Is Donald Trump mad?

Or does he merely want the world to think he's mad?

If the latter, then he would be a practitioner of the madman theory.

A tactic of coercive statecraft first theorized at the dawn of the nuclear

age when American statesman found themselves in charge of the bomb, an invention which completely

revised the standard geostrategic playbook. James D. Boyes is a political historian and author of U.S.

Grand Strategy and the Madman Theory from Nixon to Trump. He argues that the madman theory is

not madness, but the performance of madness, a tactic by which a sane leader fains irrationality to make an adversary believe there is even a 1% chance of overwhelming disproportionate force.

In this conversation, James helps us understand where the theory came from, how Nixon used it, why Trump revived it, and whether it explains the strange,

unnerving logic of American power today. Perhaps the chaos of Trump's foreign policy is

a calculated attempt to make America's enemies and allies fear what he might do next.

I'm Thomas Small.

This is my conflicted conversation with James Boys.

Hello, James.

It's really nice to meet you.

Thank you so much for coming on Conflicted.

Well, it's wonderful to meet you. Thank you so much for coming on Conflicted. Well, it's wonderful to meet you.

Thank you so much for having me.

James, your new book, U.S. Grand Strategy and the Madman Theory, I found to be not only very informative,

but as I've told you already, a kind of tonic for the soul in these very confusing times because you set out with great clarity, mustering a lot of facts, a lot of very cogent and clear analysis, that the situations

we find ourselves in now, especially those of us who pay attention to geopolitics and

American politics and stuff, is not so historically unprecedented.

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