Trump Management 101: World leaders adapt to his erratic diplomacy with flattery and patience

LONDON (AP) — If world leaders were teaching a course on how to deal with U.S. 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 U.S. from the alliance. Among the learnable Trumpisms: He disdains traditional diplomacy. With him, it's " America first," it's superlative — and " it's not even close. " He goes with his gut, and the world goes along for the ride.

They're finding, for example, that the sheer pace of Trump's orders, threats and social posts can send him pinging from the priority of one moment to another. He describes himself as "flexible" in negotiations, such as those in which he threatened big tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China only to back down during talks. And while Trump claimed credit for the ceasefire in the Iran-Israel war, he also has yet to negotiate ending the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza as promised.

Trump's threat this week to levy retaliatory tariffs on Spain, for example, "is a mystery to everyone," Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever told reporters Thursday during a summit in Brussels. If the tariffs never happen, he said, "It won't be the first time that things don't turn out as bad as they seem at first glance. Or that he changes his mind. I'm not the kind of leader who jumps every time Mr. Trump says something."

Trump management 101: Discipline vs ‘daddy diplomacy’

Two summits this month, an ocean apart — the Group of Seven in Canada and NATO in The Netherlands — illustrate contrasting approaches to the American president on the brink of his 6th month back in office.

Meeting in mid-June in Alberta, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed Trump at a press conference by wishing him a happy birthday and adding a smidgen of flattery: “The G7 is nothing without U.S. leadership and your personal leadership of the United States.” But when Trump turned partisan, Carney cut off the event, saying: “We actually have to start the meeting.”

Trump appeared to nod in agreement. But later, on Monday, June 16, he abruptly departed the summit a day early as the conflict between Israel and Iran intensified.

Trump ordered U.S. pilots to drop 30,000-pound bombs early Sunday on two key underground uranium enrichment plants in Iran, and by Wednesday announced on social media "a Complete and Total ceasefire." What followed was a 48-hour whirlwind during which Trump veered from elated to indignant to triumphant as his fragile Israel-Iran ceasefire agreement came together, teetered toward collapse and ultimately coalesced.

Trump publicly harangued the Israelis and Iranians with a level of pique and profanity that was notable even for him. Chiding the two countries for attacking each other beyond a deadline, he dropped the f-word. Not finished, he then cast doubt on his support for NATO's mutual defense guarantee.

Such was the president's mood as he winged toward a meeting of the trans-Atlantic alliance he had disparaged for years.

NATO was ready for Trump with a summit set to please him

NATO is essentially American, anyway. The Europeans and Canadians cannot function without American heavy lift, air refueling, logistics and more. Most of all, they rely on the United States for its range of nuclear weapons for deterrence.

The June 25 summit was whittled down to a few hours, and one Trump-driven subject: Raising the amount of money the member nations spent on defense to lighten the load carried by the United States.

Emphatically not on the agenda: Russia's ongoing war with Ukraine. Trump did, however, meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has climbed his own learning curve on Trump management since Trump berated him in the Oval Office in February. The Ukrainian leader has deployed a conciliatory approach and mirrored Trump's transactional style.

The goal, widely reported, was to avoid doing anything that might cause Trump to blow up the event or leave. Trump was invited to stay at the royal palace in The Hague and dine with the royal family. It was expected that most members would endorse the plan to raise their spending targets for their one-for-all defense against Russia.

The other NATO ambassadors had told Secretary-General Mark Rutte to deploy his Trump-whispering skills. He sent the president a private, presummit text predicting Trump would achieve “BIG” success there, which Trump posted on his own socials for all to see. At the summit, Rutte likened Trump’s role quieting the Iran-Israel war to a “daddy” interdicting a schoolyard brawl.

“He likes me,” Trump explained.

Backlash was stiff. Lithuania's former foreign minister called Rutte's approach “the gushings of weakness and meekness.”

"The wording appears to have been stolen from the adult entertainment industry," Gabrielius Landsbergis tweeted. "It reduces Europe to the state of a beggar — pitiful before our Transatlantic friends and Eastern opponents alike."

It was the latest confirmation that complimenting is a favorite way for leaders to deal with him, if not a popular one in some circles.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been using the tactic since at least 2018, when he called Trump "the greatest friend Israel has ever had," and even named a settlement in the Golan Heights after him. The late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plied him with multiple rounds of golf. French President Emmanuel Macron invited Trump to be the guest of honor at Bastille Day in 2017, featuring an elaborate military parade.

What Trump left behind

Rutte found a way to make Trump's demand that member countries spend 5% of their gross domestic product on defense work. Their military support to Ukraine could count as a substantial slice of that money. But the agreement left big issues unresolved, including a U.S. troop reduction that is likely to be announced later in the year, and the potential for a resulting security vacuum.

Posters on social media referred to NATO as the “North Atlantic Trump Organization.”

“This summit has all been about managing him, and it’s all been about trying to get him to say the right thing in the right moment,” Fiona Hill, a former senior White House national security adviser to three U.S. presidents, including Trump, told the BBC.

By the end of the summit, participants were declaring it a success as much for what it prevented as for what was accomplished. Trump showed up. He did not blow it up, leave early or start fights. And critically, NATO survived — indeed, with Trump declaring himself a changed man where the alliance is concerned.

And his night in the palace? He said he'd “slept beautifully.”

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Associated Press reporters Lorne Cook in Brussels and Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this story.