Trump’s Negotiating Behaviour: The Art of Manufactured Crisis and Coerced Concessions
The US President Donald John Trump’s brand of transactional diplomacy is now a familiar spectacle, with brash rhetoric, laced with tariff theatrics and shifting ultimatums. Yet, at the end of his second term’s first year in office, a pattern has begun to take shape. The mixed messages and signals that seemed irrational and chaotic at first glance now appear as a clear, calculated and deliberate pattern designed to keep both allies and adversaries off balance. In short, there is a carefully constructed method in his madness. Trump’s manner of diplomacy codifies volatility, where the manufacturing of crisis offers negotiating leverage, false certainty is projected as a form of pressure, and cultivating ambiguity is honed as a combating weapon. It is less spontaneous eruption, more staged performance, and calculated theatre designed to extract concessions while keeping every actor guessing about the next move.
The NATO Pressure Play: Using Existential Doubt to Extract Concessions
A great case is that of strong allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), which gives the clearest view of his negotiating craft at work. Repeated threats to withdraw American security guarantees and public rebukes of treaty allies, combined with public shaming. In rallies and briefings alike, he accused partners of freeloading on American security and trade, invoking the two per cent benchmark as a fair share and price of loyalty. Tariffs on European steel and aluminium reinforced his message, converting economic pain into political persuasion. This carefully staged act of uncertainty was, in fact, a push to get what multiple US Presidents had tried for decades, which was to get Europe to pay more for its defence. And it worked. At the June 2025 NATO Summit, members agreed to increase defence spending targets toward 5 per cent of GDP, a sharp leap from the previous 3 per cent consensus. While such tactics delivered the apparently desired results, they also corroded institutional trust and deepened fault lines across the alliance. Trump got what he wanted, but the price is uncertain as Europe reworks international alliances in a bid to deal with his unreliability.
China’s Contingency
Trump’s confrontation with China revealed the limits of his negotiating theatre when faced with an adversary that skilled itself to absorbed pressure in Trump’s first term “trade war”. But Beijing refused to play its assigned part in the drama. When duties on certain Chinese goods climbed to 145 per cent, Beijing’s response was the inverse of Trump’s coercive rush. China’s policymakers framed the conflict as American economic ‘protectionism’, reframing Trump’s offensive as an act of insecurity rather than strength. They quietly leveraged their control over rare earth minerals to remind Washington of shared vulnerabilities, while drawing out negotiations through procedural complexity—an art perfected in Beijing’s bureaucratic playbook.
Russia’s Manipulation: When Eagerness Becomes Exposure
Nowhere did Trump’s negotiating instincts become vulnerable than in his handling of Moscow. His transactional worldview, a conviction that every issue, from sanctions to sovereignty, could be bargained over, met its match in Vladimir Putin’s “intransigence”.
Trump’s pursuit of a potential “historic peace deal” over Ukraine soon blurred into personal ambition. In his eagerness to craft a “Nobel Prize-worthy” breakthrough, he signalled half-surrender and desperation with concessions before the talks even began. Hints of recognising Russian sovereignty over Crimea, suggestions of easing 2014 sanctions, and an open admiration for Putin’s “strength” all telegraphed a willingness to compromise without reciprocity. Trump’s reliance on personal chemistry over policy discipline deepened the problem. Encounters like the 2018 Helsinki Summit reflected his faith that mutual respect could be substituted for structured diplomacy. Personal rapport, in his view, could bridge geopolitical divides. Yet in practice, it blurred boundaries between statecraft and self-promotion. The result was a diplomacy untethered from institutions and easily outmanoeuvred by an adversary who understood that patience, not charm, secures power.
West Asia: The Limits of Spectacle
In West Asia, Trump’s signature style, maximalist pressure with flashes of spectacle cloaked in the rhetoric of peace. The escalation with Iran took a different turn in June 2025, when the US forces launched coordinated strikes on Iran’s key nuclear facilities at Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz. This “Operation Midnight Hammer”, billed by Trump as a demonstration of American might, sought to force Tehran back to the negotiating table on the US’s terms. Instead, it deepened Iran’s resolve, triggered symbolic missile retaliation against US bases in Qatar, and prompted new threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, highlighting just how brittle and combustible the region remains under pressure-first tactics.
