Less than six months ago, I assessed the reports of analysts and concluded that there was a strong chance of war (though I was entirely correct that Infinity Wars would be bigger than Star Wars). Yet the biggest news today has come from the thaw in tense relations in the Korean Peninsula. The Olympics featured cross country contact and a joint women’s hockey team between the two Koreas. Sharp Twitter jabs have been replaced by at least talk of mutual respect, peace talks, de-nuclearization, and an official end to the Korean War. A year ago I discussed the language of nuclear diplomacy, and now we have a chance to assess that policy and find that what seemed reckless turns out to have finally produced the desired results.
President Richard Nixon famously had what he called the Mad Men Theory. This was a policy that let other nations believe that the president was ready to unleash great havoc (or maybe fire and fury) upon his enemies with the slightest provocation. With that stick firmly established, Nixon brokered a peace deal using various carrots that allowed America to withdraw its forces from Vietnam.
Lawmakers often condemned Trump’s fire and fury rhetoric. Senator McCain took exception to his words, Senator Feinstein called them “bombastic,” Senator Schumer called them reckless, Senator Cardon said his rhetoric was little better than North Korea’s, and The Atlantic said the Mad Men policy didn’t work for Nixon and won’t work for Trump. They all failed to realize that his rhetoric might actually work. In the arithmetic of nuclear diplomacy, what might sound like reckless threats actually becomes a necessary step to credible deterrence and peace. This makes Trump’s response the right one to have had regarding North Korean aggression.
The mutual assured destruction (MAD) doctrine is often mocked as being too correctly named, implying that the nuclear theory was created by crazy men. In the past I wrote that in the language of nuclear diplomacy, the MAD doctrine still applies. The MAD doctrine states that where two nuclear powers agree that using nuclear weapons in an attack would inspire a massive and destructive counterattack, it would produce a deterrence to using nuclear weapons and lead to de-escalation procedures, the red phone, and even nuclear arms reduction talks.
This supposedly reckless rhetoric is exactly how we’ve arrived at the point of talking. There are various reports that suggest North Korea is ending its program due to failure of its missile program and other non-Trump related reasons. This seems more like a face-saving measure from North Korea and political opponents of Trump refusing to give him credit. In fact, when you take away Trump’s bluster and ignore his Twitter feed then the lower unemployment, rising GDP, and tax cuts, potential foreign policy successes like North Korea suggest Trump is getting solid results that earn a vote.
In the case of North Korea, it’s pretty obvious that after years of failed sanctions, it only took one year of the Mad Men policy to bring North Korea to the table. There is a place for tactful negotiations and dialogue, but the breakthrough in North Korea shows how other methods can work, especially when talking turns into useless jawing.
