Former President Nixon was the first one who supposedly applied the "madman theory", which postulates that its practitioner should pretend to be insane and capable of doing the unthinkable, which of course includes using nuclear weapons, in order to scare his adversaries into backing down and entering into a series of de-escalatory compromises which could play out to the US' advantage.
According to some of Trump's supporters, the President is doing just that when it comes to North Korea, Venezuela, Russia, and China, as well as against Iran and Syria, too, in their own different ways. There's a certain logic inherent to this strategy which makes it a believable explanation for Trump's behavior, but even if it is indeed what's driving the President's foreign policy, it's still exceptionally dangerous, hence its description as the "madman theory".
However, many people find it much easier to just accept that Trump is plain mad, as in crazy, and that nothing that his administration has been doing was planned out or has any reason behind it. Most of these people submit that Trump probably isn't clinically crazy, but just that he and his team are in over their heads and that their inexperience and naiveté are driving the world into disarray, and frightfully putting the US at risk of a nuclear war with Russia. Those who think that Trump is mad point to his personal proclivity for doing spur-of-the-moment things and fret about what he'd do in the event of a real international crisis.
Whether he's actually as mad as his critics allege he is or is expertly practicing Nixon's "madman theory" in a manner even better and more convincing than the originator himself did, there's no disputing the fact that Trump's foreign policy has been more aggressive, brash, and prone to high-stakes risk-taking than any of his predecessors, and that the US is now simultaneously engaged in serious brinksmanship with North Korea, Venezuela, Russia, China, Syria, and Iran.
Chris Shipler, American political commentator, and Eric C. Anderson, retired technology worker from Washington DC and long-term resident of Manaus, Brazil, located in the state of Amazonas, joined us to discuss the issue.
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