Understanding Trump 2.0: The 'Rationality of Irrationality'

Today we look at the Don’s unpredictability – his usage of the ‘rationality of irrationality’ – and how this is believed to redound to the US’s benefit. At the end I discuss where things stand as we head into Trump 2.0. I think this one is a ‘fun’ (and hopefully informative!) read – so strap in!

(Note that sources for all quotes below are available in my book on Trump’s foreign policy).

The ‘Rationality of Irrationality’

A lens for understanding Trump’s unpredictable behavior and rhetorical outbursts lies in post-war writing on American strategic theory. In the post-war era, strategists grappled with how to make nuclear deterrent threats credible given they were predicated on being able to convince Soviet leaders that should they attack the US, its allies, or threaten vital American interests, the US would respond with a devastating retaliatory nuclear strike that would, in all likelihood, lead to the destruction of civilization. Part of this involved coming up with elaborate ways to communicate this threat credibly, with Thomas Schelling positing that strategic actors could consciously choose to act in an irrational manner for rational purposes.

To Schelling, deterrence (and strategic interaction and competition more broadly) was akin to a bargaining situation between adversaries. In this situation, an actor (A) could behave in a manner the other side (B) perceives to be ‘irrational’. In doing so, B will become uncertain about A’s seemingly ‘unpredictable’ and dangerous behavior, which may lead them to back down during crucial strategic confrontations or in other situations. As such, A’s irrational behavior can be viewed as rational given the expected payoff. Opponents may be less likely in general to take action at your expense over concerns that they simply do not know how you will respond.

The Iranians have used a version of this tactic, the Soviet Union under Premier Nikita Khruschev practiced it and North Korea has been using it for decades. Even US presidents, such as Richard Nixon, spoke of a “Madman Theory”, telling his White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman that:

“I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where 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”

Additionally, to try secure Soviet cooperation in assisting the US to wind down the war in Vietnam, Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger wrote: “We must worry the Soviets about the possibility that we might lose our patience and may get out of control”, and Nixon also said “I just want to keep them off balance. Keel them questioning what I will do”.

(I’ll write about Kissinger’s influence on Trump 1.0 in a future post but, in brief, he had the ear of Trump and they met several times)

Despite the precedent Nixon set, what is unprecedented is an American president so consistently using this approach and directing it towards both allies and adversaries. It makes the US appear unreliable and a disruptive actor seeking to complicate international relations writ large.

In fact, this was a core and consistent pillar of the Trump administration’s foreign policy. In a statement recorded by Jeffrey Goldberg, a senior Trump administration national-security official stated that part of the rationale underlying the “Trump Doctrine” is the belief that “Permanent destabilization creates American advantage”. Goldberg continues,

“The official who described this to me said Trump believes that keeping allies and adversaries alike perpetually off-balance necessarily benefits the United States, which is still the most powerful country on Earth. When I noted that America’s adversaries seem far less destabilized by Trump than do America’s allies, this official argued for strategic patience. ‘They’ll see over time that it doesn’t pay to argue with us.’”

In an interview in January 2003 Trump critiqued the Bush administration’s open telegraphing of plans to invade Iraq, “When I watch Dan Rather explaining how we are going to be attacking, where we’re going to attack, what routes we’re taking, what kind of planes we’re using, how to stop them, how to stop us, it is a little bit disconcerting … tell the enemy how we’re going about it, we have just found out this and that. It is ridiculous”. In September 2013, he criticized Obama for backing down from his ‘red line’ in Syria, again reiterating the value of surprise rather than telegraphing US’s military intentions in advance.

And then in the run-up to the 2016 election Trump declared he would remain unpredictable to keep others off-guard, declaring in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity in November 2015 that: “I want to be much less – this country has to be less predictable”. This position was reiterated during his first major foreign policy address as the Republican presidential candidate in April 2016: “We are totally predictable. We tell everything. We’re sending troops? We tell them. We’re sending something else? We have a news conference. We have to be unpredictable, and we have to be unpredictable starting now”. This principle led him to refuse to rule out using nuclear weapons, stating “You don’t want to say ‘take everything off the table’ because you’re a bad negotiator if you say that … nuclear should be off the table, but would there be a time when it could be used? Possibly … I would never take any of my cards off the table”.

