Erratic behavior and unpredictability is having a moment in foreign policy circles. In the White House and elsewhere, it is seemingly being viewed as a strategic asset rather than a weakness.
But it is far from a new strategy. Wild threats, sudden policy reversals and intentionally confusing language have long been used to keep adversaries off balance and gain leverage.
In fact, the concept has its own name in international relations: âmadman theory.â As outlined by Cold War strategists Daniel Ellsberg and Thomas Schelling, it holds that projecting a readiness to take extreme action can shape an opponentâs calculations by heightening fears of escalation.
While the theory was meant to be explanatory, in the sense that observers used it to explain apparently irrational behavior, it has sometimes been used in a prescriptive way, as an approach consciously adopted by leaders.
The 3 conditions for madman success
The madman theory has historical roots going back to Machiavelli, but it is most closely associated with Richard Nixon, who, as incoming president, reportedly used the term to explain his approach to trying to force North Vietnamâs surrender in the Vietnam War.
Historians see evidence of the theoryâs limited applicability in episodes such as Nixonâs 1969 placing of the U.S. military on nuclear alert, which appeared to have reinforced Soviet caution even if it did not bring about an end of the Vietnam War.
President Richard Nixon is closely associated with the âmadman theory.â Bettmann/Getty Images
The theory was more applicable in Nixonâs era because of three background conditions that were in place.
The first was information scarcity. During the Cold War, signals traveled more slowly than they do today and through narrow channels. Messages were filtered by professional diplomats, intelligence analysts and military officers.
Ambiguity could be sustained. A countryâs leader could appear possibly unhinged without being instantly decoded, contextualized or publicly dissected. âMadmanâ signaling depended on this controlled opacity.
The second condition was a stable adversary with a shared notion of risk. Nixonâs gambit worked, when it worked at all, because Soviet leaders were deeply conservative risk managers operating inside a rigid hierarchy. They feared miscalculation because they believed it could lead to the Soviet Unionâs fall â or at least their fall within it.
The third condition was credibility built through restraint elsewhere. The madman pose only works if it is exceptional. Nixon appeared dangerous to adversaries precisely because the American system normally appeared controlled. His apparent erratic behavior was exceptional in a context of bureaucratic orderliness.
But the world of those three conditions is gone.
Threats today are tweeted, clipped, reframed, leaked, mocked and talked about in real time. Unpredictability doesnât have time to breathe public fear into existence. Rather, it can devolve into noise.
And nations such as Iran, Russia and China operate in a world they already regard as unstable and unjust. Volatility does not frighten them; it is the environment they expect. In such conditions, apparent irrationality can invite probing, hedging or reciprocal escalation.
Meanwhile, erratic behavior is no longer exceptional or unexpected.
Many a madman would struggle today
Unpredictability only works if itâs strategic rather than designed on the fly. Trump has blustered, contradicted himself publicly, ramped-up rhetorically and then backed down, mostly without receiving obvious concessions.
The more this happens, the more predictability he creates about unpredictability.
And once unpredictability becomes expected, it loses its coercive force.
This dynamic is evident in Trumpâs handling of both Iran and Greenland. In the Iranian case, pressure â including military strikes â has been applied without clearly defining where escalation would end.
With Greenland, coercive threats aimed at an ally only strained NATO without producing compliance.
In neither instance did unpredictability translate into durable leverage. Instead, it generated uncertainty about objectives and limits.
A bigger problem for any leader wishing to adopt a madman strategy is that todayâs international order and media ecosystem are more inured to volatility. Threats no longer freeze opponents into caution.
Friendly nations hedge their bets. For example, faced with U.S. threats over tariffs, India strengthened ties with China.
Meanwhile, enemies test boundaries. Russia, for example, has treated Trumpâs ambiguous signaling on Ukraine as little more than a green-light for it to continue its campaign to conquer the Donbas region.
Does the madman have a future?
There are still limited circumstances in which ambiguity can serve a strategic purpose.
