(Bloomberg) -- He might be fighting to salvage his presidency, but President Donald Trump can still smell weakness in others.
In his efforts to discredit his domestic enemies, Trump has solicited help from Ukraine’s rookie president, a collapsing Italian government, an Australian battling China and Boris Johnson of Brexit-divided Britain. Next up could be Romania, where the prime minister’s main political backer has just been sent to jail.
“We haven’t moved to Romania yet,” Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told Fox News on Sunday, without providing more details. “Wait till we get to Romania.”
The result is that conversations with the U.S. leader have the potential to produce dramatic and unpredictable outcomes, one way or another.
After a call with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president reversed long-standing U.S. policy and gave his tacit approval for a Turkish incursion into northern Syria, though he later warned that he’d destroy the country’s economy if it went too far.
Beyond Turkey, Trump has intuited that the credibility of Johnson’s Brexit plan relies on a trade deal with the U.S. Prime Minister Scott Morrison needs back-up from the U.S. as Australia confronts an expansionist China in Asia. And Giuseppe Conte’s government was falling apart in Italy at the moment that Trump wanted help.
The Chinese might not feel beholden to the U.S., but they are desperate to end the trade war -- that alone would give them an incentive to consider Trump’s Oct. 4 appeal to investigate Joe Biden.
“Trump’s world view is completely transactional,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Rome-based International Affairs Institute.
His tactics come straight out of Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal.
“The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have,” the future president wrote. “Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs. Or best of all, simply can’t do without.”
One European diplomat said leaders are now prepared for strange and unexpected requests when they get on a call with Trump and they have learned that the trick is to stay positive without making any commitments. All the same, political imperatives can take over at times, said another.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was in a particularly tight spot after taking power in May. He needed Moscow to see that he had the backing of the White House in order to deter Russian incursions into his territory. In a July call, he told Trump he wanted to buy more Javelin anti-tank weapons from the U.S. to counter Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
“I would like you to do us a favor,” Trump replied, according to a transcript of the call.
Trump said he wanted Ukraine to help with U.S. Attorney General William Barr investigation’s into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election meddling.
“Ukraine was an incredibly easy prey,” said Tocci. “Its survival depends on American and European support given who’s next door.”
Barr also met British Home Secretary Priti Patel in London in July, according to the Daily Telegraph, three days after Trump spoke to Johnson. Johnson is now coming under pressure to ask Trump to hand over a U.S. citizen suspected of involvement in a fatal crash.
Morrison said Trump asked for an Australian government contact to help Barr with his inquiry as well during a phone call in September. Morrison denied he was pressured to help dig into the origins of the Mueller investigation.
In Italy, Conte arranged for Barr to meet in August with an intelligence chief as he chased down another lead in his inquiry -- a missing Maltese professor who allegedly tipped off Trump’s campaign team to the fact that Russia had emails which could hurt Hillary Clinton.
Conte and Trump met later in August at the G-7 Summit in France with the Italian leader still fighting for his job. On Aug. 27, Trump offered his support, with a tweet that called him “a very talented man who will hopefully remain prime minister!”
A month later, Barr was back in Rome with prosecutor John Durham, reportedly authorized by Conte, with more requests for the intelligence chiefs.
“There’s a lot more to come out,” Giuliani told Fox.
After a year in which his economy was battered by inflation and his party lost control of key municipalities, Turkey’s president could use the political boost that might come from the U.S. ceding some military control in northern Syria, where Erdogan has long sought to target Kurdish fighters.
But Trump’s weekend call with the Turkish leader also highlighted one of the U.S. president’s own vulnerabilities: while he has long pitched himself to voters as a leader who would get the U.S. out of endless Middle East conflicts, he’s struggled to make progress on that since taking office in 2017.
The American president has also sown confusion by reversing course following an uproar from Republicans, deepening the uncertainty around his policy. Trump later suggested his move to clear the way for a Turkish invasion was intended in part to pressure European countries that, he said, have refused to accept the return of citizens who joined Islamic State.
“I have consulted with everybody,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I fully understand both sides of it but I campaigned on the fact I was going to bring our soldiers home.”
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