To reach a landmark agreement in 2015 limiting Iran’s nuclear program, President Barack Obama accepted two years of tough negotiations with Tehran as the diplomatic price to pay to seal a deal.
Not so Donald Trump.
When Iranian negotiators balked this month at the maximal terms President Trump demanded of Tehran to guarantee its nuclear program would never deliver a bomb – and especially after Israel unilaterally began an air war on Iran – an impatient president dispatched the military.
Why We Wrote This
In his second term, and in particular over the past two weeks, President Donald Trump has unleashed on friend and foe alike a diplomatic style that jettisons all the norms of traditional diplomacy in favor of commands, threats, and shows of force.
Saying he was acting in the interest of peace and heading off a broader war in the Middle East, Mr. Trump sent bombers to attack three Iranian nuclear sites, including the Fordow facilities located deep inside a mountain.
It was diplomacy by 30,000-pound bunker-buster bomb.
In his second term, and in particular over the past two weeks, President Trump has unleashed a diplomatic style that jettisons all the norms of traditional diplomacy – dialogue, bargaining, trust-building, and patience – in favor of commands, threats, and shows of force.
And much of the policymaking and announcing is carried out on the one-way street of social media.
“It’s diplomacy by tweet and by fiat,” says Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow in international affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
It’s also a style that aims to keep friend and foe alike guessing, and “our closest allies, like those in Europe, off balance,” Dr. Kupchan says.
Shifting tune on NATO
That approach was on display at the NATO summit at The Hague Wednesday.
In a gaggle with reporters on Air Force One Tuesday, the president cast some doubt on the U.S. commitment to the alliance’s mutual-defense principle, enshrined in the NATO charter’s Article 5. “Depends on your definition; there are numerous definitions of Article 5,” Mr. Trump said.
But in a press conference at the end of the summit Wednesday, the mercurial president said he had a new appreciation for NATO.
He said he came here “because I had to,” but is leaving “feeling differently. It’s not a rip-off, and we’re here to help them protect their countries.”
It’s a diplomatic style unique in American history, Dr. Kupchan says, but one that reflects Mr. Trump’s background as an authoritarian businessman used to getting his way.
“He’s used to making decisions and telling the people around him what to do and they do it,” he says.
In his first term Mr. Trump was restrained by some seasoned advisers and Cabinet members who controlled his whims, Dr. Kupchan says. But in his second term, the president has been set free to apply his management style to diplomacy and world affairs.
This week the war simmering between Iran and Israel was the setting for Trump diplomacy 2.0 – and it garnered mixed results.
Monday evening the president announced a ceasefire on his social media channel, surprising even some of his closest aides. Israel and Iran had both agreed to a “Complete and Total CEASEFIRE,” he declared on his social media channel – even though neither of the belligerents had announced any such agreement.
Rage on the South Lawn
But by Tuesday morning, when the ceasefire was showing signs of unraveling, an impatient president exploded in rage at both Iran and Israel.
As he departed for the NATO summit, he confirmed to journalists assembled on the White House South Lawn that Iran had broken the ceasefire he had declared, adding, “But Israel violated it, too.”
Baring his displeasure, he then added, “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the [expletive] they are doing.” It was hardly traditional diplomatic speak.
Within a few hours, both Israel and Iran announced their adherence to the ceasefire. And again Mr. Trump gathered journalists for an announcement, this time aboard Air Force One.
“Now we’re going to NATO, and we’ll get a new set of problems,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ll solve a new set of problems.”
But whether the president’s fast-paced and unvarnished diplomatic approach is truly solving problems remains to be seen, some foreign policy experts say.
“Trump wants quick deals and fast results, and he wants to shout these deals in capital letters on social media,” says Julianne Smith, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and president of Clarion Strategies, a Washington consulting firm. “But the truth of the matter is that diplomacy requires patience, building relationships, and a two-way street,” she adds, “so we’ll see if Trump’s very different approach delivers lasting results.”
Another hallmark of the president’s diplomatic approach is his frequent referencing of American power and its unilateral application, Ambassador Smith says. “His preference is a language of power and strength, and he believes we are in an era of the great powers asserting their spheres of influence.”
Noting Mr. Trump’s attendance at the summit, she adds, “In reality he has little use for the kind of multilateralism that the U.N., the European Union, or even NATO represent.”
“Hard power is back in vogue”
One question analysts debate is whether the diplomacy Mr. Trump is pursuing is a blip closely tied to his personality, or if global trends will make it, at least to some degree, the new norm.
“Donald Trump is sui generis; he’s a reality TV star who makes everything about him 24/7,” Dr. Kupchan says. But on the other hand, he says, there are forces at work that are influencing President Trump and will influence the course of presidencies to come.
“One factor is that hard power is back in vogue, and it doesn’t matter if it’s Trump or Biden or Obama in the Oval Office,” he says. “That’s a change that is not going to go away.”
Another factor at work is a waning of the deep multilateralism that took hold – and for which the United States was the chief architect – after World War II, he says.
“Trump’s instincts in many respects are more in tune with the world of the 19th century” – think protectionism with a dash of gunboat diplomacy – that “they resonate more with 19th-century grand strategy than with post-Pearl Harbor grand strategy,” Dr. Kupchan says. “The problem is that the fortress America vision and inward focus of the 19th-century world are not possible today.”
Thus Mr. Trump found himself at the summit of one of the multilateral institutions of the last century – if for barely 24 hours.
To accommodate an impatient U.S. president, NATO summit planners made sure the event would be short and sweet – and as devoid of opportunities for spoilers as possible.
There were even signs that other world leaders are not only adapting to Mr. Trump’s diplomatic style, but adopting it.
In a private message that the president subsequently posted for the world to see, NATO Secretary-General Marke Rutte vaunted Mr. Trump’s impact on the alliance in Trump-pleasing style – right down to the use of capital letters.
“Donald,” he wrote, “you will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done. … Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.”
