CNN
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Hours after Donald Trump secured re-election to the White House, a familiar exercise was unfolding at foreign companies. Leaders in Paris, Jerusalem, Riyadh and other countries have shed Trump’s proverbial coattails and begun posting messages of congratulations online and asking their ambassadors in Washington how to directly contact the president-elect in any way they can. I was forced to find it.
The scramble didn’t go unnoticed by Trump’s bleary-eyed aides in Florida, who were closely tracking who was reaching out and in what order.
As the world comes to terms with the reality of President Trump’s re-election, the central features of his approach to the world are becoming clear almost immediately. Transactional, personality-based and unstable, the Trump Doctrine has resulted in four chaotic years, leaving both foreign leaders and veteran US national security advisers exhausted and nervous.
There is nothing in President Trump’s campaign that suggests his approach might change. But unlike then, the world is now, as President Trump likes to say, “on fire,” and he has promised to put out the flames. He vowed to end Russia’s war in Ukraine within 24 hours and bring peace to the Middle East, while keeping America’s enemies in North Korea and Iran in check.
That would be in addition to imposing sweeping new tariffs on China, reevaluating strong U.S. defense alliances like NATO and finding countries ready to take in the migrants he has promised to deport en masse.
How he will achieve these goals is unclear. He did not go into details of his plans as a candidate, much less discuss with U.S. allies how to collectively tackle the problem.
What he revealed was his distrust of America’s alliances, which have formed the backbone of the Western world order. It’s the same alliance that President Joe Biden sought to restore when he took over from Trump four years ago, declaring “America is back.”
Rather than helping the U.S. achieve its goals, President Trump has described allies as parasitic burdens, offering “whatever he wants” to NATO countries that don’t meet their defense spending goals. The same thing happened when I recommended it to Russia.
That makes his future return to the world stage one of the most unpredictable factors in an already endangered world, with foreign leaders holding their breath and calling for intervention. are.
Even before Trump’s victory was certain, leaders were congratulating him. Among the first were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a friend of Trump’s who later spoke on the phone with the president-elect, and French President Emmanuel Macron, who had ties to Trump at the time. His first term was extremely tense.
Macron’s official residence, the Elysée Palace, said in a statement of the phone call that Macron was “one of the first heads of state to make contact” with Trump, adding: “The two build on a strong relationship. and had a very warm conversation,” the palace said.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto leader who the CIA concluded in 2018 ordered the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, also met with President Trump on Wednesday and announced that both countries It “re-emphasized the historical relationship” between the two countries.
NATO’s new secretary-general, Mark Rutte, who was able to ascend to the job because of the relationship he built with Trump as prime minister of the Netherlands, said on Tuesday night that he congratulated Trump. “His leadership will be the key to keeping our alliance strong again,” he said with some hope.
As leaders congratulate Trump, aides are intensely considering how to set up a meeting with the president-elect in the coming months, people familiar with early planning said. Explained. World leaders are open to all options, including a visit to New York or Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida, the people said. Many of them are focused on President Trump’s pre-inauguration meeting in January.
Still, no even rough plans have been drawn for a possible meeting. For now, people who sent congratulatory messages to Trump are waiting to hear back from him and his team, and are trying to reach out to people close to Trump, officials said.
Foreign leaders have approached Trump after his victory, relying on their experiences with him as the first president, when flattery and personal attention paid off. One diplomat said there was a greater understanding of President Trump than in 2016, which was one of the reasons why he was flooded with congratulatory messages even before the campaign was officially called.
The diplomats said that in their view, the leaders were set up by the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took a set of gold-plated golf clubs and headed straight to New York for talks at Trump Tower after Trump’s 2016 victory. He said he was following the model. Celebration gift.
The model they are eschewing is the one adopted by then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who took a less egotistical, more direct approach in her meetings with Trump.
It was not yet clear how, or if, some of the authoritarians Mr. Trump had publicly praised as president would make their wishes known. Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to flatter Trump during his first term in office, but the Kremlin says Trump speaks as a friend but has no intention of congratulating Putin now. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.
“Let us not forget that we are talking about unfriendly countries that are directly or indirectly involved in wars against our country,” he said.
And even though President Trump is still receiving what he calls “love letters” from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, neither party has publicly disclosed the letters.
Ultimately, it’s these relationships that are most alarming to many veterans of the Trump era, who, after breaking with Trump, are talking about efforts to prevent American leaders from being manipulated by violent dictators. spoke.
Perhaps the most important relationship President Trump must build now is with China’s Xi Jinping. Although he has described Xi as “a very good friend of mine during his term in office,” relations with him have become increasingly strained. Years into his administration, as the coronavirus began to spread across the United States, President Trump regularly referred to it as the “China virus.”
Since Trump last took office, Xi has deepened his relationship with Putin through meetings and visits, leading Biden officials to believe he intends to challenge U.S. authority.
President Xi congratulated President Trump on the phone Wednesday, according to two sources familiar with the conversation.
President Trump last month announced chilling tariffs and a general suggested that a crazy combination could thwart the invasion.
Asked by the Wall Street Journal editorial board if he intended to use military force to protect Taiwan, he said: “He respects me and he knows I’m crazy.” ” he said.
And ultimately, this will sum up President Trump’s foreign policy principles in one sentence.
Veterans of the Trump administration’s first term describe an approach to foreign policy that is not tied to the process most U.S. presidents have used to make major decisions about world affairs. Mr. Trump developed policies on the fly, sometimes based on conversations later learned by aides, and announced his decisions on social media.
That sometimes led to tense meetings, shouting matches, and the unpleasant task of explaining to President Trump why his decisions don’t work.
As he returns to the Oval Office, those around President Trump are confident that they will elect someone to serve in his administration who is ready to carry out the president’s instructions, no matter how chaotic their decisions and implementation may be. I expect it to be deaf.
It’s also possible that veterans of Trump’s first term as president, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, may return to other posts. Keith Kellogg, former national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. Or President Trump’s ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, who later served as acting director of national intelligence.
Brian Hook, who was a senior State Department official during the first Trump administration, is expected to lead the Trump transition team at the State Department, three sources said.
But President Trump is also likely to go further than his team at the time and seek advisers outside the first administration who are less concerned about breaking international norms and rules.
Who President Trump chooses for the top national security post will depend on what kind of foreign policy he will pursue, especially in Ukraine, where Republicans are divided over how best to garner U.S. support. It will be of great help in deciding.
John Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said, “Trump’s war policy is difficult to predict because his team includes staffers with very different views.” That’s because it’s happening,” he said. “One group advocates for sharp cuts in aid to Ukraine, a view many associate with President Trump. Although President Putin has made it clear that the United States is his number one enemy, he is also ignorant of the dangers of a Kremlin victory in Ukraine.
“The other camp recognizes the threat to U.S. interests in Europe and elsewhere if Washington abandons Ukraine,” Herbst continued. “This group pursues a Reaganesque peace-by-force policy and, unlike the Biden team, will not be intimidated by Putin’s nuclear detonation. The first clue about Trump’s policy is that he will be appointed.”
CNN’s Alayna Treene contributed reporting.
