Trump 2.0 and the 'Madman Theory' of nuclear deterrence

Will Trump 2.0 maintain a strategic equipoise, or roil the waters on returning to the White House?

US President-elect Donald Trump will be sworn in today, with the rare distinction of returning to the White House for a second term after a break of four years. His first term (2017-21) ended on an unsavoury note when he refused to accept the electoral result on January 6, 2021 and the violence that was unleashed on Capitol Hill by his supporters with a tacit nod from him will be recalled as a dark day in US history.

Springing surprises on his interlocutors by making outrageous statements and disrupting traditional practices and protocols associated with the high office of POTUS (President of the United States) has been a Trump trait and this was amply visible in his first term. The US President is the commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military force which also includes an imposing nuclear weapon arsenal. 

Undermining NATO

In the run-up to assuming office as POTUS, Trump spoke to the media (January 7) in what appeared to be a rambling interview but sure grabbed global attention. The US President-elect jolted the world by saying that he would not rule out the option of using military force to wrest control of Greenland and the Panama Canal – territories that he deemed were vital to American national security.

The US evincing interest in Greenland for security reasons harks back to World War II and President Trump in his first term had expressed similar intent. But this time around, the reason for ‘shock and awe’ was the fact that the use of military force had not been ruled out by the President-elect.

Mischievous? Outrageous? Shocking but predictable? There are many semantic choices but the core here is cause for concern. In one feckless remark, Mr. Trump the POTUS-elect has driven a truck through the sanctity of international law and related norms and put the 32-nation NATO   in a quandary.   Denmark, which controls the island of Greenland, is a member.

Should any member be under military threat, Article Five of the treaty commits each NATO legislature to vote on coming to the defence of the threatened member.  Will the member states invoke this article which states that if such an armed attack occurs, each of them will "assist the Party or Parties so attacked individually and in concert with the other parties.” (One thought - will the US Congress vote on this ‘Alice-in-wonderland’ issue?)

The US is the principal military power and security guarantor within NATO and perhaps the founding fathers of the trans-Atlantic treaty, who saw Moscow as the abiding challenge had never imagined such an exigency, wherein the guardian would turn predator. However, it is unlikely that there would be such a development but this does raise questions about the new POTUS – and his orientation towards military force and the apocalyptic nuclear weapon.

Ambiguity about nuclear equilibrium

Will nuclear deterrence and strategic stability as it has evolved since the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 be maintained and strengthened - more so after the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and nuclear sabre-rattling by President Putin – or will this central tenet of global safety and stability be degraded by an impulsive US President?

The ‘madman’ formulation in deterrence theory, predicated on uncertainty and irrationality, was postulated by American academics and analysts in the early decades of the Cold War.  President Richard Nixon subscribed to such posturing but luckily his principal nuclear interlocutor at the time, the former Soviet Union, ensured that no amber lights were flashing.

A brief review of Trump 1.0 and the nuclear capability is not reassuring. Averse to arms control treaties, in May 2018, a year after entering the White House for the first term, President Trump unilaterally declared that the US would withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. Seven years later and after the bloodshed that has ravaged Palestine/Gaza/Lebanon – it is moot if an Iran that was progressively encouraged to renounce its nuclear weapon quest and brought into the regional geo-political tent would have behaved differently. But for now, the Tehran nuclear nettle remains prickly and unpredictable.

2018 was also punctuated by a nuclear crisis with North Korea that President Trump handled with avoidable bluster and hectoring and the Singapore summit in June of that year was comical on the surface but had a very dangerous undercurrent. POTUS Trump at the time was engaged in reviewing what can be termed as diabolical and  devious  options to deal with North Korea and as  US analyst Caitlin Talmadge of the Brookings Institution  notes : “Trump was later revealed to have privately considered using a nuclear weapon against North Korea while falsely blaming it on another country.” This is preposterous, that a US President could have actually considered such an option.

Post Hiroshima-Nagasaki in August 1945, the US remains   the most powerful nation both politically and militarily and while there have been a number of transgressions and blunders in relation to how it used its military muscle – it has invested in and maintained a certain degree of nuclear rectitude and compliance. A vast cadre of competent and committed professionals paddle incessantly beyond public gaze, so that the nuclear ducks are seen to be sanguine and restrained in the global pond.

Will Trump 2.0 maintain this strategic equipoise, or roil the waters on returning to the White House? Watch this space.