Does the “madman theory” of geopolitics work when the leader in question could potentially be a real madman, rather than just someone pretending for strategic reasons to be erratic?
Former US president Richard Nixon was the “madman” who came up with that approach, arguing that if the North Vietnamese believed he was capable of doing anything, they would be begging for peace within days. He was not, though, really mad – bad, perhaps, by the standards of his day, but he and his own officials did know what he would do next.
We can’t say the same of Donald Trump, who surrounds himself with colleagues and even doctors who seem prepared to say increasingly ludicrous things about the US President’s cognitive abilities.
His interview with New York Magazine featured doctors awkwardly shuffling papers with “talking points” about Trump’s health – better than former US president Barack Obama’s, apparently – and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio describing him as “too healthy” and “too active”. That he was having to give an entire interview about his health was telling enough, after months of rumours about physical problems and nodding off in meetings, along with bizarre – even for Trump – public ramblings.
At one point, Trump told the interviewer that his father had suffered from “what do they call it?” And pointed to his head. When he was told he meant Alzheimer’s, Trump replied: “Like an Alzheimer’s thing. Well, I don’t have it.” This is not something most people have to announce, any more than that they’ve got fresh socks on or that they’ve remembered to wash that morning.
And yet other leaders are clearly becoming concerned that they are now not just dealing with someone who breaks the normal laws of politics, or who subscribes to the Madman Theory.
This week, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico reacted with fury after Politico reported that he had told other European leaders he was shocked by the US President’s “psychological state” and that he had appeared “dangerous” and “out of his mind” when the pair had met at Mar-a-Lago on 17 January. Fico, who is more of an ally to Trump than many of his European counterparts, described the reports as “lies”, while the White House said they were “absolutely total fake news”.
Fico was only saying the quiet bit out loud: the European leaders who seem to have repeated his remarks back to their own officials also worry that Trump really is erratic, rather than trying to play everyone.
Trump watchers within the UK Government are constantly trying to work out how much of his pronouncements are driven by his own state of mind, and find that their links in the administration itself are as confused as they are. The transatlantic nuclear community are deeply concerned that this really is a man who might decide to do anything, rather than someone who is merely conforming to familiar doctrines of deterrence by scaring the other party.
All of which raises the question of how Keir Starmer will change his public stance towards the US President. His early approach was to befriend him, offer him letters from the King and arrange a second state visit. That paid off when the big flashpoints were Ukraine and tariffs but Trump has bored of the former now he assumes he’s not getting a Nobel Peace Prize and while the latter continues to consume huge amounts of government time and energy, they are very much not the biggest worry.
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Starmer has already moved from constant flattery. Last week, the Prime Minister adopted a tougher new line after Trump criticised the Chagos Islands deal. Starmer argued in the Commons that the US President was only doing this “for the express purpose of putting pressure on me and Britain in relation to my values and principles, on the future of Greenland”.
Of course, his argument did still assume that Trump was taking a strategic position rather than being genuinely erratic. But there may well come a point where Starmer and other leaders have to acknowledge in public that they don’t really see the sensible rationale behind the decisions that Britain’s ally is taking.
Of course, the problem with a truly unpredictable actor is that standing up to them might be the most provocative action, too. Previously, there seemed to be a method to Trump’s madness, and so Starmer and others could respond with their own method. But the thing about a real madman in the White House is that not even he knows what he’s going to do next, let alone anyone else.
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