In the hours after Donald Trump secured another term in the White House, a familiar exercise was unfolding in foreign capitals. Dusting off their proverbial Trump playbooks, leaders from Paris to Jerusalem to Riyadh and beyond began posting congratulatory messages online and pressing their ambassadors in Washington to find a way — any way — to get in contact with the incoming president directly.
The scramble did not go unnoticed among Trump’s bleary-eyed aides in Florida, who kept close track of who was reaching out — and in what order.
As the world digests the reality of another Trump presidency, the central characteristics of his approach to the world are coming into sharper focus almost immediately. Transactional, personality-based and erratic, the Trump doctrine made for a chaotic four years that left both foreign leaders and seasoned American national security aides exhausted and jittery.
Nothing in Trump’s campaign for president suggests his approach is likely to change. Unlike those years, however, the world is now “on fire,” as Trump likes to say, and he’s promised to extinguish the flames. He has vowed to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours and bring peace to the Middle East, all while constraining American foes in North Korea and Iran.
That’s in addition to slapping broad new tariffs on China, reassessing stalwart American defense alliances like NATO and finding countries willing to take the migrants he’s promised to deport en masse.
How he will accomplish any of those goals is uncertain. He did not delve into details of his plans as a candidate, much less confer with American allies about how to approach the problems collectively.
What he did make clear was his distrust of American alliances that have been the backbone of the Western world order, the same one President Joe Biden sought to restore when he took over the presidency from Trump four years ago, declaring “America is back.”
Instead of helping the US achieve its goals, Trump has described the allies as parasitic burdens, no more so than when he encouraged Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries who don’t meet their defense spending targets.
That makes his upcoming return to the global stage one of the most unpredictable factors in an already perilous world, and has foreign leaders both holding their breath while also seeking an in.
Even before Trump’s victory was assured, leaders were writing their congratulations on X. Among the first were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Trump friend who later spoke with the president-elect by phone, and French President Emmanuel Macron, whose relationship with Trump during his first term grew badly strained.
The Élysée Palace, Macron’s official office, noted in describing their call that Macron was “among the very first heads of state” to reach Trump: “They had a very warm conversation, building on their strong preexisting relationship,” the palace said.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader who the CIA concluded had ordered the killing of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, also spoke with Trump on Wednesday to “reiterate the historic relationship” between their countries.
NATO’s new secretary general Mark Rutte, whose elevation to the job was helped along by the relationship he’d developed with Trump as Dutch prime minister, said he’d congratulated Trump on Tuesday evening. “His leadership will again be key to keeping our alliance strong,” he said, somewhat hopefully.
Scramble to arrange meetings
As leaders were sending congratulatory messages to Trump, their aides are feverishly gaming out how to setup potential meetings with the president-elect in the coming months, multiple sources familiar with the early planning efforts explained. World leaders are open to all options, including making trips to New York or Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, sources said. Many of them are eyeing meetings before Trump’s January inauguration.
Still, even loose plans have not been sketched out for possible meetings. For now, those who have sent congratulatory messages to Trump are awaiting responses from him and his team as they also work to be in contact with people close to Trump, they said.
Foreign leaders are relying on their experience with Trump during his first presidency, when flattery and personal attention paid dividends, as they approach him following his win. One foreign diplomat said there is a better understanding of Trump compared to 2016, which is part of what led to the flood of congratulatory notes even before the race was officially called.
The diplomat said in their view, leaders are following a model set by the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who headed directly to New York following Trump’s victory in 2016 for a meeting at Trump Tower, toting a set of gold-plated golf clubs as a congratulatory gift.
The model they are avoiding is the one adopted by then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who took a direct approach when speaking with Trump without much ego-stroking.
It wasn’t yet clear how or whether some of the authoritarians who Trump openly admired as president would convey their well-wishes. Russian President Vladimir Putin — who tried flattering Trump during his first term and who Trump talks about as a friend — has no plans to congratulate him now, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.
“Let’s not forget that we are talking about an unfriendly country that is both directly and indirectly involved in the war against our states,” he said.
And if Trump is still receiving “love letters,” as he called them, from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, neither is revealing their correspondence publicly.
Ultimately, it is those relationships that proved the most alarming for many veterans of Trump’s first presidency, who — after breaking with Trump — described efforts to prevent the US leader from being manipulated by violent autocrats.
Perhaps the most important relationship Trump must now cultivate is with China’s Xi Jinping, who he has described as “a very good friend of mine during my term” but with whom his relationship grew increasingly tense: Trump entered a trade war with China during the first few years of his administration and when Covid-19 began spreading throughout the US, Trump regularly referred to it as the “China virus.”
Since Trump was last in office, Xi has deepened his relationship with Putin though meetings and visits, creating a dynamic Biden officials believe could be meant to challenge US authority.
On Wednesday, Xi congratulated Trump in a phone call, according to two sources familiar with the conversation.
As American officials work to assess whether Xi has near-term designs on Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its own, Trump suggested last month that a combination of withering tariffs and general insanity might prevent an invasion.
“He respects me and he knows I’m f***ing crazy,” he told the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board when asked whether he would use military force to protect Taiwan.
And that, in the end, could sum up Trump’s foreign policy doctrine in a sentence.
Veterans of Trump’s first term describe a foreign policy approach untethered to the processes most US presidents adopted to make consequential decisions about world affairs. Trump developed policy on the fly, sometimes based on conversations his aides only learned about afterward, and announced his decisions on social media.
That at times led to tense meetings, shouting matches or the unsavory task of telling Trump why his decisions wouldn’t work.
Trump could bring in advisers more willing to break with norms
As he returns to the Oval Office, people around Trump expect he will select individuals to serve in his administration who will be better prepared to execute his directives, no matter how chaotic they may be decided or delivered.
It’s not out of the question that some veterans of Trump’s first time in office could return to serve in different posts, including Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state; Keith Kellogg, who acted as National Security Adviser to Vice President Mike Pence; or Richard Grenell, Trump’s ambassador to Germany who later served as acting director of national intelligence.
Brian Hook, a top State Department official during the first Trump administration, is expected to lead Trump’s transition team at the State Department, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
But Trump is also likely to look outside his first administration for advisers who are willing to go further than his team did back then and be less concerned about breaking international norms or rules.
Who Trump selects for top national security posts will go a long way in determining what type of foreign policy he will execute, particularly in Ukraine, where the Republican Party has been somewhat divided in how best to wield American support.
“It is difficult to anticipate Trump’s policy on the war because his team contains personnel with very different views,” said John Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a former US ambassador to Ukraine. “One group advocates sharply reducing aid to Ukraine—a view many associate with Trump. This group is naive about the Kremlin’s policy toward the United States—Putin states plainly that the United States is adversary number one—and clueless about the danger of a Kremlin victory in Ukraine.”
“The other camp recognizes the threat to US interests in Europe and elsewhere if Washington were to abandon Ukraine,” Herbst went on. “This group would pursue a Reaganesque policy of peace through strength and, unlike the Biden team, not be intimidated by Putin’s nuclear bluster. The first clues about Trump’s policy will be the appointments he makes to senior national security positions.”
CNN’s Alayna Treene contributed reporting.