Bouvard on Deal-Making and Political Commitment

When you make a deal you stake your political standing on the outcome of the deal and therefore find you have an interest in protecting your partner in the deal. This observation is so elementary that it's hard not to assume that was the real purpose of the deal.

Trump's renewal of preposterous threats fits this pattern because they represent the pretension of "disciplining" the deal partner, which further confirms them as partner. The argument that all this ultimately destabilizes the regime stands, but the claim that you need to

strengthen the regime in order to undermine it is at the very least counterintuitive and not very evident at the moment. It would imply a stark contradiction between deep, meticulous planning (and confidence in tight control) and apparent haphazardness.

Anyway, here is the strongest argument for that analysis by its most stalwart representative, at any rate. Is the endgame a single strongmen who slaughters the rest or a civil war between factions?

One good thing about this analysis is that if it's correct maybe the skepticism is just part of the "cooking."