grudges, but some are nationalistic grudges founded on a belief that Washington has been pussyfooting around for too long on the world stage. Like Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, Trump wants to declare what he likes and take what he wants.

To that end, even before he took the oath of office, Trump was talking about grabbing the Panama Canal, invading Greenland, and annexing Canada as the 51st state of the United States. Now, only two weeks into his term, Trump is showing that the crazy talk wasn’t just talk. In rapid succession, he has responded to every tiny irritant by going all-out extreme.

During his very first week in office, Colombia refused to take back deported migrants who were being returned from the US on military planes. Trump threatened that country with a spate of threats, including steep tariffs. Then, arguing that Canada and Mexico aren’t doing enough to stop the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants into the US, Trump slapped both countries – Washington’s two largest trade partners – with crippling tariffs.

The early rounds appear to have gone Trump’s way. Colombia climbed down almost immediately and avoided the tariffs. Canada and Mexico reached a deal with Trump to delay their share of tariffs by a month.

That is bad news for the rest of the world. Trump has now been encouraged by the effectiveness of the Madman Theory and might be tempted to use it on wilder ideas. This week, Trump said that he wants to take over Gaza and relocate its people to Egypt, Jordan and other countries in the region. Almost everyone in every country derided that proposal. Egypt and Jordan flat out refused any possibility of taking people in. Trump is now highly liable to threaten both with heavy tariffs.

The problem with the Madman Theory, however, is that the threats have to be credible, and the more frequently Trump uses wild threats, the less effective they will become. The repeated imposition and reversal of tariffs makes business transactions impossible and will hurt the global economy – including the US.

The rest of the world will know this. Trump’s foreign adversaries – which at this point appears to cover almost everyone – would increasingly be willing to call his bluff, because the more they concede, the more they risk emboldening him. China, for instance, has retaliated with tariffs of its own and negotiations have paused.

But such retaliation may also not discourage Trump, who has shown a willingness to prize optics above all else. The global economy may well be in for a prolonged period of pain.