Newspaper Reader on Janan Ganesh as Auteur?
Apr 10, 2026
Opinion | Janan Ganesh
Trump is playing the madman. But he’s doing it all wrong
As the Iran war veers in and out of apocalyptic brinkmanship, there are reasons to think unhinged bombast will prove even less successful than in the past.
Janan GaneshContributor
The following conversation was tape-recorded in the Oval Office some 55 Aprils ago. Richard Nixon is authorising his envoy, Henry Kissinger, to take a message to the North Vietnamese, with whom the US is at war. The message is that Kissinger’s boss is unhinged.
Nixon: “You can say, ‘I cannot control him’. Put it that way.”
Kissinger: “Yeah. And imply that you might use nuclear weapons.”
Nixon: “Yes, sir.”
The president’s aide, HR Haldeman, in his memoirs, recalled another chat to the same effect. And so the “madman theory” – that making extreme threats can bring opponents to the bargaining table – took root.
Editor: Has Janan Ganesh run out of ideas, the reader might ask herself? Or does Nixon, as portraid by Ganesh, read as if Nixon were not the master of the Vietnam War, but an assistant to masterful Kissinger? This essay seems to wander, yet still recognisisng Nixon’s use of ‘private channels’ as some how repesents a more rational approach to Americas criminal aventurism in Vietnam?
Editor: Ganesh assertions take wing! The reader might note that Janan Ganesh was born in 1982, and the Vietnam War ended in April 30, 1975. Ganach’s attempts to weave together something that attempts to resemble History, that seeks to place the reader within a mere backdrop for the faultering American Hegemony?
Donald Trump was practising it almost by name even in his first term. As the Iran war veers in and out of apocalyptic brinkmanship, there are reasons to think the ploy will be even less successful now than it was then.
For one thing, Nixon made his threats through private channels. If he decided to back down from them, he would not lose face in front of the entire world. In contrast, Trump’s threats to erase a civilisation could scarcely be more public.
The pressure to make good on them at some point is correspondingly higher. It might intensify after his agreement to a conditional ceasefire with Iran on Taco Tuesday — sorry, April 7. This is why games of bluff are better played behind closed doors.
Another difference is that mid-20th century Vietnam was not central to the world economy. Early-21st century, Iran unmistakably is.
If a few weeks of bombing can trigger the worst energy crisis for half a century, a “mad” escalation might turn oil-price inflation into outright oil shortages.
There is already infrastructure damage that European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde fears will take years to mend. And none of this touches on the likely refugee exodus in the event that Iran becomes a failed state.
This tends to be the problem with madman-ism. The threat is too extreme to be entirely credible. On the other hand, if it is carried out, then by definition, the strategy has failed.
“A Trump apologist could string together a circumstantial case that his ‘worst’ traits – the aggression, the amorality – act as deterrents.”
There is something else that Trump should have learnt from the Nixon experience. Public opinion matters. To even threaten, let alone perform a mad action, would alienate domestic and international audiences.
Unpopular wars
Had Nixon used nuclear weapons in a war of choice, the already vehement anti-war protests at home might have tipped into total civil breakdown. Allies would have recoiled. The communist bloc would have been given a leg-up to the moral high ground.
Similarly, Trump cannot allow a war that now commands the support of 34 per cent of Americans to become much more violent. Autocracies can read the domestic politics of democracies. Just as North Vietnam spotted and harnessed America’s divisions over the war, so could Iran.
(Democracies have a much foggier window into public opinion in closed societies.) Nor can Trump ignore allied countries, as he tacitly concedes whenever he scolds them for not helping to secure the Strait of Hormuz.
We have to reach back into the previous century for the last unambiguously successful US-led war. The failures since then happened in part because there wasn’t enough domestic or foreign buy-in to sustain the scale of force required in, say, Iraq.
In other words, there is an operational case for behaving attractively, not just a moral one. You cannot – whatever the MAGA refrain – “just do things”.