Limited uncertainty about specific responses can reinforce deterrence by keeping adversaries cautious. U.S. strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan, for example, leaves it unclear whether Washington would intervene militarily in the case of an attack by Beijing, discouraging the locking of any side into automatic escalation.
That part of the madman approach remains effective. But what no longer works is volatility untethered from clear objectives and visible limits.
The madman theory was built for a rigid, rule-bound world. It is least effective precisely where todayâs politics feels most chaotic.
Andrew Latham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Ask people how Stonehenge was built and youâll hear stories of sledges, ropes, boats and sheer human determination to haul stones from across Britain to Salisbury Plain, in south-west England. Others might mention giants, wizards, or alien assistance to explain the transport of Stonehengeâs stones, which come from as far as Wales and Scotland.
But what if nature itself did the heavy lifting in transporting Stonehengeâs megaliths? In this scenario, vast glaciers that once covered Britain carried the bluestones and the Altar Stone to southern England as âglacial erraticsâ, or rocks moved by ice, leaving them conveniently behind on Salisbury Plain for the builders of Stonehenge.
This idea, known as the glacial transport theory, often appears in documentaries and online discussions. But it has never been tested with modern geological techniques.
Our new study, published today in Communications Earth and Environment, provides the first clear evidence glacial material never reached the area. This demonstrates the stones did not arrive through natural ice movement.
While previous research had cast doubt on the glacial transport theory, our study goes further and applies cutting-edge mineral fingerprinting to trace the stonesâ true origins.
However, near Stonehenge, these tell-tale clues are either missing or ambiguous. And because the southern reach of ice sheets remains unclear, the glacial transport idea is open to debate.
So, if no big and obvious clues are present, could we look for tiny ones instead?
If glaciers had carried the stones all the way from Wales or Scotland, they would also have left behind millions of microscopic mineral grains, such as zircon and apatite, from those regions.
When both minerals form, they trap small amounts of radioactive uranium â which, at a known rate, will decay into lead. By measuring the ratios of both elements using a technique called UâPb dating, we can measure the age of each zircon and apatite grain.
Because Britainâs rocks have very different ages from place to place, a mineralâs age can indicate its source. This means that if glaciers had carried stones to Stonehenge, the rivers of Salisbury Plain, which gather zircon and apatite from across a wide area, should still contain a clear mineral fingerprint of that journey.
Searching for tiny clues
To find out, we got our feet wet and collected sand from the rivers surrounding Stonehenge. What we discovered was striking.
Despite analysing more than seven hundred zircon and apatite grains, we found virtually no mineral ages that matched the bluestone sources in Wales or the Altar Stoneâs Scottish source.
Zircon is exceptionally tough: grains can survive being weathered, washed into a river, buried in rocks, and recycled again millions of years later. As such, zircon crystals from Salisbury Plain rivers span an enormous stretch of geological time, covering half the age of the Earth, from around 2.8 billion years ago to 300 million years ago.
However, the vast majority fell within a tight band, spanning between 1.7 and 1.1 billion years old. Intriguingly, Salisbury River zircon ages match those from the Thanet Formation, a blanket of loosely compacted sand that covered much of southern England millions of years ago before being eroded.
This means zircon in river sand today is the leftovers from ancient blankets of sedimentary rocks, not freshly delivered sand from glaciers during the last Ice Age 26,000 to 20,000 years ago.
Apatite tells a different story. All grains are about 60 million years old, at a time when southern England was a shallow, subtropical sea. This age doesnât match any potential source rocks in Britain.
Instead, apatite ages reflect the squeezing and uplifting caused by distant mountain-building in the European Alps, causing fluids to move through the chalk and âresetâ apatiteâs uranium-lead clock. In other words, the heating and chemical changes erased the mineralâs previous radioactive signature and started the clock ticking again.
Much like zircon, apatite isnât a visitor brought in by glaciers but is local and has been sitting on Salisbury Plain for tens of millions of years.
A new piece of the Stonehenge story
Stonehenge sits at the crossroads of myth, ancient engineering and deep-time geology.
