“An entire civilization will die tonight, never to return.”
Last Tuesday, Donald Trump openly threatened to carry out a genocide in Iran If the regime of ayatollah did not comply with his ultimatum to reopen the Strait of Hormuzcrucial for global trade. When journalists asked for the exact conditions of an agreement, the president of USA He simply noted: “one that is satisfactory to me.” A day before, the president had exhibited his most unhinged tone. “Open the fucking strait, you crazy bastards, or you’re going to live in hell,” he exclaimed in a post on his social network. Within a few hours, Washington reached an agreement cease-fire con Tehran.
Trump’s rhetorical infamy is not just words, but a performative crime, says philosopher Mathias Risse, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. His atrocious threat of murder to 90 million people not only describes a reality, but creates it: that of terrorizing.
Has the American president gone crazy or is this just a projection? His irrational, volatile and permanently incendiary behavior has made more and more experts consider whether to appear loco It is a strategy with which White House seeks to impose its agenda on the rest of the world.
An entire civilization will die tonight
The Madman Theory
Although Machiavelli wrote in 1517 that sometimes it is “a very wise thing to simulate craziness“, Trump could be following in Iran the footsteps of one of his great personal references: Richard Nixon. Between 1969 and 1974, the foreign policy of the reviled leader republican tried to convince the leaders of countries communists like the USSR o Vietnam of the North that he was a furious madman with the nuclear button at hand to intimidate them and make them bend to his will.
“I call it the Madman Theory“Nixon confessed to his chief of staff, Bob Haldemanin 1968, as he explained in the book The Ends of Power (1978). “I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I have reached the point where I could do anything to stop the guerra (…) The same [líder revolucionario comunista] Ho Chi Minh will be in Paris in two days begging for pazThroughout his presidency, Nixon ordered his deputies to convey to the Soviets that he was “capable of the bloodiest brutality” to extract once-unlikely concessions from them.
Nixon y Kissinger. / EP
A “crazy” against Iran
In 2017, Trump asked the adviser Robert Lighthizer to describe him as a “crackpot“during trade negotiations with South Koreaas uncovered by Axios, a maneuver that resurrected the controversial Nixonian theory. Almost a decade later, the president could be emulating that same strategy in Iran, where the semi-capitated regime is holding on after six weeks of ferocious bombings of USA e Israel. “No one applies a ‘crazy’ strategy when they feel like they are winning,” remarks conservative political analyst David Frum, author of the speeches of George W. Bushin The Atlantic.
Trump desperately wants a victory ahead of some legislative electionsin November, which he addresses with the disapproval of 56% of Americans. “Since he has so far failed to gain any clear victory in this conflictis probably looking for some kind of masterstroke that will allow him to withdraw and declare victory without his critics being able to call into question his version of events,” explained Ali Vaez, director of the International Crisis Group’s Iran program, in statements to The Guardian.
US President Donald Trump gestures as he answers a question from the media during a press conference on Iran from the White House. / Barefoot JIM / EFE
“Loser” strategy
History provides a valuable lesson that Trump could ignore. For Nixon, flirting with madness and thermonuclear attack on Moscow resulted in a period of de-escalate with the Soviets and the signing of two treaties to control the proliferation of armas. However, the fierce launch of 20,000 tons of bombs over Hanoi and Haiphong during Christmas 1972 led to the murder of more than 1,600 civilians and practically failed to alter the text of the peace agreement that was sealed a month later.
In the real world of diplomacy Internationally, Trump’s emphasis on the usefulness of being “unpredictable” for statecraft could be a tactical error. “There is little or no evidence that the madman theory actually works” to “intimidate opponents or extract valuable concessions from them,” international relations expert Stephen M. Walt warned in 2017 in Foreign Policy. In that article he analyzed how this strategy translated into failures for historical “lunatics who prosper in the chaos” how Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot o Muammar al-Gaddafi. Why reinforce a crazy person if that will make him more dangerous?
There is little to no evidence that the madman theory actually works
Frum points out that, while Trump and Israel remain isolated on the international stage, China rises as a solid power by selling itself as a “reliable force for stability,” in the words of Beijing. Violence, impulsivity and disorder are enemies of the trust that diplomacy requires. Or, as Walt emphasized, “crazy people fail because they are generally not good at devising effective long-term strategies.”
Set the world on fire with one crisis self-inflicted and erode credibility of the US to subordinate the world to its personal ambitions is a project with short legs. “Being unpredictable can make sense in sports or poker, or even on a golf course.” battle“Walt warned, ‘but it’s a losing strategy for foreign policy.’
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