The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Will Trump's "Madman" Approach Work?

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Unpredictable, impulsive, arbitrary. These are some of the words that might come to mind to describe President Trump's first few weeks in office. But is the chaos the point? Richard Nixon famously wanted the North Vietnamese to believe he'd do anything to end the war, including using nuclear weapons. It was called his "madman theory." Is Trump deploying the same strategy but, to the entire world? And what does his zero-sum approach mean for the post-World War II order? .See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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a TVO original podcast. Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. Unpredictable, impulsive, arbitrary. These are some of the words that might come to mind to describe President Trump's first few weeks in office. But is the chaos the point? Richard Nixon famously wanted the North Vietnamese to believe he'd do

anything to end the war, including using nuclear weapons. It was called his Madman theory. Is Trump deploying the same strategy but to the entire world? And what does his zero-sum approach mean for the post-World War II order? Joining us now to help answer that in Medford, Massachusetts, Daniel Dresner, Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. And in Washington, DC, Janice Stein,

the Bellsburg Professor of Conflict Management and founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. And we are happy to welcome two such thoughtful and wonderful familiar faces back to our program. Daniel, I want to start with you because I think for those who are not old enough to remember the Vietnam War, they may not have heard of this expression, the madman theory of politics. Tell us what it means.

First, I want to go on the record and say I'm not old enough to remember the Vietnam War, but I've studied it. And yes, you're correct. That the Madman theory goes back to Richard Nixon telling Bob Halderman, his chief of staff, according to Halderman's memoirs, that Nixon's goal was to act in a sort of crazy manner in the hopes that the North Vietnamese and the Soviets would believe Nixon will do anything,

including up to and including the use of nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War. The hope was that by demonstrating how crazy he was, that would force the North Vietnamese and the Soviets to the bargaining table and lead to a speedy resolution of the Vietnam War. And just a quick follow-up, is there evidence in your mind that Trump pursued this kind of

policy when he was president the first time? Yes, there is explicit evidence for this. There's a famous report in Axios that Jonathan Swan reported at the time that when the Trump administration was trying to renegotiate a chorus, the U.S. free trading room with South Korea, Trump explicitly authorized his U. his US trade representative at the time, Robert Lighthizer,

to go to his South Korean counterparts and say, Trump is crazy. Trump wants to exit this agreement now. You have to make the concessions now in order to expedite this deal. And actually then sort of pantomime in the Oval Office what Lighthizer was supposed to say. There's also pretty clear evidence

that we've respected North Korea. Throughout all of 2017, Donald Trump used incredibly bellicose rhetoric in terms of threatening North Korea with the idea of fire and fury and dubbing Kim Jong-un, Rocket Man, claiming that, you know, there could be a conflagration of some kind or another. And then when the North Koreans sent a signal that they perhaps wanted to talk, Trump immediately accepted that and agreed to three separate meetings with Kim Jong-un. So Janice, is the chaos calculated?

Yes. I agree with everything that Dan said and more. See, what is important here to distinguish between unpredictable and mad. Crazy. Out of control. The madman theory is really I am crazed. I'm out of control. That's different from unpredictable. And I think there's no question with Trump that he deliberately calculates the sense of unpredictability, creates chaos, calculates the sense of unpredictability, creates chaos, everybody scrambles. And if we need any indication, any evidence that the unpredictability works, look at

these last two or three weeks on tariffs as our government has scrambled, the Mexican government has scrambled, totally took over the agenda. He's actually getting the attention that he wants now. I saw Dan Zirou go up there and he did back off for the moment on those 25% tariffs, but we're back at it again on steel and aluminum at 25% and that is overwhelmingly a hit against Canada. The madman theory, which is way up the ladder, I am insane. There's a lot less evidence that that actually works. It's tough to make people believe that you are absolutely out of control and detached from reality.

Daniel, I suspect there is a difference between being a calculating madman with some kind of philosophy underpinning that behavior and just a complete dangerous fool. Which do you think Trump is closer to here? I think he's closer to the first one. Trump has made it clear. We've seen the script before in his first term. We've seen it even in the first three weeks, where once he

actually approaches the prospect of genuine economic cost of what he's contemplating, he backs down, as what happened in the case of Canada and Mexico, after Canada and Mexico agreed to concessions that they had already previously said they were going to do in November and December. And furthermore, I would add that the madman theory doesn't work if you actually think that the person that you're dealing with is genuinely insane. The problem with the madman theory is that in any know, in any kind of form of coercive bargaining,

there are two kinds of credible commitment that you have to make. The first is that you're going to credibly threaten something that is going to be incredibly punishing, and that's where potentially acting like a crazy person or acting like a person with extreme preferences can pay off. But the second credible assurance, and this is extremely important, is that if your target then agrees to a deal, you will then honor that agreement and not impose any punishment. And this is where Donald Trump runs into some difficulty. The madman theory absolutely increases the credible commitment that you're going to punish, but at the same time, it erodes your belief that if you make any kind of deal, Trump is actually going to back off. Or to put it more colloquially, would you make any kind of deal, Trump is actually going to back off?

