Steven Brams: It seems to me that Trump is seeing all of these confrontations he's having as zero-sum games, which means when you win, I lose, so there's no possibility of agreement or compromise. That worked fine in the election, that's how he was successful in both the primaries and the general, because there are always winners and losers—but I think now that he's president, continuing this strategy of seeing every conflict as zero-sum is misplaced. I think the consequences are going to be what we've observed: His approval ratings have fallen, and he's going to be castigated by people from very different sides of the political spectrum, including Republicans. [...]
If you're playing a non-zero-sum game against someone who thinks that it is in fact a zero-sum game, what can you do? Just convince them that they're wrong?
That's part of the story, yes. But when one player has a zero-sum point of view and the other player does not, that defines a new game. Now you're looking at payoffs that the players think very differently about. That might have some other kind of solution. [...]
I don't think anybody is "irrational." We have to be careful about how we define rationality. Rationality, in its simplest form, means you choose the best and most effective means to an end. An extreme example would be if you decide to commit suicide, and you succeed in doing so, you're rational. So in a way, if Trump wants to commit political suicide—which I don't think he thinks he's doing, but he may be doing in effect—then he's being perfectly rational in creating all these confrontations. So his goals are different from others' goals, but he's being rational with respect to his goals. I think one of his goals is to continually be controversial and be in newspapers and other media all the time. These are not normally the goals of politicians.
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