Scribblings

Trump and the Art of Losing Bigly

As they say in Texas, it turns out that Trump is all hat and no cattle. Full of social media braggadocio, he has just lost a war to a bunch of medieval theocrats. On any objective measure, Iran is now a stronger regional power than it was before the war began. I call that losing bigly.

James D. Boys is a senior research fellow at the Centre on Politics at University College, London. I finished reading his book US Grand Strategy and the Madman Theory: From Nixon to Trump last Sunday just as word was breaking that the US and Iran had signed a deal to at least temporarily bring the war between them to an end.

It is not often that you read a book on a theory of negotiations at the same time as you have an example of that theory playing out in real time. Did the Iran deal deliver on the madman theory?

By the way, the book is a fascinating read, though I do think it over-rationalises Trump’s approach to policy. My own view is that Trump has genius political instincts but is nonetheless a fruitcake for all that who has destroyed the US’s reputation in the world. Would you buy a second-hand casino from this man? One that he had bankrupted in the first place?

I first became aware of the “madman theory” during the “Brexit Wars” when Boris Johnson was quoted as saying:

(He thought) … that President Trump … would do a better job negotiating Brexit than Mrs. May.

I am increasingly admiring of Donald Trump … I have become more and more convinced that there is method in his madness.

Imagine Trump doing Brexit … There’d be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos. Everyone would think he’d gone mad. But actually you might get somewhere. It’s a very, very good thought.” (here)

According to Boys, the “madman” theory of negotiations has its origins in the work of three American academics, who were also influential in Washington policy circles, one of whom was to become extremely influential and globally well-known.

The three were Thomas Schelling, Daniel Ellsberg, and Henry Kissinger. From the 1950s onwards, their work focused on strategic options for the US during the Cold War when both the US and the Soviet Union had nuclear weapons. Out of their work emerged the concept of the “madman theory”.

At the same time, Richard Nixon, Vice-President to Eisenhower during the 1950s, was coming to similar conclusions as a result of observing the tactics employed by Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, during the Korean War and other international incidents. He was to use these insights when he finally became President himself after the 1968 elections.

In essence, the madman theory does not require the practitioner of the strategy to be mad. It simply requires that counterparties believe they are mad, irrational, and out of control. “Madmen” negotiators want to keep the other side off-guard, unable to predict how the “madman” might act or react in any given situation. For example, would they be prepared to use tactical, nuclear weapons? Or, at least, give the impression that they might.

Let me say at this point that for most of us involved in everyday negotiations, whether it is industrial relations negotiations, commercial negotiations, or the small negotiations that fill our personal lives, the “madman” theory has limited relevance. It may work if you are a major power with nuclear weapons. Even then, maybe not, as we will see. In ordinary business and personal life, if you tried to give the impression that you are mad and started to behave irrationally, you would probably quickly find yourself out of a job and living on your own. Maybe even in care somewhere.

The “madman theory” is premised on the notion that a great power with nuclear weapons should convey the impression that it is prepared to use them in certain circumstances to force its opponent to the negotiating table and to do a deal on the “madman’s” terms.

Has this ever happened? Has it worked out when it was tried? Not that I know of.

Go back to Nixon. He campaigned in 1968 saying that he would quickly bring the Vietnam War to an end and that US troops would soon be coming home. Once elected President, he recruited Kissinger as his National Security Advisor, one of the three academics who have authored the madman theory. A chance for Kissinger to apply the theory in practice.

But there was no quick end to the Vietnam War, and Nixon even extended it with the illegal bombing of Cambodia.

It took until 1975 for the US to extricate itself from Vietnam, and it was hardly out of the country before the North Vietnamese overran the South and the reunited Vietnam became a Communist state, which it remains to this day. The use of the madman approach to grand strategy and great power diplomacy clearly did not work and failed to deliver in the case of Vietnam.

Had it delivered in Korea, where Boys says that Eisenhower and Dulles had threatened a nuclear attack to bring the fighting to an end? Maybe they did, and maybe it did work, but Korea remains divided, and North Korea is now a nuclear power.

