(FEB 6): If there’s one thing history teaches us, it’s that power isn’t just about having it — it’s about how you use it.

From Henry Kissinger’s realpolitik to Donald Trump’s 'Madman Theory' of unpredictability, leaders have long tried to weaponize chaos to their advantage. But while playing with fire can sometimes yield short-term gains, the long-term costs are usually far steeper than anticipated.

The world complains about American imperialism, but what happens when the US pulls back? Chaos doesn’t disappear — it just finds a new host.

Now that Trump has returned to the White House, emboldened by his improbable political survival. He seems to have doubled down on unpredictability, not realizing that the biggest risk of all is believing your own myth.

Henry Kissinger, the ultimate practitioner of power politics, never outright advocated for global anarchy, but he certainly understood how to manipulate instability in service of the balance of power.

His Cold War strategy wasn’t about igniting chaos for its own sake — it was about ensuring the United States remained the ultimate arbiter of global order. Whether in Latin America, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia, Kissinger’s policies often sought to weaken adversaries while positioning America as the indispensable stabilizing force.

The logic was straightforward: in a fragmented world, the US could set the terms of engagement. This approach was a modern extension of the European balance of power doctrine, in which no single state is allowed to dominate, and competing forces are kept in check through strategic interventions.

However, the risks of such a strategy are evident — there is a fine line between managing disorder and losing control of it entirely.

Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan serve as stark reminders that US interventions, aimed at maintaining order, sometimes had the opposite effect, creating power vacuums that unleashed greater instability. In trying to be the world's anchor, the US has often found itself entangled in the very chaos it sought to contain.

Yet even the most skilled strategists, like Kissinger, could not perfectly control global events in real time.

This is where George Soros' Reflexivity Theory provides a valuable lens. Initially developed to explain financial markets, Reflexivity Theory posits that decision-makers operate with incomplete or flawed information, creating feedback loops where perceptions influence reality, often leading to unintended consequences.

In foreign policy, this means that leaders believe they are shaping events when, in reality, events are shaping them.

Take Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — Vladimir Putin likely assumed that Nato would be too divided to mount a strong response. Instead, the West imposed severe sanctions, Nato expanded to include Finland and Sweden, and Ukraine demonstrated far greater military resilience than expected. This illustrates the dangers of strategic miscalculation: even the best-laid plans are susceptible to human error, unforeseen reactions and the self-reinforcing cycles of history.

This brings us to Trump and his belief that unpredictability is a strategic asset. Nixon played the Madman Theory in Vietnam, hoping to scare the North Vietnamese into submission. It didn’t work — they called his bluff, and the war dragged on.

Trump tried something similar with North Korea, threatening "fire and fury" before pivoting to diplomacy. Did it work? Maybe in the short term, but North Korea never denuclearized, and its missile program is now more advanced than ever.

The Madman Theory relies on perception, and if your enemies stop believing you’re crazy enough to follow through, you have only one option left: proving them wrong. That’s the real danger — when unpredictability stops being a tactic and becomes a necessity.

Trump and his team are in the driver’s seat, the world is beginning to find out what happens when a leader truly believes he’s invincible. As one Trump advisor put it, "He survived two assassination attempts, he’s been indicted how many times — he really is at this moment feeling kind of emboldened in a way that he never has before."

That’s not a leader who will pull punches. That’s a leader who may double down on risky bets, assuming that the rules of history no longer apply to him.

The irony is that while America’s critics decry its global dominance, they may soon face the consequences of genuine US retrenchment.

History offers a cautionary precedent. In the interwar period, the US embraced isolationism, avoiding entanglements in European and Asian conflicts despite rising threats from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

The 1930s Neutrality Acts sought to prevent American involvement in foreign wars, but this non-interventionist stance only emboldened aggressors. Without an engaged US counterweight, expansionist powers filled the void — Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, Japan invaded Manchuria and China and Mussolini conquered Ethiopia.

By the time the US re-entered the global stage after Pearl Harbour, the world had already descended into war. Today, a similar retreat from global leadership could create fresh power vacuums, with China, Russia, or other emerging actors eager to assert dominance. While the world may resent American hegemony, history suggests they will find a leaderless, fractured international system far more perilous.

In the end, power is a double-edged sword. The belief that the US can "manage" global instability, the assumption that leaders can control events in real time, and the illusion that unpredictability is always an advantage — these are dangerous ideas when taken to their extremes. Trump has returned with an even stronger conviction that chaos is his greatest weapon, and the world may be in for the ultimate test of whether unpredictability is a strength or the surest path to disaster.

History suggests it’s the latter.

Economist Samirul Ariff Othman is an adjunct lecturer at Universiti Teknologi Petronas, international relations analyst and a senior consultant with Global Asia Consulting.