"Madman theory" -idea you can win negotiations by making your opponents afraid you'll do something crazy if they don't

...make a deal.

Apr https://www.stopthepresses.news/p/trumps-not-just-pretending-to-be

Trump’s not just pretending to be a madman. He actually is one.
His unhinged behavior may alarm Americans more than it intimidates Iran
Mark Jacob

The master of political pragmatism, Niccolo Machiavelli, wrote in the 16th century that “at times it is a very wise thing to simulate madness.”

Four centuries later, another pragmatist, Richard Nixon, made use of the “madman theory” – the idea that you can win negotiations by making your opponents afraid you’ll do something crazy if they don’t make a deal. In Nixon’s case, he tried to convince the Soviet Union and North Vietnam that he had an itchy finger on the nuclear trigger.

But we’ve never had a president who acted as mad as Donald Trump.

I’m not the first person to apply the madman theory to Trump, of course, but I want to put it in the context of his illegal war and address the question of whether both the American people and the Iranians should be deeply frightened by his approach to warmaking.

There’s evidence that Trump consciously uses the madman theory. During trade talks with South Korea, he supposedly told his negotiators to warn their counterparts that “if they don’t give the concessions now, this crazy guy will pull out of the deal.”