Jim Sciutto Publishes Trump 'Madman Strategy' Book in South Korea, Probing $1 Billion-a-Day China Policy
Updated
Updated · 매일경제 · Aug 22
Jim Sciutto Publishes Trump 'Madman Strategy' Book in South Korea, Probing $1 Billion-a-Day China Policy
1 articles · Updated · 매일경제 · Aug 22
Summary
Jim Sciutto’s "Madman Strategy" has been translated and released in South Korea, framing Donald Trump’s foreign-policy style as a live test of whether unpredictability is strategy or personal impulse.
Nixon’s original model was a calculated bluff, the book argues, but Trump’s aides often could not tell whether his threats were staged—an uncertainty Sciutto says made him both a risk factor and a usable U.S. bargaining weapon.
China is presented as a central case: Trump abandoned the long-held U.S. effort to steer a $1 billion-a-day trade relationship, launched a tariff war, quit the TPP and, in Sciutto’s view, weakened alliances while handing Beijing leverage.
North Korea chapters are the book’s centerpiece, arguing Trump’s "fire and fury" theatrics and three summit meetings produced little because Pyongyang never pledged to curb its nuclear program and resumed missile tests within weeks.
Sciutto writes that none of his interviewees considered Trump insane, a conclusion that shifts the book’s warning from instability to the consequences of a deliberate, fully conscious style of brinkmanship.