How might a madman theorist respond? What is the strongest case to be made that erratic leadership does work?
Well, Trump is the one US president elected this century under whose watch Russia has not launched a foreign invasion. Vladimir Putin attacked Georgia under George W. Bush, Crimea under Barack Obama and Ukraine under Joe Biden. The sample size is small enough to suggest that nothing more than coincidence is at work here.
But a Trump apologist could string together a circumstantial case that his “worst” traits – the aggression, the amorality – act as deterrents. No state wants to test a man who might respond with sadistic force.
Likewise, Ronald Reagan’s forward nuclear posture in the 1980s seemed unconscionable at the time. Before the decade was out, the Soviets had folded with hardly a shot being fired.
“Circumstantial” is the word, however. Good luck establishing cause and effect here with much confidence. What a thin evidential basis on which to rest such high-stakes statecraft.
The wonder is that madman theory is still discussed with a straight face. Nixon practised it about as well as possible – working in secret, threatening a country of little global significance – and still achieved next to nothing. To the extent that he did go feral, bombing Cambodia and Laos, it sullied the US more than it forced concessions from the other side.
There is a desperation out there to see cunning and forethought in Trump’s wildest behaviour. This has skewed financial markets, which were too optimistic at the start of the war, and in Lagarde’s view still are.
If something good is to come of the present chaos, it might be a new realism about the US leader. Even if Trump does have a strategy that can be called madman theory, that doesn’t mean it is a good one. It just means that he has a weird reading of the past.
Four years after the Oval Office conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, the North Vietnamese took Saigon. Of the 58,220 US deaths in the war, over 20,000 occurred under the genius pair.
Newspaper Reader.
Saturday, April 11, 2026
Editor: Ganesh is by any measure a Flâneur as my comments over time will demostrate !
Newspaper Reader asks one of his readers to post the full text of Janan Ganesh’s latest essay…
Posted on March 7, 2026 by stephenkmacksd
Newspaper Reader. stephenkmacksd.com/ Mar 05, 2026 Middle East war Be glad of Starmer’s caution over Iran Bellicose critics of the UK prime minister have learnt nothing from the recent past Janan Ganesh Newspaper Reader.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment | Edit
Old Socialist confronts Janan Ganesh, in his various iterations over time…
Posted on February 20, 2026 by stephenkmacksd
Newspaper Reader offers ‘A Janan Ganesh Cornucopia’! stephenkmacksd.com/ Feb 18, 2026 Headline: Maga will regret embracing Europe’s hard right Sub-headline: Nationalists on the continent have historically opposed America more than anything else https://www.ft.com/content/0baf4e30-3501-4aec-a189-5c49e40908aa Some selective quotation from Ganesh’s essay, for … Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment | Edit
Please send me the full text of Janan Ganesh latest intervention ?
Posted on February 20, 2026 by stephenkmacksd
stephenkmacksd.com/ Feb 15, 2026 Life & Arts Liberals should mourn the passing world Why apologise for what was the most successful international order in history? Best regards! StephenKMackSD
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment | Edit
It’ been some time since I have read Janan Ganesh, but the wayward political trojectory remaines his metier! Even though it appears to be something like shadow boxing, of a kind.
Posted on February 15, 2026 by stephenkmacksd
Newspaper Reader. stephenkmacksd.com/ Feb 11, 2026 Opinion Keir Starmer Britain should pray that Starmer survives The country did not and would not vote for the Labour left An unsustainable situation can be sustained for quite a long time. John Major, Gordon … Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment | Edit
Janan Ganesh in The Financial Times: ‘The bidding war for geniuses will antagonise those just below’
Posted on October 16, 2025 by stephenkmacksd
Newspaper Reader comments. stephenkmacksd.com/ Oct 04, 2025 Opinion Life & Arts The war against the quite good The bidding war for geniuses will antagonise those just below Janan Ganesh https://www.ft.com/content/0fc44c6b-277c-4472-a235-65f59a9195f3 Editor: Janan almost pulls out all the stops, for his … Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment | Edit
Reader I can’t quite break my habit of thinking about & critiquing Janan Ganesh, in his many iterations!
