Historian: Trump's "madness" is a calculated Cold War tactic

British historian James D. Boys suggests that U.S. President Donald Trump deliberately employs a "madman theory" strategy, a tactic from the Cold War era, to confuse and unnerve his opponents. Boys contends that Trump's perceived unpredictability and impulsiveness are not accidental but a calculated performance.

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Anyone who doesn't write exclusively condemning this government makes themselves vulnerable to criticism from people who only attack and don't want to understand. I fully understand why many people dislike Donald Trump. He is a very special person, very direct, and he doesn't try to put things into diplomatic language.

Boys, who has faced accusations of being a Trump apologist for attempting to rationally explain the president's policies, acknowledges the widespread dislike for Trump's direct and undiplomatic communication style. He notes a historical pattern where European audiences, accustomed to more diplomatic U.S. presidents, often react negatively to Republican leaders, citing George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan as previous examples.

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In recent decades, Europeans have become accustomed to democratic presidents, in particular, coming to Europe and telling them what they want to hear. Republican presidents have generally not done that. As much as Donald Trump is detested in Europe – George W. Bush was before him, as was Ronald Reagan. There is a clear pattern here.

The historian criticizes both the media and academia for failing to seriously engage with the underlying reasons for Trump's policies. He points to the initial dismissal of Trump's candidacy, with many journalists refusing to cover his announcement. Boys highlights Trump's 2016 foreign policy speech, where he criticized Obama's negotiation style and declared his intention to act unpredictably, as a key moment that was largely overlooked.

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The problem is that neither the media nor the academic world has made much effort to understand this administration. When Donald Trump announced his candidacy, nobody took him seriously. Many journalists even refused to appear at that event. Important testimonies, like Trump's first foreign policy speech in 2016, were therefore overlooked. In it, he criticized Obama publicly for his negotiation style and said that, unlike him, he wanted to act unpredictably.

According to Boys, the "madman theory" is not a novel concept but a tactic traceable to Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Sun Tzu. He explains that in the 1950s, academics at Harvard, including Thomas Schelling, Daniel Ellsberg, and Henry Kissinger, developed ideas around the suspension of rationality, feigning madness, and accepting limited nuclear war. Boys notes that when Richard Nixon appointed Kissinger as national security advisor in 1968, he brought this intellectual framework into policy-making.

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The Madman Theory is not really a theory, but a tactic from the Cold War. Unpredictability as a concept is not new. It can be traced back to Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Sun Tzu. But in the fifties, academics at Harvard University worked on a new foreign policy approach.