Or to put it more colloquially, would you trust any agreement that you made with Donald Trump? One of the things that we're seeing right now is the fact that Donald Trump has been perfectly willing to tear up the one trade deal that he negotiated in his first term. Yeah, that is funny that he said every trade deal this country's made in the past have been terrible. I guess not recognizing that the last one that was made, he did. But anyway, that having been—let's set that aside for a moment. Janice, I want to put this kind of clever quote to you from a former Trump official who once said he doesn't think Donald Trump is playing a sort of three-dimensional chess

people ascribe to his decisions, but rather more often than not, he's just eating the pieces. Is it possible that Trump actually is a madman and he's not just playing one on TV? You know, anything's possible, Steve, but I think again, most observers of Donald Trump think if they want to go there that this is not a calculated strategy. And by the way, Dan's point about why it's so tough, because you have to trust the person afterwards that you're going to make a deal, it's a real problem now that everybody has with Trump. It's not only Canada and Mexico, it's Iran that says it is not going to negotiate a nuclear agreement because they did it last time and he tore it up.

With Trump, I think there's a different issue that we're actually not talking about as much. It is this, I'm going to try to be polite and I hope the two of you will take it further. He has a need, an obsessive need for endless flattery. And boy, do you see that playing out there. He takes up all the air time. It is always about him. You need to play to his tune and his song. That sets the boundaries of almost everything.

Foreign leaders know this, from the Prime Minister of Japan to, you know, the leader of North Korea to frankly, the prime minister of Canada and the president of Mexico. So it is working to the extent that you're dealing with somebody who is incredibly narcissistic. You tailor what you're trying to do. You reframe the issues. There Donald Trump has gotten, I think, a lot of traction and continues to get it. Taking him on head-on is not a strategy that any foreign leader thinks will work with Donald Trump.

In which case, Daniel, is it better to understand Trump as a kind of a New York real estate guy who's just on the world stage right now and he is trying to quote-unquote win the deal and dominate other leaders as he would if he were doing a New York real estate deal. I think that's correct, but you know, one of the things you learn about New York real estate deals is that they're never completed. You might sign an agreement,

and then Trump goes to court and sues you, or you might sign an agreement, and then Trump refuses to pay you. So I think one of the deceptive things in terms of thinking about Trump as a transactional president, as a deal maker, I think these to some extent do explain what's going on. The problem is, is that for Trump,

the deal is never completely sealed. He will always welch on the deal if he feels it will gain him an additional short-term advantage. And so in terms of dealing with Trump, I agree with Janis, obviously, that there are strategies to pursue what I call the shining orb strategy of flattering Trump's ego and making it clear that you think he's

the most important person in the room. As a short-term tactic, that works. As a long-term tactic, you have to be prepared that any deal you sign right now is not going to necessarily have a long half-life. Well, and we're seeing that right now, obviously, on the Canadian trade stage, where the USMCA, the trade deal that was negotiated the first time he was president, has apparently no meaning anymore, because here come the tariffs. Janice, if this is the case, what's the point with negotiating with the guy at all since he clearly doesn't intend to keep his word

even if he signs a deal? You know, I think that is the really, that goes to the core of the problem that foreign leaders face with Trump. Is he going to keep his word? Now look, on USMCA, he did in the first term, right? He's the worst deal ever. The deal got what I would politely say as modified. It wasn't completely redone to meet his extreme preferences or anything like that. And then he left everybody, Canada, Mexico, alone for the rest of that term. And everybody got some time to breathe, frankly. And I think that's where foreign leaders are. They are forced by Donald Trump now because you can't trust them.

