The eight-letter word Trump insists on hearing from foreign leaders

Washington: After US President Donald Trump spoke on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week, the White House wanted to make one thing clear: the Ukrainian leader was grateful to the American president. Very grateful.

The statement recounting the call mentioned four times that Zelensky had thanked the president for his efforts to negotiate terms of a ceasefire with Russia. It then went on to note that Zelensky was “grateful” for Trump’s leadership.

The starkest example of Donald Trump’s insistence on a thank you came during a meeting last month in the Oval Office with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.Credit: Bloomberg

The description revealed a pattern in the Trump administration’s shaping of its foreign policy agenda: when it comes to diplomacy, Trump wants an implicit or explicit display of personal gratitude from US allies.

Michael Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump’s transactional approach to diplomacy suggested he saw aiding US allies as a favour, rather than as a cornerstone of foreign policy that will pay dividends down the road.

“That does sort of signal a fundamentally different notion of order than we have had for the last 80 years, which is that while our allies need to step up and do more for their own defence, our support of their defence is also in our interest,” Froman said. “I believe President Trump is questioning that.”

The starkest example of Trump’s insistence on a thank you came during a meeting last month in the Oval Office that included Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Zelensky.

“You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict,” Vance said, scolding the Ukrainian leader. The last words Trump said to Zelensky as he brought the meeting to a close were: “You’re not acting at all thankful. And that’s not a nice thing.”

Last week’s phone call was the first time the two have spoken since.

Trump appears to have taken a softer approach with Russia. In a description of a phone call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, no expressions of gratitude were noted.

Trump’s desire for thanks is something of a shift in US diplomatic relations. It is not unusual for presidents to want recognition for contributions to military and humanitarian support; former president Joe Biden had his own frustrations with Zelensky for relentlessly pushing for more.

But any friction between world leaders typically takes place behind closed doors, with a more restrained public description of a “full and frank discussion”.

White House officials defended Trump’s approach.

“It’s called respect,” said Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson.

“Every US president should demand that from both allies and adversaries, especially when being asked to contribute billions of taxpayer dollars in their defence,” Fields said.

Kori Schake, director of foreign and defence policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute who also served as a national security aide to former president George W. Bush, said Trump treated “our allies like subjects instead of acting like peers”.

“What this signals is that in a strictly transactional global order, if you humble yourself in front of the American president, you can get what you want,” she said.

The parade of foreign visitors to the White House appears to have taken the hint.

NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte top-billed his remarks with Trump this month with “thank you so much”. He went on to credit Trump, who has long railed against the organisation, for the alliance’s increased military spending and declined to defend Greenland, the territory of one of its members, from Trump’s threat of a hostile takeover.

During a visit to the White House the same week, Micheál Martin, the prime minister of Ireland, did not explicitly say the words “thank you”. Instead, he made a reference to Trump’s personal investment in the country rather than respond to the president’s complaint that Ireland was using a trade imbalance to take advantage of the US.

“You have the distinction of being, I think, the only president that has physically invested in Ireland through Doonbeg,” Martin said of Trump, referring to one of his properties. “It’s just stunning,” he added.

Trump was smitten. “I love this guy,” he replied.

Even some of Trump’s cabinet members have started soliciting for thanks.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio jumped into an exchange on social media between Poland Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, and Elon Musk about Starlink, the satellite internet service that Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has been providing to Ukraine.

When Sikorski asserted that the service was paid for, in part, by the Polish Digitisation Ministry and warned Musk against threatening to yank it, Rubio accused him of “just making things up”.

In a post on social media, Rubio said: “And say thank you, because without Starlink, Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now.”

Witold Zembaczynski, another Polish minister, wrote the words Rubio demanded, but in support of Sikorski.

“Thank you. It’s so simple #standwithukraine not with war criminalist #Putin.”

Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Centre for International Policy, said Trump had put on a “dominance display” throughout his career, both as a businessperson and a politician.

“He approaches foreign policy, the US-led order, as a protection racket,” Duss said. “If you want protection, you have to show respect to the boss, and you’ve got to pay upstairs.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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