JONATHAN ALTER:
Hi, I’m Jonathan Alter of Old Goats.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
And I’m Julian Zelizer from The Long View.
JONATHAN ALTER:
And this is our discussion of the “madman theory,” which is an idea that’s come up after President Trump’s two social media posts regarding Iran and his threat to end an entire civilization.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
Of course, the madman theory is something both of us have studied and read a lot about. It’s associated primarily with President Richard Nixon, starting in 1969, his first year. There’s a lot of documentation of how he wanted to scare the Soviets into believing he was willing to do anything to end the war in Vietnam, and also to position the United States in a stronger place in the Cold War.
In 1969, he puts U.S. forces, including nuclear forces, at high alert to send a signal. There is the bombing campaign—the Christmas Day bombing campaign in 1972—against the North Vietnamese. And in 1973, with the Middle East, we see other incarnations of this.
The fears increased during the Watergate crisis that he was unstable and even drinking heavily. H.R. Haldeman, who was his chief of staff, is the one who articulates this years later when writing about Nixon. He says—and I have the quote here—that Nixon told him this was his theory: “I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war.”
So that’s when that idea came into being. I’m curious how you think of Nixon in light of what we’ve just gone through.
JONATHAN ALTER:
Well, you know, in some ways it really starts with the Soviets. So when Khrushchev says, “We will bury you,” that’s a form of madman theory. Or when Putin says, at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, “I may use nuclear weapons,” that’s a variation on the same thing.
The problem is, it doesn’t really work. The best example, as you mentioned, is the Christmas bombings of Hanoi. Supporters of Nixon will say, well, the next month, in early ’73, they get this peace treaty, right? No—they didn’t get a good peace treaty from the United States’ perspective. They got some kind of deal. In a way, there might be a deal with Iran now, but it was a bad deal. It sold out the people of South Vietnam, and it was a fig leaf to basically end the war.
So people are not intimidated by this kind of rhetoric, even when it’s way over the line. What Trump did on Easter Sunday, I think, will be remembered for a long time, because he was threatening an ancient civilization with annihilation. It wasn’t fooling anybody—except that Trump is so unhinged that I think all of us had, in the back of our minds, maybe he could do this. Because every time you think Trump has touched bottom, he crashes through the floor.
It turns out he was looking at it more like a real estate negotiation, where you attack the other side right before you come to some kind of deal. But the deal that he got out of this “madman theory” is horrible. Basically, the Iranians came back with a ten-point plan that, if the United States agrees to any significant part of it, would mean that Iran won.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
And I’d just add—versions of the madman theory, like threatening to end an entire civilization rhetorically, have a cost to the moral standing of the United States. And secondly, you don’t control war, and the logic of war can sometimes lead you to actually go for things that are pretty devastating, like the Christmas bombing.
So I think that’s part of the fear from last week. It’s not always a controlled thing. And here we have a leader with nuclear weapons, so you never know where this goes.
JONATHAN ALTER:
An unhinged leader with nuclear weapons. Yeah, great point.