They're forced to play a short term game, negotiate for two or three years, and hope they live to see a better day when his presidency is over. I think honestly that's where everybody is. There is nobody playing chess at this point with him. Or is that because he's already eaten all the pieces on the board? No, it's because nobody trusts him that he won't flip the board over in the middle of the game if he doesn't like what he just did. I think that's a really critical point. You can't

have it both ways. You can't, you know, humiliate leaders, force them to flatter you, do all of that, and then not give them a reward, which means, okay, if we've got a deal now, I'm going to stick by this. It's the credibility to keep his commitments, which he has virtually none, frankly, with anybody. Daniel, OK, put some meat on this bone for us, if you would. Because probably since the end of World War II, as countries around the world have negotiated,

they have looked for win-win situations, right? Both sides want to come away from the negotiations feeling okay about things. Donald Trump is pretty clearly not a win-win negotiator. He is, I have to win, you have to lose. If those are the new rules, how do we make any progress in the world today? That's a tough question. I would say there's two tracks you want to pursue. The first is, to some extent, Janus is correct.

In terms of dealing with Trump directly, you want to stay out of his line of fire. I'm not quite as pessimistic as I think Janus is in terms of the rest of the world. While there is no denying that Canada and Mexico are particularly vulnerable to Trump's caprice, the truth is there are a lot of other countries in the rest of the world who are less dependent on the United States for trade, for investment, for a variety of things. And I think, and we can see this, for example, in Trump's efforts to, for example, try to create a ceasefire in Ukraine. Russia doesn't necessarily feel like it owes anything to the United States. China doesn't necessarily feel like it owes anything to the United States. So I am extremely skeptical of Trump's ability to use madman tactics on other

great powers to get what he wants. It's more vulnerable allies that that strategy might actually have some utility. The second track, however, which you can argue in terms of solving the world's problems, is to essentially ignore the United States for the time being. The truth is that the European Union is continuing to sign trade deals. The Paris climate change accords are not going to go away. There are a variety of other situations where the United States will now be on the outside looking in. And in some ways, that might actually be the thing that winds up driving Trump to rejoin the global stage, as it were.

Things like expanding the comprehensive partnership of the Trans-Pacific Partnership or other trade deals, or a sense that the United States is missing out on things that are going on in the rest of the world. That is the one thing that might actually lead Trump to become more interested in global engagement. Janice, give us a history lesson here. Has that ever been tried before, where the world essentially isolates and ignores America?

Not really for the last hundred years. I think the last time we tried that was before World War II. And that wasn't the initiative of the United States. That didn't work out very well for the world. But let me just, let's just do a quick geographic tour, right? In the Middle East right now, you really can't ignore the United States. Just look at the scrambling that's gone on as Donald Trump went off script last week and everybody is now, you know, he put the ceasefire that his team negotiated at risk

when he went off script like that. The whole region fundamentally convulsed right now. Let's go to Europe. Well, Europe could, has a better chance than I think of doing what you suggest, except they have a big security problem which they're worried about and they can't manage that alone. So they're not dependent on the United States for trade as we are in Canada, but boy do they want the United States at the table on the security issue. So ignoring the United States doesn't work well for the Baltics and Poland and other

Russia adjacent states and Ukraine that are still really, really preoccupied with the threat from Russia. So yeah, there are parts of the world, in South Asia, you know, in South America that could do this, but the big hotspots, it's really not possible to go around the United States. I don't think that's why this is such a problem. And that's why I think they're all playing short games right now, because that's their only option.

Let me read a quote to both of you. This is from Jennifer Middlestad, professor of history at Rutgers University, whom I suspect you both know. Look for other countries, buoyed by Mr. Trump's scorn, to put the brakes on internationalism and instead build new, separate relationships with one another. What we would be left with is an unruly period for international relations, one that is less centralized and less governed by the shared principles and operating modes

that lasted from the end of World War II until just a few years ago. Daniel, if she's right, are we into a new era of international relations now? I mean, I fear the answer is yes, in the sense that, you know, regardless of what the rest of the world does, it is very clear that the United States is intending to go its own way with the Trump administration, frankly unchecked by other countervailing institutions. I think the most interesting thing that we've seen over the last month is that whatever reasons Donald Trump got elected, which primarily had to do with concerns about inflation, what is striking to me is the degree to which everything Trump has said over the last month

has been obsessed with territorial expansion. He talked about this in the State of the Union address. He's talked about Canada being the 51st state. He's talked about control over the Panama Canal. He's talked about annex being the 51st state. He's talked about control over the Panama Canal. He's talked about annexing or buying Greenland. And now we're on this absurd notion of somehow the United States is gonna annex the Gaza Strip. It strikes me that the reason that Trump is doing this,

is if there is a reason, is because he sees other great powers also engaging in territorial land grabs. Whether it's Russia in Ukraine, or China trying to put the moves on Hong Kong or potentially contemplate a move on Taiwan. And I think Trump looks at this and thinks the way you are a great power is the way you were a great power in the 19th century, which is to acquire territory. The norm of territorial sovereignty has been the sort of one last remaining pretty powerful norm that was created after 1945.

