METHODICAL MADNESS

The morning is unusually mild for early November. Berlin is bathed in golden light. We meet at the China Club Berlin, one of those places where elegance, history and the present converge – a diplomatic oasis in the middle of a city that rarely comes to rest.

DR. MELODY SUCHAREWICZ is a political communications and strategy consultant. Through her many years of work in a field that appears abstract and complex to many, she has retained the ability to distil geopolitical dynamics into a single sentence. And she shows a determination to take a stand even where others have long since gone on the defensive.

She is not your typical expert. Not aloof, but someone who gets involved, thinks things through and takes countermeasures. In recent years she has worked at crucial interfaces – between government agencies, media houses and international organisations. Her perspective is multi-layered, conflict-tested, pragmatic.

For our issue of SLEEK, which appears under the theme of ‘Madness’, we invited her to talk about precisely this moment: a time in which reason often feels like a relic, in which ‘madness’ – understood as a state of emergency, loss of control or strategic disruption – has become the norm.

What does rationality still mean in a world where emotions dominate political action, where narratives outweigh facts, and where geopolitical decisions often resemble a play whose script no one knows? This is an attempt not to get lost in rhetoric, but to approach the complexity of the present with clarity and openness.

We talk to Dr. Melody Sucharewicz about calculated ambiguity, dealing with uncertainty, media hype and the psychological pitfalls of diplomacy – but also about personal resilience, clarity of thought, and the question of whether madness can sometimes be not only a danger, but a productive force. A conversation about boundaries – and how to shift them without losing them.

CHRISTIAN BRACHT You advise political decision-makers in high-tension situations. How do you maintain your own mental clarity in such moments?

DR. MELODY SUCHAREWICZ What you call mental clarity, I interpret as control. So the prefrontal cortex remains in control. But that’s a conditio sine qua non for the job. My academic background gives me a good foundation for this. I studied anthropology and sociology and wrote my dissertation on radicalisation/deradicalisation. This research showed me how easily the line into irrationality can be crossed – by individuals as well as by collectives, and also in the political decision-making process.

CB How can we communicate reasonably in a world that is becoming increasingly unreasonable – from social media to foreign policy?

MS A big question for which there is no big answer. It already fails because of the term ‘reasonable’, which is even more difficult to define in politics than in civilian life. But if we engage in a theoretical experiment, we must add more tangible elements to reason, including ethics, the goal of peace, the absence of exploitative goals, and others.

Given our knowledge of the world in 2025, this means that ‘reasonable communication’ inevitably leads to communicative inferiority or defeat. Today, in politics and in large parts of civil society, we are forced to behave as if we were in an information war – even on a talk show.

This requires a high degree of sensitivity in political communication, in the sense of Weberian political reason: this means that the real effects of political communication should be placed above good intentions and emotions.

CB What role does language play when it comes to bringing order to chaos – or, conversely, destabilising order?

MS Satire may do anything, language can do anything. Constant verbal attacks claiming that Europe is a decadent continent reinforce tendencies that can be interpreted as decadence. We can see how massively language can destabilise in the recent urban landscape debate. One word becomes a tsunami of debate. But it is not language that destabilises, but the cultural context. We find ourselves in a kind of cultural world war in which progressivism is supplanting liberalism and linguistic norms are being demanded that can become toxic for a resilient democracy.

CB Are there situations in which madness – i.e. breaking the rules, disruption or calculated loss of control – is a smarter strategy than rational planning?

MS I cannot imagine a situation in which deliberately irrational behaviour is the smarter strategy. What authoritarian regimes consider smart does not necessarily correspond to the Western understanding of smart – because we pursue different values and goals. Idi Amin, for example, tried to prevent his loss of political control in Uganda towards the end of his term in office by deliberately acting irrationally, such as invading Tanzania and spreading rumours that he would eat his opponents. The opposite was the case: he was deposed immediately after invading Tanzania.

CB How can you tell whether a political actor is actually acting irrationally – or just deliberately appearing irrational in order to secure power or confuse opponents?

MS This distinction is possible to a certain extent if you apply a differentiated analytical grid to an actor. Relevant actors usually have a long-term agenda for organising their political behaviour. And in the course of their careers, they have learned from the reactions of their political competitors. So they know when and whether threatening behaviour or aggressive statements pay off for them in political terms. We see this every day with Putin.

CB To what extent is madness perhaps even a necessary driver of innovation – including in international politics?

MS Necessary in the sense of ‘no madness – no innovation’ would be debatable. Innovation also occurs through systematic evolution. Diligence and concentration lead to new results. Persistence in solving a problem is not the same as obsession. In politics, too, ‘thinking outside the box’ is not the same as madness. Milei is not mad. But I can understand that politics in Germany is becoming too conformist and that a certain amount of madness is missing. Even President Trump, who is often perceived as ‘mad’, breaks with ‘madness’ in Einstein’s sense through his political actions: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By shifting norms and boundaries, by disrupting decades of defensiveness, he contributed in 2020 to pragmatism and strategic interests triumphing over ideology and extremism in the Middle East with the peace agreements between Israel and Morocco, Bahrain, the UAE and Sudan (Abraham Accords). Using the same modus operandi, Trump contributed to the release of dozens of Israeli hostages and the ceasefire in Gaza.

CB If you could implant one rational thought into the collective memory of the world, what would it be?

MS Look at history and think about which mistakes you want to repeat.