The ages of microscopic grains in river sand have now added a new piece to its story. This gives us further evidence the monumentâs most exotic stones did not arrive by chance but were instead deliberately selected and transported.
Anthony Clarke receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Chris Kirkland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrew Gawthorpe, Lecturer in History and International Studies, Leiden University
Another US citizen has allegedly been killed by immigration agents in Minnesota, raising tensions between state and federal governments. The actions of the federal agencies involved has drawn fierce criticism not only from former Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, but also Americaâs powerful pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA).
If you were to think it unusual that the people named in the previous sentence appear to be on the same side over this issue, youâd be right. But these arenât usual times in America.
Video footage taken at the scene reportedly shows agents of the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) â working with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) in Minnesota to detain people they suspect of being illegal migrants â tackling 37-year-old nurse, Alex Pretti.
The footage reportedly shows they wrestled him to the ground, beat him and apparently removed a handgun from a holster he was wearing, before firing ten shots at him.
Since his killing a lot of attention has focused on his gun. Carrying a handgun, whether openly or holstered, is legal in Minnesota, and Pretti had a license for his gun. So he was perfectly within his rights to be carrying it. And there is nothing to suggest from the footage that he attempted to draw it or use it while being tackled by the ICE agents.
Of course, in the United States, the right to keep and bear arms â the second amendment â is a pretty big deal to a lot of people, especially conservatives. So when various figures in the Trump regime suggested that CBP agents had been justified in shooting Pretti because he was carrying a holstered weapon, they provoked outrage from gun rights activists. And, significantly, many of these people are usually on the same page as the White House about pretty much anything.
First there was FBI director Kash Patel, who told Fox News: âYou cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want.â Dead wrong, replied the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus and the group Gun Owners of America â youâre legally entitled to bring a gun to a protest.
Then a Trump-appointed district attorney waded in, arguing: âIf you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.â
This drew a rebuke from the NRA, one of the most prolific and important right-wing groups in America and a big donor to Trumpâs campaigns, which replied that: âThis sentiment ⊠is dangerous and wrong. Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.â
The problem that the Trump regime has is that it appears from abundant video evidence that Pretti was not handling his gun irresponsibly. He wasnât waving it around, he wasnât threatening anyone, in fact he wasnât even touching it. He didnât approach the federal agents â they appeared to pile on him. And he was disarmed of his holstered weapon by one of them before he was killed.
Second amendment vs tyrannical government
The reason that this touches such a raw nerve, even with many people who usually support Trumpâs agenda, is that this cuts to the core of what the second amendment is about. In the eyes of the right, the amendmentâs whole legitimacy rests on the idea that it allows the populace to arm in order to protect itself against a tyrannical government.
This means that Pretti was doing exactly what second amendment advocates say they need guns for. And while some gun rights advocates may have been willing to keep quiet while federal agents were trampling on the rights of migrants and brown-skinned citizens, the murder of Pretti is a bridge too far.
Thatâs not to say that the gun lobby is turning on the Trump administration â at least, not yet. But it is notable that ICEâs outrages (and those of the related Customs and Border Protection Agency) are becoming so hard to ignore that theyâre increasingly drawing opposition not just from the left but also from traditionally right-wing groups.
The NRA is not about to flip and start fundraising for the next Democratic party presidential candidate. But its willingness to call out the regime is unusual to say the least. And it increases pressure on Trump to change course and damages the credibility of key people in the regime among conservatives.
The whole sequence of events also reveals something more concerning â the fact that more and more people in America on both left and right are carrying weapons. The idea of arming for self-defense has been quietly gaining ground in left-wing circles for around a decade.
Gun clubs have sprung up to serve LGBTQ+ people, black people, white liberals â anyone who fears they might one day be a target of violence from the Trump-ified federal authorities or right-wing militia. Nearly one-third of self-identified liberals now live in a gun-owning household.