And that is eroding very badly. Janice, if we're in a new era of international relations, what is the nature of this era? So I'm very glad Dan went there because that's where I was going to go. Steve, I agree. You know, I have been very un popular at times in this country when I said the liberal international order was wonderful, but it's gone. I've been saying that probably for the last eight, nine years and I think now there's a recognition as great as it was for small powers like us then. It's gone and we just have to adjust. It's really interesting, this emphasis on territorial expansion, because that very

few people got before he became president. So what does this tell us? We're back in the age of imperialism. Russia is very good at it. China certainly has imperial ambitions. And this is a reassertion of late 19th century American imperialism along with a healthy dose of mercantilism that thinks that tariffs are the way to go.

We have three great powers in the world. Each of these three will be preeminent in their own region. Now I say this with some concern because you know which region this country is in and that is not a good story for us right now, but that's really where I think we're going. And yes, there are bricks. And yes, there are parts of the world that still have the luxury of moving around among these three regions, but even their room for maneuver is narrowed. Less than five minutes to go here. Let's see if we can get a couple of more items up for discussion here.

And I want to start with, Daniel, the attempts to shut down the USAID, which has been most prominent over the last few days. I'm sure there are people watching or listening to us right now who are thinking to themselves, yeah, you know, we spend way too much on foreign aid. It's not doing any good anyway. Good for him for shutting that down. Could you weigh in on that and tell us what, if anything, you think would be lost if USAID disappeared?

So this is a sort of ritual that we talk about if we ever lecture, if Janice I'm sure has done this same lecture, about public opinion and American foreign policy. Which is to say that if you ask Americans, you know, are we spending too much on foreign aid, you will probably get an overwhelming majority response saying yes. You then ask those same Americans, well what percentage of the federal budget do you think is devoted to foreign aid? And, you know, the modal answer is usually

anywhere from a quarter to a third, to a half of the federal budget, when in point of fact, it is less than 1%. When you actually inform Americans about this statistic, they then believe that the United States government should actually be spending more on foreign aid. There is also, by the way, the slightly more cynical answer of most foreign aid, the dirty secret about this in terms of USID, an awful lot of it goes to Americans. When we are providing things like food aid, we are buying food from American farmers. And indeed, there have been various stories this week about American farmers being caught short because the USAID contracts aren't being fulfilled.

Not to mention the fact that this is a tremendous source of American soft power. Whether we're talking about immunizing children against disease or PEPFAR, which is the program that the George W. Bush administration launched to combat AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in Sub-Saharan Africa, these are just obvious policies where we're doing, you know, well by doing good and by destroying these institutions. And it's not clear we're going to be able to recreate them. This is sort of a Humpty Dumpty Act where what's been done already in the last three weeks, I'm not sure it'll take a long time to reconstitute, you know, basically presents the United States as a simple, normal, great power. One apparently interested in expanding its territory

and not interested at all in helping anyone other than Americans. Janice, you know, of course, that Canadians, perhaps now more than ever, are looking around for other alternatives since we seem to feel we need to, I don't know what the word is here, minimize or decouple? Diversify is a better word.

Derisk. Yeah, derisk our relationship with the United States right now. One idea that's being floated out there is that Canada ought to join the European Union. What do you think of that idea? Well, you know, I wonder what the European Union thinks of the idea. More to the point, Steve. I don't think that idea has a lot of legs with the European Union to open up to non-European members that would open a Pandora's box for them.

You know, we've been struggling forever since Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and that takes us back to the days of the third option to the so-called diversify and de-risk. We can do something, and there's a lot of internal stuff that we can do that we haven't done. Canadians are well aware of the fact that's this 25% tariff on aluminum and steel. We can more than compensate, frankly, if we just removed inter-provincial,

non-tariff and tariff barriers inside the country. There's a lot of stuff that we can do, but fundamentally, we live next door to the United States. And we, Mexico, are the two countries in the world that are going to have to figure out how we get along with an imperialist United States that, with a president who's in love with tariffs, we just have no choice but to figure it out we can de-risk to some degree but we can't we can't cut ourselves off with a jigsaw knife and move to the Mediterranean

unfortunately although weather would be a lot better. It's minus 15 out in Toronto today so you are right about that. I want to thank Daniel Dresner from Tufts University and Janice Stein from the University of Toronto for being with us on TVO tonight for a most fascinating conversation. Thanks you two very much. Thank you. It's a pleasure.