The Idiot Plot, Madman Theory, and Late American Empire
This post explores US policy towards Iran through the lenses of the idiot plot, madman theory, and theories of American executive power.
Content Warning: First of all, I wanted to offer a quick content warning for two things: first, discussions of cruelty and violence, and second, language that has ableist origins and usages. The United States is committing mass violence abroad and the past treatment of those with mental ailments often included abuse of the afflicted (both are briefly covered here). Terms like "idiot" and "madness" have a deeply problematic genealogical and practical history, and this essay touches on discussions of both terms as applied within literary criticism and international relations theory. If anything listed above is something that will trigger you or cause any harm, please proceed with caution or ask a friend to summarize this for you instead. Otherwise, please use discretion when reading onwards.
In our highly mediated experience of the US war of choice against Iran, an observer may be brought to wonder at any recent juncture in the conflict: how could US leaders be so stupid? Thoughtful analysis, reportage, and commentary from the likes of New York Times investigative reporters and sitting senators have sought to grapple with the apparent plan-free confidence with which the Trump administration has stumbled into a war they don't appear to be winning. Unsurprisingly, the details around the direction of the conflict haven't stopped the powers-that-be from attempting to convince us all that they're actually winning), especially as we all digest the news of Trump's ceasefire resolution around the Strait of Hormuz.
In my quest to constantly (over-)use dramatistic analysis of US politics, I wanted to offer a quick bit of analysis in line here by arguing that US policy towards Iran right now (and perhaps all US policy) maybe only makes sense through the framework of the idiot plot, madman theory, and generally just theories of centralized power. This mix of dramatistic explanations stands in contradiction to the scholarship of the fields of international relations / security studies, which have long struggled to explain or anticipate the American empire's decision making but has failed to do so with the culmination of poor, cruel statesmanship that Trump and his allies represent.
Rather than treating this moment as a failure of strategy or expertise, I argue that it is better understood as a political narrative structure: an idiot plot driven by the (staged?) madness of executive power operating within an imperial system that no longer requires coherence to function.
The Idiot Plot
In 1956, Damon Knight wrote in his collection of essays on science fiction that his friend James Blish had coined the term "idiot plot", who defined it as "a plot which is kept in motion solely by virtue of the fact that everybody involved is an idiot" (17). The most famous instances are perhaps The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare, but really any miscommunication trope laden story is also an idiot plot.
Roger Ebert's writing on idiot plots, especially his criticism in the 1980s, helped to popularize this term. In his glossary of terms for the era, Ebert defined an idiot plot as "Any plot containing problems that would be solved instantly if all of the characters were not idiots."
The whole fiasco around the Strait of Hormuz lends itself to the notion that no one involved on the US policy side has any idea what they are doing. Their stunned response to Iran closing the strait, their inability to understand that conflict isn't won with air supremacy, and their shock at Iran's regional retaliation indicated just how little strategic thinking went into Trump's decision to attack Iran unprovoked. Decision loops are closed, corrective mechanisms are dulled, and a performance of certainty has been so normalized it has been worn smooth by this administration and those that preceded it.
At the time of writing, the administration avoided further escalation after a bizarre Truth Social post by the president by reaching a deal with Iran over Hormuz, including a $2M fee for any ship using the strait (reminder: this was previously a $0M fee pre-war). At the time of editing (just hours later), this ceasefire has already collapsed as Israel continues to bomb Lebanon.
Madman Theory
The closest to the idiot plot we can get within IR political theory is the so-called 'madman' theory, which Jeffrey Kimball theorized US President Richard Nixon inhabited, such that communist bloc country leadership would avoid provoking the US empire out of fear of his unpredictability. Nixon is a good example for this theory, in part because of his (apparently drunken) threat to nuke a North Korean airstrip in the early months of his administration after the North Koreans shot down a spy plane over the Sea of Japan. An important part of this theory -- which is perhaps more an explanation of an executive's strategy than a theory of how power functions -- is that the leader is understood to be rational and of sound mind but performing a sort of madness. Some of this is derived from Discourses on Livy, a 1517 text by Niccolò Machiavelli, published in 1531 (four years after his death). In it, Machiavelli argues that for a leader, it is "a very wise thing to simulate madness" in order to both escalate with an enemy and obfuscate one's intentions.
We have heard echoes of the approach described by Machiavelli and Kimball from Trump, who often says things about his international doctrine like "nobody knows what I'm going to do" and leads scholars to puzzle over the impacts of Trump's unpredictability. It doesn't quite ring the same, however, when Trump's own grip on reality (read: his crossing the line into madness) is up for debate. Commentary on his "preventative" MRI scan last year, theorizing around a potential 2025 stroke, and ongoing dementia speculation are all ultimately window dressing when we all can obviously see his mental decline and growing instability. A recent Truth Social post, wherein he called for Iran to "open the fucking strait you bastards," certainly has a particular air to it.
When we think of mad kings, we may think of George III, to whom the Declaration of Independence was addressed 250 years ago this July. He was known to be deeply paranoid, often agitated, and delusional. Some retroactive diagnoses of George have claimed he had an enzyme disorder and others bipolar disorder, though such estimations are often difficult to do accurately centuries after his death. Importantly, George was also subjected to a cruel regime of treatment from doctors like Francis Willis, who would bind him to a chair alone for long periods of time, use chemicals to create blisters on his skin or induce vomiting, and emotional abuse during periods of mania. George III, this mad king, is puzzlingly portrayed as effeminate but cruel in Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton (as made popular by the performances of Jonathan Groff and also Andrew Rannells), where he famously sings of the relationship between the United States and England as one of romance lost (and to be returned by force).
