Nixon’s ‘Madman’ approach is dangerous, but it works — and Trump knows it

Dozens of Democrats are now calling to remove President Trump from office, horrified by his over-the-top threats against Iran. (Democrats, it is worth noting, were not alarmed enough by war in the Middle East to actually be at their desks in Washington — rather, they are on vacation.)  

Amazingly, after a decade or more of dealing with the blustery businessman, Democrats are still clueless about how Trump operates. Have they not read “The Art of the Deal”? Do they not understand that the president always leads with maximalist demands and then, having shaken his adversary, withdraws to a more moderate and desired goal? Apparently not.

Democrats howling for the president’s head are also appallingly ignorant of history. Trump is not the first commander in chief to use dire threats to end a war. “Madman” Richard Nixon and former President Dwight Eisenhower forged that diplomatic path years ago.  

As it happens, Trump’s apocalyptic threats may have pushed the regime in Tehran — or what’s left of it — to agree to a ceasefire. His warning that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” was meant to terrify. It was, admittedly, excessive, as was his crude demand that the mullahs “Open the F—in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH!” Those demands, directed at officials in Tehran and posted to Truth Social, proved effective.

No one should be surprised that the mullahs, or the remaining heads of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, took Trump’s threats seriously. He has purposefully cultivated an aura of unpredictability, beginning with his initial meeting in 2017 with China’s President Xi. In the course of an elegant dinner at Mar-a-Lago, over what Trump described as a “beautiful piece of chocolate cake,” he informed Xi that the U.S. military had just dispatched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles to bomb a military airfield in Syria. For the protocol-obsessed Chinese, it was a warning: Do not underestimate this president.  

It was also a diplomatic masterstroke.  

More than once, Trump has employed Nixon’s “madman theory.” He understands, as Nixon did, the value of keeping the enemy off-guard and guessing. After Trump shockingly extricated President Nicolás Maduro from his “secure” compound in Venezuela and after bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities last summer, he has convinced the mullahs in Iran that he is capable of bold and unexpected measures. Trump is not a Brussels diplomat, devoted to meetings and committees. He is an action figure, ever ready to destabilize the opposition. 

Nixon wanted to bring the Vietnam War to a close, and he used draconian threats to do so. Writing in his memoirs in 1978, his one-time chief of staff H.R. Haldeman recalled: “The communists feared Nixon above all other politicians in U.S. public life. And Nixon intended to manipulate that fear to bring an end to the war. The communists regarded him as an uncompromising enemy whose hatred for their philosophy had been spelled out over and over again in two decades of public life. Nixon saw his advantage in that fact. ‘They’ll believe any threat of force that Nixon makes because it’s Nixon,’ he said.”  

Nixon reportedly told Haldeman: “I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I’ve reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry — and he has his hand on the nuclear button’ — and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.” 

Nixon later disputed Haldeman’s version of this story, but there is no denying subsequent events, as official White House documents spell them out: “In October 1969, the U.S. military, including its nuclear forces, secretly went on alert, a fact that remained unknown for many years. The documentary record offers no definitive explanation as to why U.S. forces went on this alert.”

One explanation was that Nixon wanted to convince the Soviets that the U.S. was prepared to launch a nuclear attack against North Vietnam. He wanted Moscow to pressure Hanoi to negotiate an end to the war in Southeast Asia. Not surprisingly, this terrifying prospect moved the peace process forward.

Nixon was evidently inspired to use existential threats by Eisenhower, who had used a similar approach to bring the stalled Korean War to a close. Desperate to end the stalemate, Eisenhower secretly communicated to the Chinese that he would deploy nuclear bombs on North Korea unless they immediately signed on to a truce. As a former military leader, the president’s threat was taken seriously; shortly thereafter, the Chinese called for a ceasefire and the Korean War ended.

We do not know if Trump’s ceasefire in Iran will hold. We do not know whether Iran’s leadership will agree to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons or permanently reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

We do know that Trump’s over-the-top threats moved the diplomatic needle. Note that Trump’s hammer is always delivered with a velvet glove. While threatening to eradicate Iran, he also offered complimented the “different, smarter, and less radicalized minds” of the Iranian leaders currently making decisions behind the scenes. As he called for Trump’s ouster, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) described the president as “completely unhinged.” He is wrong — Trump knows exactly what he is doing. 

Trump will continue to use maximalist (and sometimes outrageous) military and diplomatic pressure in his campaign to rid the Middle East of Iran’s near 50-year campaign of terror. Republican and Democratic leaders have solemnly vowed for decades that Tehran must not be allowed to acquire a nuclear bomb, but they have done nothing to prevent it. Trump is getting the job done.

Democrats’ sensibilities may be offended, but future generations will be grateful. 

Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company.