THE MADMAN THEORY WORKS FOR TRUMP, BECAUSE UNCERTAINTY DETERS AMERICA’S ADVERSARIES. There are two problems with this approach. First of all, Trump has a record by now, and he is not nearly as unpredictable as he professes to be. The world already knows that he loves tariffs and trade sanctions, he’s far less keen on war, even though he likes to talk about using nukes, he’s a genuine mercantilist, and he plays good cop, bad cop with the State Department bureaucracy. Putin and Xi, among others, will be prepared for those gambits this time around. Second, whatever benefits uncertainty creates in dealing with your opponents, it has the opposite effect with your allies, who view you as unreliable and move away from you. So it was then, and so it will be now.