Trump's Foreign Policy

If world leaders were teaching a course on how to deal with US President Donald Trump early in his second term, their lesson plan might go like this: Pile on the flattery. Don't chase the policy rabbits he sends running across the world stage. Wait out the threats to see what, specifically, he wants, and when possible, find a way to deliver it. With every Oval Office meeting and summit, the leaders of other countries are settling on tactics and strategy in their pursuit of a working relationship with the emboldened American leader who presides over the world's largest economy and commands its most powerful military. The results were there to see at NATO, where leaders heaped praise on Trump, shortened meetings and removed contentious subjects from the agenda. Given that Trump dominates geopolitics, foreign leaders are learning from each other's experiences dating to Trump's first term, when he reportedly threatened to withdraw the US from the alliance. Among the learnable Trumpisms:

The rush to curry Trump's favour makes clear just how much global leaders learned their lesson from his first term, when the quickest way to the president's heart was to offer investment

In recent weeks, he has also threatened to seize the Panama Canal and slap Canada and Mexico with 25 per cent tariffs if they do not clamp down on the flow of drugs and migrants into US

The problem with Trump is not so much that he sees a world of self-motivated states and individuals, but that he only sees the world that way