“Thank you, Mr. President. … Thank you. … Thank you, dear Donald!”
The gushing gratitude that leaders of Ukraine, NATO allies, and the European Commission showed at the White House this week was not a mere nervous tic. It was a core feature of their high-stakes mission to safeguard Kyiv from a potential U.S.-backed peace deal on Russia’s terms.
And it was the latest, most dramatic sign of a sea change in the way many leaders around the world are now approaching relations with the United States.
Why We Wrote This
In their dealings with the U.S. president, foreign leaders are finding that he responds better to a personal approach than to geopolitical arguments or the details of diplomacy.
With each passing week since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, their focus has shifted more from traditional diplomacy to psychology – with the overriding aim of staying on the right side of the man in the Oval Office.
Partly, that’s because of Mr. Trump’s outsize personality, as well as his undisguised thirst for praise and for accolades such as the Nobel Peace Prize.
But the main concern has been the real-world effects – the result of his unprecedented, almost uncontested, control of the levers of power and his penchant for policy swerves and U-turns.
That has been true of his pronouncements on the Middle East, on tariffs, and above all – as the major players were all keenly aware this week – on Russia’s war against neighboring Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been engaging in sustained Trump-wooing of his own. He continued that campaign at last week’s summit in Alaska – a meeting at which he not only stood firm on his main Ukraine demands, but apparently convinced Mr. Trump to go along with them.
Earlier, in Moscow, he had presented U.S. envoy – and Trump friend – Steve Witkoff with a portrait of the U.S. president by one of Russia’s leading painters. Mr. Putin also let it be known that when candidate Trump escaped an assassin’s bullet, he had gone to church to pray for his safekeeping.
In Alaska, Mr. Putin seconded Mr. Trump’s frequent claim that if he, rather than Joe Biden, had been president at the time, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine. For good measure, he also echoed Mr. Trump’s insistence that his 2020 election loss was “rigged.”
Ukraine and its European allies initially reacted to the Alaska summit with alarm.
They believed that, in a pre-summit call, they had secured Mr. Trump’s agreement to press for a ceasefire, leave territorial arrangements to direct Russia-Ukraine negotiations, and ensure credible security guarantees for Kyiv as part of any eventual deal.
When that proved to not be the case, it took only hours for Western Europe’s main political and security leaders to decide to join Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his own White House summit on Monday.
Yet, while their travel plans had to be hastily arranged, their highly personal, psychologically informed approach to this week’s talks had been months in the making.
It began to take shape this past February, when Mr. Zelenskyy suffered a humiliating public dressing-down at the White House from Vice President JD Vance. Mr. Vance berated the Ukrainian leader for not saying “thank you” to President Trump for U.S. military and financial support.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Mr. Zelenskyy was then unceremoniously ushered out of the White House, and officials announced a suspension of U.S. aid.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer – who one day earlier had deftly begun his White House talks by handing Mr. Trump a coveted royal invitation for a state visit – led Europe’s damage-control efforts, joining fellow leaders in reiterating their support for Kyiv.
But Mr. Starmer did more than that.
He felt that he and others had failed by not having coached the Ukrainian leader on the key importance of engaging personally with Mr. Trump at the talks. He sent aides to Kyiv to help repair Mr. Zelenskyy’s ties with the U.S. president and avoid a repeat of the diplomatic debacle.
This week’s meeting had a hard-nosed political aim: to draw Mr. Trump back from his apparent embrace of the Russian president’s Ukraine agenda.
But the apparent success of the mission – at least for now – owed much to a psychological approach European leaders had been honing for months.
It was not just the thank yous, which ran to several dozen in all.
Mr. Zelenskyy dressed more formally. He made a point of presenting a letter addressed to Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, who has highlighted the plight of Ukrainian child victims of the war.
As a key figure in efforts to persuade Mr. Trump to involve the U.S. in Ukraine’s postwar security, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte drew on months of outreach. That included an alliance summit in June that he choreographed as a personal tribute to Mr. Trump’s role in Europe’s rearmament.
It was Mr. Rutte, this week, who offered gratitude to “dear Donald.”
The scale of the shift away from old-style diplomacy when dealing with the U.S. president was captured in recent remarks by Britain’s ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson.
“I’ve never been in a town or a political system that is so dominated by one individual,” he said, describing Mr. Trump’s Washington. “Usually, you’re entering an ecosystem rather than the world of one personality.
“But he is a phenomenon. A unique politician.”
