Dice Diplomacy and Trump
By Waleed Abdulhay
June 15, 2026
Since the Russians contributed to Donald Trump’s accession to the US presidency, the mechanisms and steps of decision-making in the United States have undergone radical transformations. The positions and weights of individuals and institutions, and even their “procedural ethics,” have been affected. I am almost certain that the American academic community in political science is confused by the “theoretical modeling” that underpins Trump’s decision-making.
In this article, I propose to call Trump’s policies “dice diplomacy”, and what makes me call this concept is the approach between Trump’s decisions on the one hand and the randomness of the dice within the limits of the six options on the other hand, and this can be explained as follows:
1- Unpredictable:
The ability to predict a decision (or face the dice) is in the range of 16.25%
2- High risk: Because the repercussions of the “unexpected” make hedging of the results a high-risk thing.
3- Achieving goals – scientifically according to probability theory – depends on the number of accelerated movements, which calls for linking the results with the times of rolling the dice, and Trump is perhaps one of the most current world leaders in delivering statements, statements, and tweets. etc., so we return it – His Dice – it does not stop.
4- Losing the tight strategy to the extent that it depends on the results of “rolling the dice” or announcing successive plans and statements that contradict each other, as is the case with dice.
We believe that dice diplomacy is not without some advantages, as it achieves several important results:
- Confounding the opponent and weakening his ability to anticipate the next action or reaction.
- Creating the impression in the opponent of being willing to take risks
Enhancing the feeling in the opponent that you are interested in achieving quick results and do not have a distant vision for the future.
The concept of the face of the dice can be approximated by a tactical option: face 1 means war, 2 means tariffs, 3 means sanctions, 4 means providing aid, 5 means joining a bloc, and 6 means withdrawing from an international bloc.
The history of international relations has defined concepts drawn from various fields that were later developed, such as ping-pong diplomacy, brinkmanship, and the madman theory.
The theory of probability involves some logic, the more times you throw, the more likely you are to fall in the desired face, and if you fail to get the desired face in the first throw, the chances of getting it become higher with the second and third throws… etc., which is controlled by the method of throwing and holding the dice which can improve the power of endurance.
But the central problem remains in the area of the difficulty of prediction, which calls for focusing on the face of the dice after the roll, which is matched by focusing on what Trump is doing and not what he says, because what he says is more difficult than predicting the face of the next dice. Maybe.