And while itâs hard to find fault with their fears, this is another reason why Americaâs knife-edge politics is so terrifying. What happens when things fall apart in a country in which hatred and fear have driven so many people to arm themselves?
Letâs hope that Alex Prettiâs death serves as a reminder of the importance of stepping back from the brink rather than pushing the country closer to it.
A version of this article also appears on the authorâs Substack series, America Explained.
Andrew Gawthorpe is affiliated with the Foreign Policy Centre, a London-based think tank.
Ontarioâs Bill 33, passed in November 2025, could change how post-secondary admissions decisions are made, as well as how student fees are managed and what campus services they fund.
Each year, tens of thousands of university and college applicants come from communities that are historically underrepresented in higher education.
These policy changes could shape who gains access to programs, supports and opportunities for success.
The provincial government says Bill 33, which it termed the Supporting Children and Students Act, will make education more transparent and consistent. The law affects school boards, colleges and universities.
For us as scholars whose combined expertise spans strategic planning, equity, anti-oppressive forms of education and learning accessibility, the billâs reach into admissions raises serious concerns about equity and student rights.
Discussion of âmeritâ
A section of the bill ârequires colleges of applied arts and technology and publicly assisted universities to assess applicants based on merit and to publish the criteria and process to be used for assessment into programs of study.â
Greater transparency in admissions is positive. But if merit is defined too narrowly, it could block diverse pathways to post-secondary admissions that recognize different kinds of achievement, leaving out students from marginalized communities.
If merit is defined too narrowly, it could block diverse pathways to post-secondary admissions. (Saforrest/Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA
Studies in professional and medical education show that relying only on grades can miss other signs of potential, like life experience, community work and meeting the needs of society.
Bill 33 doesnât explain what âmeritâ means. Without a clear definition, admissions could end up favouring students who already have advantages. New rules will soon define how merit is measured, and these rules will be very important. If they donât protect equity-focused pathways, the law could make existing gaps even worse.
Student fees and risk to campus services
Fair admissions are only part of the story. Bill 33 also changes how student fees are handled. These changes could harm students from marginalized communities.
Student groups have raised strong concerns about how Bill 33 could affect ancillary fees and the services they fund.
According to the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance, âancillary fees are democratically approved by students, for students.â These are extra student fees that fund essential services such as food banks, wellness centres, accessibility programs, cultural programs, transportation and safety programs. These services could be at risk if the province gains more control over how fees are defined and charged.
In 2019, student groups successfully challenged Ontarioâs Student Choice Initiativ. Through this measure, the province tried to limit ancillary fees but the court ruled it didnât have the legal authority to do so at the time. Bill 33 responds to that ruling by changing the law itself, giving the province clear authority to regulate student fees.
The Canadian Federation of Students in Ontario has warned that focusing on fee oversight may distract from deeper problems in higher education, including chronic underfunding and high tuition costs.
Could weaken student-led supports, harm equity
Under Bill 33, the government can decide which fees can be charged and under what rules. Most universities clearly list how ancillary fees are used. For example, at McMaster University, these fees help fund transit passes, wellness services, career supports and refugee student programs.
How fees are managed is closely linked to the governmentâs broader oversight of universities, linking financial decisions to questions of accountability, governance and whose voices are heard in decision-making.
Student groups have long played a key role in raising equity concerns and ensuring local needs are addressed. If more decisions are made at the provincial level, student voices could carry less weight unless students are clearly included in new rules and decision-making processes.
Looking ahead: Equity is not automatic
As universities begin to apply Bill 33, students and faculty may notice changes in how admissions decisions are explained, how student fees are handled and how transparency rules are used.
While the law may seem neutral, its real impact will depend on how it is put into practice and whose experiences are considered.
Ensuring equitable access to higher education requires careful planning, enough funding and meaningful input from students, faculty and communities most affected by these changes.
Equity will not happen by chance. It will depend on the choices universities and policymakers make now, and on whose voices are heard in those decisions.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – in French – By Catherine Wynne, Associate Dean for Research and Enterprise, Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences and Education, University of Hull