The ‘Rationality of Irrationality’ in practice

Trump’s approach to numerous foreign policy issues during his first term suggested he acted irrationally to obtain leverage, and this is perhaps nowhere better displayed than in his interactions with North Korea and Iran. As noted, North Korea and Iran have at times used the very same tactics. Evidence suggests Trump also used it against Kim in the lead-up to the historic summit between the two leaders in June 2018 (even though this behavior conforms to Trump’s negotiation tactics, examined above, through the lens adopted here they are also explicable as unpredictable maneuvers).

Consider, in the year prior to this, and against the backdrop of North Korea expanding its nuclear long-range ballistic missile tests, both leaders threatened one another aggressively. This seemed to reach its apex in September 2017, when Trump issued the aforementioned statement that the US could face a situation where it would “have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea”, and that “Rocket Man [Kim Jong-un] is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime”. Despite this, within seven months of Trump’s statements at the UN, he stunned the world by accepting an invitation to meet Kim Jong-un at a summit in June 2018. The unpredictable behavior continued when, in mid-May, North Korea threatened to cancel the summit in response to ongoing US–South Korea military exercises. This announcement was seemingly irrational because the summit had been agreed to in the knowledge that these war games would continue in the lead-up. So why would North Korea do this? In all likelihood it was to continue to project an image of impulsiveness. In any event, Pyongyang did not go ahead and cancel the summit. Trump, for his part, responded a week later with a letter that (at the time) canceled the summit. This also seemed crazy and capricious but like North Korea’s bluff, is consistent with Trump’s stated desire to be unpredictable and, within a bargaining framework where being fickle is viewed as providing each side with leverage, the behavior of both suggests they were seeking leverage over the other through erratic behavior.

South Korea also experienced Trump’s volatility. For example, after Robert Lighthizer told Trump he would instruct the South Koreans that they had only 30 days to grant concessions to the US (to pay more to host US troops), Trump said “No, no, no … That’s not how you negotiate. You don’t tell them they’ve got 30 days. You tell them, ‘This guy’s so crazy he could pull out any minute’”. Trump continued, “That’s what you tell them: Any minute … And by the way, I might. You guys all need to know I might. You don’t tell them 30 days. If they take 30 days they’ll stretch this out”.

Trump acted unpredictably towards Iran. In June 2019 evidence emerged that Tehran, likely in response to the Trump administration’s ‘maximum pressure’ policy (which included withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, increasing sanctions, and strengthening the anti-Iran coalition in the region), asserted its power against US interests through an uptick in proxy attacks against US forces in the region and mining vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz. This campaign culminated in Iran shooting down a US drone on June 20, 2019.

The administration – and Trump’s response – was predictably unpredictable. Firstly, on the day the drone was shot down the president stated “I find it hard to believe it was intentional, if you want to know the truth … I think that it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it”. Yet, that very night, apparently a decision was made to conduct a limited military strike against Iranian radar and missile sites. At the last minute, despite US forces being “cocked and loaded”, Trump called off the strike. This occurred, he said, because he was informed it would kill 150 people, which would be disproportionate to Iran’s shooting down an unmanned US drone. It was also odd that the president reportedly asked and was informed of this fact at the last minute, given this information would have been communicated to him before US forces were in motion. In the days to come Trump would oscillate his messaging between saying he did not want war with Iran but that Tehran would be annihilated if war broke out; that his hawkish advisors were pushing for conflict; that he sought negotiations with no preconditions with Iran over its nuclear program; and that “If they [Iran] do something else, it’ll [the US response] be double”. By most president’s standards, such contradictory messaging would be unexpected; for Trump it is the norm.

