Security studies

Christopher McKnight Nichols taught history at Oregon State University for a decade.

Then, in 2022, he went to another OSU, The Ohio State University, where he became the Wayne Woodrow Hays Chair in National Security Studies.

He is back in Oregon this week, and he'll be giving a free lecture tonight in Portland.

He'll explore the parallels between seminal moments in our nation's history and what we're experiencing right now.

Thanks for having me.

It's such a pleasure to be here.

Christopher Mendyt Nichols is now the Wayne Woodrow Hays Chair in National Security Studies and a professor of history at Ohio State University.

For 10 years, though, uh, before 2022, he was a professor of history at Oregon State University.

And so, uh, one of the papers that I was looking at, this one is titled "Madman or Mad Genius? The International Benefits and Domestic Costs of Madman Strategy" by Joshua A.

Schwartz, published in twenty twenty-three in Security Studies.

And in this, the author found that the madman approach can work in negotiations with foreign adversaries, but, quote, "entails significant domestic costs that potentially erode its efficacy." He also points out that madman theory may simply not work against major powers because while it might make a threat more credible, that doesn't necessarily make the threat more effective and make the adversary willing to cave to those demands.

So he points, uh, out that this is perhaps why Nixon's use of madman theory didn't work against the Soviets.

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For further information about the work of the International Security Studies team at RUSI, please follow us on X at ISS_RUSI, and find out more about the ISS team's research on the RUSI website.

But for now, it's goodbye from me, Philip Shatner Jones at RUSI in London.

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