The least diplomatic president in U.S. history is scoring diplomatic victories.

Over the last couple of days, Donald Trump has gotten NATO to agree to a defense spending target of 5%, and backed Canada off imposing a digital services tax on American tech firms.

He’s done this while being loathed by many of his foreign interlocutors. In fact, Trump has executed a near-complete inversion of the typical diplomatic formula. He’s not nice. He’s not conflict-averse. He’s not euphemistic. And yet he’s gotten results.

The NATO commitment, in particular, is potentially historic, and could materially strengthen the position of the Western alliance for the long term.

Trump is violating the usual rules of persuasion. Abraham Lincoln famously said: “It is an old and true maxim that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.” Trump doesn’t hesitate to pour on the gall, often in ALL CAPS on Truth Social.

The leading 19th Century French diplomat Talleyrand said, “A diplomat who says ‘yes’ means ‘maybe,’ a diplomat who says ‘maybe’ means ‘no,’ and a diplomat who says ‘no’ is no diplomat.” Trump says “go to hell” as the start of the negotiation.

He persuades by pressuring.

He coaxes by threatening.

He de-escalates by escalating.

He wins friends and influences people by convincing them he thinks they’re freeloaders and losers.

A lot of this is a function of his personality and his experience as a Gotham real estate developer with a nose for power dynamics, knack for showmanship and willingness to court risk. It’s hard to see how his style of international politics will be replicable by a more traditional political figure. But undergirding his approach is a strategic insight into the gap between U.S. military and economic might and that of its allies, and how this meant there was a vast unexploited potential for the U.S. to throw its weight around.

When the U.S president is talking about pulling the plug on NATO, or cutting off trade talks with Canada — as Trump did in response to the proposed digital services tax — it’s going to get everyone’s attention.

The bull standing outside the door of the china shop is a powerful incentive to get along with the bull.

The U.S. has jawboned European countries about their defense spending over the years, but always in a “we are all friends here” fashion. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates issued warnings, cast in terms of how the U.S. might one day lose its patience.

The Biden team didn’t have it in them to force the issue. One expert told The New Yorker of her effort to convince Biden officials to get tougher on Germany over its low level of spending. They demurred. “We don’t want to overpressure them,” she recalled them saying. “They should do it on their own time.”

What Trump has shown is that “overpressuring” can sometimes be the right amount of pressuring. Amazingly, prior to the NATO summit on spending, the secretary-general of NATO sounded like a Republican senator trying to keep on Trump’s good side in a text message to the president: “Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.”

There’s, no doubt, a limit to Trump’s way of doing business. It’s true that Machiavelli said it’s better to be feared than loved, but he also warned against being hated. Continuously operating this way will build up resentment of the U.S. over time. And Trump so far has gotten his most notable results using his leverage against dependent friends and allies, not China or Russia.

Still, there’s no denying his unconventional effectiveness. The late political scientist Joseph Nye contrasted so-called soft power with hard power. “This soft power — getting others to want the outcomes that you want — co-opts people rather than coerces them,” he wrote.

Trump wields a soft power with an edge, co-opting through an element of coercion.

© 2025 by King Features Syndicate