The US drone strike that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani in Iraq on January 3, 2020, and that briefly seemed to place the region on the cusp of a US–Iran war, was also completely unpredictable, eliciting shock from much of the world. It was at odds with the administration’s – and the president’s in particular – hesitance in responding to prior aggressive Iranian moves (and Trump’s pledge in October 2019 to get the US out of “ridiculous Endless Wars”) in the region with force, while risking a war seemed unwise as the US entered an election year. Yet, Trump still went through with the action, adding additional weight to his unpredictable bona fides.

Did Trump’s seeming irrationality pay off in his first terms? States, for obvious reasons, are loathe to admit they changed their policies/gave in to demands from others because the other was unpredictable and unnerved them. But it is notable that Iran’s reaction to the Soleimani assassination was calculated to ensure it did not give cause for the US to escalate the situation into a larger war, as a warning was delivered hours ahead of time by Iran through Iraq to US forces that it intended to strike US military bases in Iraq. Iran has also called Trump a “gambler” suggesting they view him as an unpredictable actor.

On North Korea, Trump matched its unpredictability and, at times, bellicosity with his own. The fact negotiations ultimately stalled and Pyongyang stated during Trump 1.0 that its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and international ballistic missile testing had come to an end, but it not restart long-range missile tests, suggests were wary of pushing the Trump administration too far.

If sowing a sense of uncertainty in the minds of foreign leaders is the basic objective of this tactic, then Trump was definitely successful in his first term and it’s notable that after Trump left office a number of US adversaries chose to make moves they didn’t while he was in office (Russia -> Ukraine; Iran/Hamas -> Israel; Venezuela’s expanded claims over Guyana; the deepening/consolidation of the Russia-China-Iran-North Korea alignment, etc).

Before I conclude, a couple other things are worth mentionin. Trump has said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would not have occurred had be won re-election in 2021 because he told Putin he would nuke Moscow if Russia invaded Ukraine. No doubt Trump’s unpredictability was factored into Putin’s thinking, and it had more of a restraining effect on him than had such a threat been delivered by a more ‘normal’ US president.

Meanwhile, Trump has said that China will be careful not to provoke him when he returns to the White House next months because President Xi “respects me and he knows I’m [expletive] crazy”.

And make of this what you will but Jared Kushner, when asked on the Lex Fridman podcast (Oct 2023) what Trump’s best quality was as President, said it was the Don’s unpredictability.

Where does that leave us as we head into Trump 2.0? Trump’s unpredictable reputation remains intact – with analysts and commentators unsure what exactly he will do once he gets into office. Will he rapidly try end the Ukraine War? Will he apply tariffs on everything coming into the US? Will he do a grand bargain with China? Will he send the US military into Mexico to go after the cartels? Will he withdraw from NATO? Will he.. (etc). You get the point. This is precisely the effect Trump’s unpredictability is meant to have. It’s possible even Trump himself may not know; as I wrote in an earlier post, Trump is a ‘tactical opportunist’ – forever seemingly shifting his positions in the moment depending on what he thinks is in his best interests.

Finally, I’ll leave you, dear reader, with a final story that I think is telling and nicely fits the theme of today’s post. It was recounted by the famous portrait photographer Platon Antoniou. He said:

I worked with Donald Trump quite a while ago, but even back then, there was this chaos and madness that surrounded him. I remember saying to him: ‘Donald, how do you weather the storm? It’s madness around you wherever you go, whatever you do, whatever you say. There’s this sort of frenetic energy’. Suddenly, this quiet calm came over him, and he said, ‘I am the storm’. All this sort of frenetic, crazy energy and sense of chaos is very easy for Donald to navigate through that, because he created it. And it’s actually us that can’t cope with it.

Ultimately, Trump’s approach to domestic governance and to international affairs shows he is not just comfortable operating amidst chaos but actively promotes it. This certainly overlaps with his preference for acting unpredictably.