In 1517,
Niccolò Machiavelli argued that sometimes it is "a very wise thing to simulate madness" (
Discourses on Livy, book 3, chapter 2). However, in ''Nixon's Vietnam War'', Kimball argues that Nixon arrived at the strategy independently, as a result of practical experience and observation of
Dwight D. Eisenhower's handling of the
Korean War.
Richard Nixon " in October 1969 was carried out at the direction of President
Richard Nixon (left) and
National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger (right). In October 1969, the Nixon administration indicated to the
Soviet Union that "the madman was loose" when the
United States military was ordered (unbeknownst to the majority of the American population) to full global war readiness, an alert known as the "
Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Test", which culminated in "
Operation Giant Lance" when eighteen
B-52 bombers armed with
thermonuclear weapons flew patterns near the Soviet border for three consecutive days. However, according to the
U.S. State Department, another explanation is that the Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Test was ordered by Nixon to deter a
possible Soviet nuclear strike against the People's Republic of China in 1969. In July 1969 (according to a
CIA report declassified in February 2018), Nixon may have suggested to the
South Vietnamese president Nguyễn Văn Thiệu that the two paths he was considering were either a nuclear weapons option or setting up a coalition government. According to the historian
Michael S. Sherry, the
1970 incursion into Cambodia was part of the strategy to incentivize negotiations.
Nikita Khrushchev The Soviet premier
Nikita Khrushchev sought to develop the image of a madman, which was accepted to some degree by U.S. policymakers. For instance, during the
KORUS FTA renegotiations Trump told U.S. trade negotiators to warn South Korean diplomats that "if they don't give the concessions now, this crazy guy will pull out of the deal", which
Jonathan Swan of
Axios characterized as a "madman" approach to international relations. Trump's application of madman theory was linked to the release of American pastor
Andrew Brunson from Turkish detention in 2018, after Trump threatened Turkey's economy in retaliation. During the
2024 U.S. presidential election campaign, Trump touted his version of the madman theory as a strategy he would utilize against
China to deter an invasion or blockade of
Taiwan, and against
Russia to push for a peace deal to end its
invasion of Ukraine. Trump has also stated that he could utilize the threats of high tariffs to incentivize trade deals without actually engaging in trade wars, and warnings about U.S. reluctance to defend
NATO member states as a means of spurring NATO allies to invest in their own defense.
Vladimir Putin , several journalists speculated that
Russian president Vladimir Putin was using the madman strategy. Another example of madman theory has also been attributed to
Russian president Vladimir Putin, especially in the lead-up to and during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In 2015,
Martin Hellman stated that "nuclear weapons are the card that Putin has up his sleeve, and he's using it to get the world to realize that Russia is a
superpower, not just a
regional power." This use of the madman theory, Hellman argued, was something which the
West had not "properly caught on to." In 2022, days before the invasion,
Gideon Rachman argued in the
Financial Times that Putin's "penchant for publishing long, nationalist essays" regarding Ukrainian and Russian history, his plans of nuclear weapons exercises and his image of isolation and "growing increasingly out of touch and paranoid" during the
COVID-19 pandemic, could have been a use of madman strategy. Rachman stated that Putin "is ruthless and amoral. But he is also shrewd and calculating. He takes risks, but he is not crazy", comparing Putin's recent actions to his more "rational" actions of the previous 20 years. However, Rachman also noted that "the line between acting like a madman and being a madman is disconcertingly thin." In the first days of the invasion, Paul Taylor of
Politico also speculated that Putin was using the madman strategy after his decision to place Russian deterrence nuclear forces on "special alert". Taylor stated that Putin was exhibiting "pathological behavior" by "swinging wildly from seeming openness to negotiations to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in four fronts, while threatening the world with mass destruction." Taylor also stated, in reference to Putin's television address prior to the invasion, that "
his branding Ukraine's elected leaders as drug-addicted neo-Nazis raised doubts even among supportive Russians about his mental state and health." ==Research==