Posted on October 9, 2025 by stephenkmacksd
Political Observer and my other critical guises ! stephenkmacksd.com/ Oct 01, 2025 Reader I can’t quite break my habit of critiquing Ganesh… Yet I am unable to break the ban, that FT has imposed upon me, to be again a … Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment | Edit
Janan Ganesh as Madame Arcati? Political Cynic comments.
Posted on September 7, 2025 by stephenkmacksd
Posted on February 3, 2021 by stephenkmacksd stephenkmacksd.com/ Aug 29, 2025 Title this ‘The Enlightenment of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’ ? Mr. Ganesh doesn’t need to dust off his Madame Arcati shtick, he uses C-Span to demonstrate that Bill Clinton’s utter … Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment | Edit
Reader I can’t resist the temptation of re-posting my comment from October 20, 2015! In honor of Janan Ganesh!
Posted on August 23, 2025 by stephenkmacksd
Political Reporter. stephenkmacksd.com/ Aug 21, 2025 At The Financial Times: Janan Ganesh demonstates The Myopia of the Winner, a comment by Political Reporter Posted on October 20, 2015 by stephenkmacksd Mr. Ganesh demonstrates that the enemy of the political winner is the inability … Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment | Edit
Janan Ganesh’s latest *feuilleton in The Financial Times!
Posted on July 6, 2025 by stephenkmacksd
Literary Observer re-aquaints himself with Ganesh as *flâneur? stephenkmacksd.com/ Jun 25, 2025 Headline: How Los Angeles made the modern world Sub-headline: The troubled city has done more than most to shape how people now live https://www.ft.com/content/7f416e2b-a89b-4083-b3c2-77461d3986c4 It’s been sometime since … Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment | Edit
In praise of Janan Ganesh, from September 6, 2020!
Posted on March 11, 2025 by stephenkmacksd
StephenKMackSD. stephenkmacksd.com/ Mar 03, 2025 Janan Ganesh’s Hipster L.A. American Writer comments Posted on September 6, 2020 by stephenkmacksd Mr. Ganesh is my favorite flâneur! He can write a feuilleton, the rhetoric of the Sunday Supplement’s decorous chatter, like no other writer in … Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment | Edit
Janan Ganesh of the ever changing registers of ‘thought’?,’political convenience’ & always wraped in self-congratulation!
Posted on February 10, 2025 by stephenkmacksd
Newspaper Reader. stephenkmacksd.com/ Feb 10, 2025 Editor : For those of us who have not read this Stendahl novel, here is Penguin Random House to the rescue: The Red and the Black Reader’s Guide By Stendhal https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/298093/the-red-and-the-black-by-stendhal/9780140447644/readers-guide In Stendhal’s The … Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment | Edit
On the Political Alchemy of Janan Ganesh: The Marriage of the Beguiling & the Reprehensible?
Posted on February 7, 2025 by stephenkmacksd
Newspaper Reader comments. stephenkmacksd.com/ Feb 07, 2025 As usual Janan Ganesh has a lively and insightful conversation with himself -its like a fast moving current in a river of ideas, speculations, and just plain political chatter – some call this … Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment | Edit
Janan Ganesh abandons Tom Wolfe for Shahrazad?
Posted on January 7, 2025 by stephenkmacksd
Newspaper Reader comments. stephenkmacksd.com/ Jan 02, 2025 Headline: Things have to get worse to get better Sub-headline : Voters can’t be sold on change until their nation is in acute trouble https://www.ft.com/content/c9a8d92a-0c1d-424e-83be-c3469c370c19 Editor:The Reader of Mr. Ganesh’s latest essay is … Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment | Edit
StephenKMackSD's Blog 