Beyond Hamilton's sidestepping of kingly madness (or perhaps substituting queerness for madness), the mad king mythos has naturally slipped into 21st-century media, perhaps most notably in the characterization of Aerys II Targaryen in Game of Thrones. Jaime Lannister described the Targaryen king's cruel obsession with loyalty, saying, "He burned anyone who was against him. Before long, half the country was against him. Aerys saw traitors everywhere." In the world of Westeros, George R. R. Martin indicates that King Scab himself went mad because of his incestuous lineage, something that would place him perhaps in the realm of a Habsburg king like Charles II of Spain (who was known as "el hechizado"--"the bewitched"--due to his afflictions). Cersei Lannister ponders to her brother, Tyrion, over the Targaryen curse towards madness, famously saying, "Half the Targaryens went mad, didn't they? What's the saying? 'Every time a Targaryen is born the gods flip a coin."
These narratives run the risk of naturalizing cruelty, unjustly making empire feel tragic, or even individualizing systemic violence. Ultimately, Trump doesn’t need to be actually mad for his reign to be one wracked with madness. Indeed, actual madness is largely irrelevant once power is sufficiently centralized, which seems to always been a key throughline for those mad kings of the past.
Obviously: Power
While Martin may have been thinking of Habsburg interbreeding, another key Western tradition is at play in his depiction of Aerys: the Targaryen mad king was likely more closely inspired by the cruel Roman emperors Caligula and Nero. Both of these emperors, like Aerys, began their reign benevolently before succumbing to power and becoming extremely cruel tyrants. That Nero set Rome on fire and Aerys's daughter Daenerys did something similar to King's Landing in the awful 8th season of Game of Thrones is perhaps not just a coincidence. Caligula, on the other hand, declared himself a god and drained the national treasury before his own Praetorian Guard killed him.
Returning to the idiot plot with renewed vigor we could solely explain Trump's behavior through the lens of the mad king (which is probably not altogether incorrect), but it's perhaps most important to see how this Iran escalation fits into decades of America moving increasing amounts of military power to the executive branch alongside a massive crisis of empire for the US after the Cold War. Trump's imperial logics are ones of cruelty, pride, and personal attack more than a coherent strategy, yes, and he is surrounded by advisors and people who are deeply loyal either out of fear of reprisal or a lust for political ascendance, yes, but the sheer unchecked power of the US empire in general and the executive branch in particular only intensifies these problems.
There is ultimately no strategy in the war against Iran not simply because strategic thinking is impossible for Trump and his closest circle, but because the power of the president is so totalizing that a president's word is policy even if it makes no sense. We, as the audience watching the movie, throw our hands up in frustration as we watch the awful decisions of the characters, extremely powerful men with the literal ability to extinguish life and livelihood at a scale unmatched at any point in history up until this moment.
And, while they’re exercising this power limitlessly, the administration is mocking their victims and baiting media response. I wrote a bit about this previously, if you’re interested and want to take a moment to read it after this piece:
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Taking a Second-Order?
Later in his 1956 collection of essays, Damon Knight describes the concept of a "second-order idiot plot", essentially a case where not just the main characters but everyone in the society itself must be an idiot or the story couldn't happen. I'm not going to commit to a broad stroke to say that the United States is all or even mostly full of idiots, but I know Trump's election and re-election also reflect very poorly on how large a portion of our electorate is willing to support an obviously cruel madman over what primarily amounts to white identity politics.
And the Iran situation, of course, follows nearly half a century of antagonism between the United States and Iran. The two countries have had no formal diplomatic relations since April 1980 and American propaganda around the country has maligned them throughout this entire period. Recall that George W. Bush figured Iran as one of three parties to the "Axis of Evil", declaring Iran, Iraq, and North Korea (?) as aligned against global peace--a little over a year before Bush launched his campaign of Shock and Awe, which kicked off with over a thousand massive strikes on Baghdad in the first 24 hours. These public attempts by an American president to demonize a foreign enemy should almost always be read as creating the pretext for military action against them. This then becomes a repeating cycle, where operations deemed successful become arguments for replication: Trump, who has been bragging about the success of his kidnapping of Maduro, reportedly considered a similar (yet more complex) plan for capturing Iran's uranium.
Regardless of what is driving all of this (probably a failing empire lashing out), there are real human costs. The United States never really recovered from 9/11 / never recovered from Vietnam / never recovered from an era of mass lynching / never recovered from the Civil War / never recovered from chattel slavery / never recovered from native genocide, and the country’s inability to reckon with both the catastrophes endured and crimes visited upon others (domestically and internationally alike). Trump is a symptom of this tradition (and many others), and represents a cruelty that is as lethal as it is idiotic or mad. Indeed, idiocy, madness, and cruelty are not deviations from an honorable tradition – they are operational modes of late empire.
Thanks to the edits and advice from Tom, the Principal Investigator at GroundTruthNC. You can check out his reporting here. Thanks to Neil for giving this a read, too.
