Last weekend, leaders from France, Ukraine and the United States met in Paris. While the gathering’s primary purpose was to celebrate the reopening of Notre Dame—newly restored after the 2019 fire that destroyed large parts of the cathedral—it also offered the opportunity for diplomacy. In particular, the three leaders talked over the next phase of the ongoing war in Ukraine, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seemed to come away from the meeting buoyed.
Zelenskyy noted that they had “discussed important issues on the battlefield and in the global situation, from our frontlines to North Korea,” before adding,
"We count on America and the entire world to help stop Putin. The only things he fears are America and global unity."
Zelenskyy’s remarks are not surprising, as he has long made clear that U.S. support to Ukraine is critical to its war effort. What was surprising about the meeting was that the U.S. leader in attendance was not current President Joe Biden, who is rushing the last deliveries of authorized U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. Nor was it one of his top foreign policy officials, such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Instead, it was President-elect Donald Trump, despite the fact that he will not officially take office until Jan. 20, 2025. But that did not seem to matter to Zelenskyy, who already referred to Trump as “President Trump.”
Zelenskyy is far from alone in treating Trump as if he were already the sitting U.S. president. Following Trump’s election victory in November, a host of foreign leaders quickly shifted to engaging with him, while side-stepping Biden. Consider how Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reacted when Trump threatened to impose harsh tariffs on both nations in response to flows of undocumented migrants and illicit drugs into the United States. Sheinbaum, after strongly rebutting Trump’s claims and pointing out that tariffs would be harmful to both countries, announced her plans to call Trump to discuss the issue over the phone. Trudeau went a step further, meeting directly with Trump at the latter’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. In addition to initiating negotiations over the measures Trudeau might take to avoid tariffs, their meeting resulted in a bizarre offer by Trump to make Canada the 51st U.S. state. He made comments to the same effect about Mexico, though not in his call with Sheinbaum.
Even China, whose President Xi Jinping officially closed the book on his relationship with Biden after the most recent APEC summit in Peru, has already shifted gears: Trump confirmed that he and Xi have resumed communication. Though Trump didn’t provide details, his statements suggest that their conversations are going further than simply exchanging platitudes about the importance of the U.S.-China relationship. They are instead opening discussions over issues ranging from trade to the status of Taiwan, ahead of what could prove to be a tense relationship over the next four years.
The above episodes all illustrate that, from the perspective of foreign leaders, Trump is already the de facto U.S. president. While this makes the current presidential transition highly unusual, it also makes sense for a few reasons.
For starters, Trump is only the second president in U.S. history to be elected to nonconsecutive terms. But things are much different today than the first time it happened, when Grover Cleveland was elected president in 1885 and then again in 1893. Back then, the U.S. was only emerging as a major power, and the U.S. president was not even seen as a major international figure, let alone the “leader of the free world.” That’s not the case now. For better and for worse, the U.S. remains the key power in the international system.
Of course, that means world leaders will want to have a good relationship with the incoming president, which is why many line up to quickly congratulate the election winner every four years, maybe even taking the opportunity to meet with the president-elect prior to the inauguration. Indeed, when Trump was first elected in 2016, then-Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo paid him a visit at Trump Tower in New York City ahead of his inauguration, becoming the first foreign leader to meet with him.
That has been even more pronounced the second time around, especially since many of Trump’s interlocutors among world leaders still have communication channels with him from his first term in office. What makes this time different is that Trump appears to be not just accepting courtesy calls, but actively engaging in diplomacy before the inauguration. Indeed, he apparently had regular conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and even Russian President Vladimir Putin well before the election.
Reinforcing the incentive for foreign leaders to reach out to Trump on substantive issues beyond an initial congratulatory phone call is the fact that Trump personalizes U.S. foreign policy around himself. Usually these substantive conversations don’t take place until the incoming president’s foreign policy team is in place, and for some until the relevant ambassador has been appointed. Trump’s foreign policy picks are no doubt important. But consistent with his aim to shrink the role of the federal government in all aspects of policymaking—to the point that it can be funded solely on tariff revenue—he is keen on centralizing policymaking in his own hands. For Trump, the U.S. is the indispensable nation, but only if it is personified by him.
Trump has further raised the stakes for the transition period by his bold campaign pronouncements that he would actually solve some of the world’s crises even before he entered office. And it seems that he has at least tried to make good on that assertion. But the key word is tried. For instance, he claimed that it would only take him a few phone calls to reach a deal to end the war in Ukraine. But Putin does not appear interested in accepting what Trump has on offer.
The obvious downside to world leaders immediately focusing on Trump as the de facto U.S. president is that the man who currently holds the job and has the actual ability to steer U.S. policy during a crisis is seemingly being cut out of the foreign policy dealmaking process. But one key positive is that this presidential transition will likely avoid what international relations scholars call the turnover trap: the idea that foreign officials will test a new leader in order to gauge their resolve, with the new leader in turn taking tougher actions than they would otherwise prefer in order to establish an early reputation for being tough.
It’s hard to call Trump a known quantity, given that he is predictably unpredictable. But as the unusual nature of this transition shows, he is familiar enough that foreign leaders have essentially picked up their engagement with him where they left off in early 2021.
Presidential transitions are always an interesting time. The sitting president attempts to wrap up their agenda, ease the way for their predecessor and maybe even throw in a last-second pardon or two—or more. But the current transition is more interesting than most. Or, we might say, it was more interesting, as from the standpoint of many world leaders it has already taken place.
Source: WPR ...... read full story
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