Meanwhile, Trump’s approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict produced a cascade of negotiation set-pieces but little durable change. In October 2025, Trump unveiled a 20-Point Gaza Peace Proposal, backed initially by Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, which sought a phased ceasefire, prisoner exchanges, a temporary International Stabilisation Force (ISF), and a transitional technocratic government in Gaza. The choreography of the negotiations, featuring high-profile summits and multinational mediators, again produced images of American leadership but left the core dilemma, the status of Palestine and final status, uncertain. That side-stepping of a core issue brought out that the dramatics of publicised diplomacy could only work so far, and no more.
The pursuit of normalisation between Israel and key Arab states also reached a complex inflexion point. While the Abraham Accords remained resilient, expanding from the original 2020 signatories under relentless US lobbying, Saudi Arabia hedged its entry on concrete progress toward a two-state solution. Across West Asia, then, the spectacle of dominance once again overshadowed the patient labour of peacebuilding. The tactics of maximum pressure and headline-grabbing deals left a landscape marked by escalating arms races, transactional alliances, and a deepening deficit of trust.
Subcontinent Triangulation and Price of Unpredictability
Nowhere did Trump’s brand of dealmaking inject greater uncertainty than in the Indian Subcontinent, a region where delicate balances already define security and diplomacy. His interventions added a fresh variable, American unpredictability, as an active force that had to factor into their strategic equations.
With Pakistan, Trump’s sudden warming epitomised his transactional instinct. After years of harsh rhetoric about duplicity and terrorism, he abruptly shifted to overtures of partnership. Hosting Asim Munir (now a lifetime Field Marshal) at the White House, floating favourable trade terms, and a “strategic handshake”, Trump turned engagement into a reward for flattery and utility.
India, by contrast, encountered the sharper edge of this methodology. Tariffs reaching 50 per cent on certain Indian goods, pressure to curtail Russian oil imports, and boastful claims of having “prevented World War III” between New Delhi and Rawalpindi reflected a mindset where goodwill had to be purchased and restraint treated as a debt owed. In this frame, the proposed 25 per cent tariffs on commercial ties with Iran are not really about whether the rate is 50 or 75; they are about signalling the cost of defiance, turning compliance with US foreign policy into a negotiable price tag rather than a shared strategic understanding. Trump continues to admire Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly, yet his admiration never translates into consistent policy alignment. To Trump, India was an important partner, but one that needed reminding of America’s leverage.
The Subtext of American Diplomacy: Coercion Disguised as Dealmaking
Trump’s diplomacy is not about negotiation but extraction. He trades reassurance for uncertainty, mutual benefit for leverage, and predictability for doubt. What appears as improvisation is, in fact, the deliberate creation of crisis as a bargaining tool. The so-called “madman theory” that analysts often invoke is less about unpredictability than control, engineered volatility designed to push others into concession.
Where classical deterrence builds credibility through steadiness, Trump’s version derives power from instability. By keeping allies guessing about NATO commitments, trade deals, or sanctions, he turns ambiguity into an instrument of pressure. The message is plain: reliability has a price, and that price is submission to dynamic American demands.
This tactic exemplifies Trump’s distinctive negotiation behaviour, where old and established diplomatic approaches are infused with a new flavour (e.g., “Monroe Doctrine” to “Donroe Doctrine”), completely abandoned, or replaced by bold new strategies bearing his unmistakable mark. It echoed in his approach to Venezuela, where escalating naval deployments and threats culminated in a 03 January 2026 military raid that captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, leading to the release of over a hundred prisoners, including dozens of political detainees, the US oversight of oil shipments, and an interim government under pressure to align with American interests amid ongoing instability.
Whether this signals a passing disruption or a lasting shift in world order remains uncertain. Across Europe and Asia, however, allies and partners are adapting. They are learning from Trump’s method: to hedge, transact and quietly diversify their dependencies. Like India’s approach to China, they proceed with restraint, cooperating where necessary, contesting where possible, and preparing for a future where American steadiness can no longer be taken for granted.
The enduring lesson is that Trump’s coercive theatre works only against those who fear confrontation. It loses force when met with patience, resilience and alternatives. In an age of manufactured crises, the real test for global actors lies not in reacting to American unpredictability but in mastering their own, treating it as a proving ground to adapt, build resilience, assert autonomy and shape the transition toward multipolarity.
