CNN
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The hours after Donald Trump secured another term in the White House, a familiar exercise was taking place in foreign capitals. Dusting off their notorious Trump playbooks, leaders from Paris to Jerusalem to Riyadh and beyond began posting congratulatory messages online and pressed their ambassadors in Washington to find a way — any way — to connect with the president-elect directly.
The power didn’t go unnoticed among Trump’s blue-eyed aides in Florida, who kept close tabs on who reached out — and in what order.
As the world digests the reality of another Trump presidency, the central features of his approach to the world come into sharper focus almost immediately. Transactional, personality-driven and erratic, the Trump Doctrine created a chaotic four years that left both foreign leaders and seasoned US national security aides exhausted and nervous.
Nothing in Trump’s presidential campaign suggests that his attitude is likely to change. Unlike those years, the world is now “on fire,” as Trump likes to say, and he has promised to put out the flames. He has promised to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours and bring peace to the Middle East, while containing US enemies in North Korea and Iran.
That’s in addition to slapping broad new tariffs on China, reassessing staunch U.S. defense alliances like NATO, and finding countries willing to take the migrants he’s promised to deport en masse.
How he will achieve either of these goals is uncertain. He did not delve into the details of his plans as a candidate, let alone confer with American allies on how to tackle the problems collectively.
What he made clear was his distrust of American alliances that have been the backbone of the Western world order, the same ones that President Joe Biden sought to restore when he took over the presidency from Trump four years ago, declaring that “America is back.”
Instead of helping the US achieve its goals, Trump has described the allies as parasitical burdens, none more so than when he encouraged Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries that fail to meet their defense spending targets.
That makes his impending return to the global stage one of the most unpredictable factors in an already dangerous world, and has foreign leaders both holding their breath as they search in.
Even before Trump’s victory was assured, leaders wrote their congratulations on X. Among the first were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Trump friend who later spoke to the president-elect by phone, and French President Emmanuel Macron, whose relationship with Trump, meanwhile, was his first term became very strained.
The Élysée Palace, Macron’s official office, noted in describing his call that Macron was “among the very first heads of state” to reach Trump: “They had a very warm conversation that built on their strong pre-existing 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 dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, also spoke with Trump on Wednesday to “reiterate the historic relationship” between their countries.
New NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, whose elevation to the job was helped by the relationship he had developed with Trump as Dutch prime minister, said he had congratulated Trump on Tuesday night. “His leadership will once again be key to keeping our alliance strong,” he said, somewhat hopefully.
While the leaders sent congratulatory messages to Trump, their aides are feverishly playing out how to set up 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 watching rallies before Trump’s inauguration in January.
Still, not even loose plans have been outlined for possible meetings. For now, those who have sent congratulatory messages to Trump are waiting to hear back from him and his team as they also work to stay in touch with people close to Trump, they said.
Foreign leaders are relying on their experiences with Trump during his first presidency, when flattery and personal attention paid dividends, as they approach him after his victory. A foreign diplomat said there is a better understanding of Trump compared to 2016, which is part of what led to the flood of congratulations even before the race was officially announced.
The diplomats said in their view the leaders are following a model set by the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who headed straight to New York after Trump’s 2016 victory for a meeting at Trump Tower, with a set of gold-plated golf clubs as a congratulatory gift.
The model they shun is the one adopted by then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who took a direct tack when speaking to Trump without much ego-stroking.
It was not yet clear how or if some of the authoritarians Trump openly admired as president would convey their well wishes. Russian President Vladimir Putin — who tried to flatter Trump during his first term and whom Trump talks about as a friend — has no plans to congratulate him now, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.
“Let us 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 while Trump still receives “love letters,” as he called them, from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, none of them is disclosing their correspondence publicly.
Ultimately, it’s those relationships that proved most alarming to many veterans of Trump’s first presidency, who — after breaking with Trump — described efforts to prevent America’s leaders from being manipulated by violent autocrats.
Perhaps the most important relationship Trump now has to cultivate is with China’s Xi Jinping, whom he has described as “a very good friend of mine during my term” but with whom his relationship became increasingly strained: Trump entered into a trade war with China in the first a few years into his administration and as Covid-19 began to spread across the United States, Trump regularly referred to it as the “China virus.”
Since Trump was last in office, Xi has deepened his relationship with Putin through meetings and visits, creating a dynamic Biden officials believe may be intended to challenge US authority.
On Wednesday, Xi congratulated Trump in a phone call, according to two sources familiar with the conversation.
As U.S. officials work to assess whether Xi has short-term plans for Taiwan, the self-governing island Beijing claims as its own, Trump suggested last month that a combination of steep tariffs and public insanity could prevent an invasion.
“He respects me and he knows I’m crazy,” he told the Wall Street Journal editorial board when asked if he would use military force to protect Taiwan.
And that could ultimately sum up Trump’s foreign policy doctrine in one sentence.
Veterans of Trump’s first term describe a foreign policy approach unconnected to the processes most US presidents adopted to make consequential decisions on 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 sometimes led to tense meetings, shouting matches or the unpleasant task of telling Trump why his decision wouldn’t work.
When he returns to the Oval Office, those around Trump expect that he will select people to serve in his administration who will be better prepared to carry out his directives, no matter how chaotic they may be decided or delivered.
It is not out of the question that some veterans of Trump’s first term in office could return to serve in various 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 in 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 willing to go further than his team did then and be less concerned about violating international norms or rules.
Who Trump picks for top national security posts will go a long way in determining what kind of foreign policy he will pursue, particularly in Ukraine, where the Republican Party has been somewhat divided on how best to marshal American support.
“It’s hard to predict Trump’s policy on the war because his team includes staff with very different views,” said John Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. “One group advocates a sharp reduction in aid to Ukraine – a view many associate with Trump. This group is naïve about the Kremlin’s policy towards the US – Putin clearly says the US is adversary number one – and has no idea of the danger to 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 continued. “This group would pursue a Reaganesque policy of peace through strength and, unlike the Biden team, would not be intimidated by Putin’s nuclear storm. The first clues about Trump’s policies will be the appointments he makes to senior national security positions.”
CNN’s Alayna Treene contributed reporting.
