The fact that Donald Trump threatened that a “whole civilization will die tonight” before the fragile U.S.-Iranian ceasefire took hold has led to an extensive conversation about “Madman Theory,” the use of extreme threats in warfare to draw adversaries to the bargaining table.
Professor Jamie Rowen, a legal studies scholar at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, pointed out that the history began with a Cold War gambit that failed.
“So the idea really started after Richard Nixon decided to send bombers with nuclear warheads over to Russia to pressure Russia to give the United States what it wanted in the Vietnam War in the late 1960s,” Rowen said.
In what became known as “Operation Giant Lance,” Nixon sent the B-52 bombers in flight from Alaska toward the Soviet Union on Oct. 27, 1969, but he cancelled the exercises after finding they weren’t having the desired effect.
“Russia just said, ‘No, we don’t actually think they’re going to start a nuclear war over this,’ and so Nixon didn’t get what he wanted,” Rowen continued.
Flash forward to Tuesday.
After weeks of Trump’s escalating brinkmanship and threats of war crimes, the United States agreed to a two-week ceasefire agreement in which Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz and bombs continue to fly throughout the Gulf. Trump’s immediate statement in the wake of the agreement called Iran’s 10-point framework — a maximalist plan that would allow nuclear enrichment, abandonment of sanctions, and financial compensation — a “workable basis on which to negotiate.”
That was the same plan that Iran demanded well before Trump’s latest ultimatum.
Citing the research of political scientist Roseanne McManus, Rowen said that madman theory historically fares poorly when the adversary thinks the threats are coming from a leader who’s just crazy.
“If a leader is situationally acting like a madman, and they seem to just sort of have extreme preferences, then that might actually pressure an adversary to give in,” Rowen said. “But if the person seems to be dispositionally mad and seems to not understand the consequences of their actions, well, then the adversary is not going to give in.”
The reason for that, she noted, is “credibility.”
“You have to believe that they are actually going to do the thing they’re threatening to capitulate,” she added.
During a roughly half-hour conversation, Rowen sorts through the history and its application.
