Although Machiavelli did advocate that a Prince may sometimes profit by playing mad, I can only think of a couple of times this strategy was actually employed.
The first time it was used was by Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War. He told Melvin Liard to let word out so that it gets to the Russian and Vietnamese leadership that the U.S President harboured such extreme hatred of communism, he could be expected to do just anything to end the Vietnam War. He wanted it bruited about that it was not beyond him, in a fit of madness, to order a nuclear strike on both the countries! He believed that if played properly this could induce both the Russians and the Vietnamese to come to the table and to end the war on U.S terms.
Liard , who was Nixon’s secretary of defense at the time, was then ordered by Nixon, to lay out plans which would give credibility to this “Madness”. But Liard chose to put off giving shape to any such plans by one excuse or another. He thought this strategy was too “crazy” and dangerous and if the plans were ready on the table, this in itself could become an enticement for their use and lead to nuclear war.
But Nixon insisted, and in Oct 1969, US bombers, loaded with nuclear warheads were ordered to fly along the borders of USSR. And for three successive days they did this.
No one is certain about the degree of fright these maneuvers created among the Soviets, but thankfully nothing much came of them.
Yet the next time this strategy was employed, it did create an immense amount of fright. This was when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, then under arrest and knowing his quarters were bugged, began issuing fusillades of invective against Zia ul Haq and his generals, enumerating all the nice things he would do to them when he returned to power.
By this stratagem Bhutto hoped to scare Zia into releasing him, but succeeded in generating some serious fright among the generals. Serious enough to get himself hanged!
And now we are seeing Mian Nawaz Sharif, egged on by his brilliant daughter, taking a leaf out of Bhutto’s book and running with it. Whether the result he achieves is going to be as brilliant as the one achieved by Bhutto, one cannot predict at the moment. But one can clearly see where he is headed.
He has decided that being the lion that he is, it best behooves him to roar and to keep on roaring till the roar flattens out into braying. And he seems clearly to have arrived at the felicitous conclusion, that without him, Pakistan stands to lose all meaning. Thus, if he cannot have Pakistan all to himself and his brood, Pakistan would be better off as a heap of rubble.
So far his crowning achievement is the tattering of a political party built of three decades of loot and plunder.
The only thing more pathetic than him are his sorry remnants of slobbering court jesters, making excuses for him and trying to put Humpty together again.
And then there is Chaudhary Nisar–sulky little Jack Horner, the sole self-confessed carrier of the flag of integrity in the late lamented PML-N and the symbol of loyal service to the party. So loyal in fact, that he has proudly confessed to advising Nawaz Sharif at every turn, of how to explain away the wealth he stole from the country so that he could escape the just deserts of plunder coming to him.
But luckily for Pakistan, whatever be its plight, Nawaz Sharif’s last attack on the state and its army, come to be known as the Dawn Leaks case, seems to have put public support decisively behind the army. Most writers and nearly all the anchors given to cutting him slack, have either genuinely turned, or seem too embarrassed to help him along with their usual platitudes of mercenary support. Perhaps Pakistan will see better days yet. Perhaps the process of accountability now underway will be an across-the-board process, and proceed from top to bottom, because the poor bottom, having been buffeted so long and so mercilessly, is now in a truly sorry state and needs some relief.