Boys well makes the point that whatever about the use of madman tactics by Eisenhower and Nixon, neither of them was mad in any clinical sense. Neither did they shout their madman tactics from the rooftops. They let their thinking be quietly known through backchannels, which also has the benefit of plausible deniability if things go wrong. “Did you ever hear me say that …?”

Which brings us to Trump and his Iran “deal”. There is no rooftop too high from which Trump will not shout, though in his case it is social media, Truth Social, that he uses. Theodore Roosevelt is quoted as saying: “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far”. Trump likes to talk loudly, but when push comes to shove, he never appears to have much of a stick. There is some truth in “TACO” – Trump Always Chickens Out.

The more I read about the agreement with the Iranians, the more I conclude that it is an “entrée deal” and not the “plat principal”. Of course, I use entrée in the French sense of a starter and not the main meal, which is how Americans use the word. In other words, it appears to be an agreement to negotiate an agreement. Nothing wrong with that. Except it does not deliver what Trump claimed through social media were his war objectives when he and Israel started bombing Iran on February 28.

He wanted regime change in Iran and the complete destruction of its capacity to produce nuclear weapons, as well as putting an end to its ballistic missile resources. He also wanted to stop its ability to threaten Israel, either directly or through its proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon. In a word, he wanted to break Iran. He wanted unconditional surrender. “Unconditional surrender” were the exact words he used.

As I write, the fundamentalist, theocratic regime in Iran is still in place, with, it would appear, hardliners even more in control than before. Little hope of democracy for the people of Iran anytime soon. Iran still seems to have most of its attack arsenal in place, able to launch missiles and drones against its Gulf neighbours, not to mention Israel. As for its nuclear material, that will be a matter for discussions over the next sixty days. The nuclear can has been kicked down the road.

The last time I looked, the Strait of Hormuz was freely open to shipping before the bombing started on February 28. Then the Iranians closed it and discovered that they had global economic leverage in their hands. Will it remain freely open in the future, or will fees be charged for the passage of ships through it, given Iran an enormous financial bonus? Trump says no; the Iranians say they will be charging a “fee for services”.

How much in dollars has Trump’s team offered Iran? Much more, it seems, than Obama gave them back in 2015.

Are all stakeholders on both sides on board with the deal? Israel appears unhappy, as do many in the US MAGA movement in the US. Will Israel do what Trump orders it to do? Commentators in Israel have said that the deal is a “sell-out” and a “surrender” with Israel “being thrown under the bus”. here.

The madman theory might work if you are a nuclear power. But it probably doesn’t unless you are really prepared to use nuclear weapons, and few are willing to do so. The price you pay is just too high for dropping atomic bombs.

But there are still some lessons those of us involved in mundane, everyday negotiations can take from the Iran debacle.

One: Be clear and precise about your objectives before you start a negotiation. If you do not know where you want to end up, you will not know how to get there.

Two: Never overpromise and create unreal expectations.

Three: Always be moderate in your language. Words can hurt, they can sting, they can wound, and they are not easily forgotten.

Four: Always agree what you have agreed before the negotiation ends. If the two parties walk out of the room with different interpretations of what the text means, they are heading for trouble.

Five: Beware of “dealitis”. “We have been at this so long, we cannot finish without a deal. Otherwise, we will be seen as failures”. I dislike the phrase, but there is a truth to it: “No deal is better than a bad deal” and “dealitis” often leads to bad deals. Walking away when you have to is a sign of strength, not failure.

Six: Always, but always, keep your own stakeholders with you. Communicate, communicate, communicate. The phrase “We will not give a running commentary on our negotiations” is nonsense. You need to do so to bring your people with you and to pick up early warning signs of potential trouble.

I learnt much from Boys’s book, and he makes a strong case for a certain degree of cogency in Trump’s thinking, stretching back to his obsessions with certain policy themes going back many years.

But, as I said earlier, I am still convinced that Trump is a fruitcake, and a fruitcake short of a few raisins at that.