“We’ve often thought of diplomacy as this big, broad endeavour. It’s about institutions connecting with one another,” Edwards said. “In this instance, they’re playing the man.
“This is how it works,” he added. “You come with gifts; you offer homage of sorts, in order to gain the respect, the support, the favour of the head of that court.”
President Donald Trump, followed by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leave the podium after their group photo at the G7 Summit in Canada last month.Credit: AP
And yet, political analysts, diplomats and others who follow international interactions say that “playing the man” with public declarations of admiration does not always work, especially with a leader like Trump, whose decision-making is often fickle.
Netanyahu declared on Monday that Trump was “forging peace as we speak, in one country, in one region after the other”.
But stroking the president’s ego has not produced an end to the war in the Gaza Strip, which rages on even amid a resumption of ceasefire talks. In Europe, the war in Ukraine continues with no sign of the peace that Trump once promised would take him only 24 hours to implement. Some tariffs remain in place on British exports to America even after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer sealed a deal with Trump in part by delivering a royal invitation.
Yolanda Spies, a former South African diplomat and the director of the Oxford University Diplomatic Studies Program, said flattery had long been built into the art of diplomacy.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer hands an invitation from King Charles to US President Donald Trump.Credit: AP
But she said that the most personal interactions between leaders used to happen privately, not in front of cameras.
“One of the driving thoughts of the profession of diplomacy is do all the hard work behind the scenes, where no one is watching,” she said. “Now, you have to be really careful because anything you send to him will be public. It means a new step in the flattery game.”
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Zelensky might appreciate the need for flattery more than most other world leaders, