MADMAN THEORY is a silly pretext used by cynics to appeal to morons
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Daniel Drezner elaborates on why the MADMAN THEORY Trump fluffers will use to justify his actions involves unacceptable downside risk in exchange for no actual benefits:
Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric had unnerved people who have long grown inured to his bluster. Garrett Graff characterized the chances that Donald Trump would use a nuclear weapon against Iran as “non-zero…. I’d personally put the chance that Donald Trump uses a nuclear weapon against Iran at some point in the three percent range — which is a stunningly high number, given the history of nuclear weapons and the presidency.”
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As someone who has written about Trump and the Madman Theory, at this point I have to ask a very basic question: what tactical victory?!
I’m serious: what tactical gain did the Trump administration secure by agreeing to the two-week cease-fire beyond the cease-fire itself? Sure, President Trump saved himself from committing war crimes, but that’s not exactly a tactical win. Iran’s military has been battered, but that has not stopped Iran’s regime from retaliating across the region and closing the Strait of Hormuz.
The most one could credit Trump with is that maybe his rhetoric persuades his base that he was employing the Madman Theory all along, thereby reducing his audience costs of backing down.
But for everyone else not named “Pete Hegseth” it remains the case that the United States has failed to achieve most of its stated war aims. Neither Israel nor the Gulf allies seem particularly pleased with the current status quo compared to the pre-war moment. The rest of the Arab world ain’t thrilled with the United States either.
Meanwhile, even a conventionally weakened Iran has managed to control the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint — a fact unaffected by the cease fire. Indeed, Politico’s Ben Lefebvre and Phelim Kine report that oil executives are keenly aware of just how the current status quo is worse than the pre-war situation…
..,I have yet to read a credible analyst explain how the United States has won this clash with Iran. But I have seen a boatload of analyses that explain how the current U.S. situation is far worse than the pre-war status quo.
Jonathan Last concludes, “If the general contours of the ceasefire agreement hold, then America will have suffered a significant strategic defeat and Iran will have won a significant strategic victory.”
At this point, it is worth noting that the most prominent invocation of MADMAN THEORY was noted geopolitical supergeniuses Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger killing large numbers of people and expending enormous amounts of scarce resources to get essentially the same deal that was available to them on Nixon’s first Inauguration Day. There’s no serious strategy involved, just bloodthirsty politicians trying to make their bad instincts sound a little more tactically sophisticated to the most gullible marks in their audience.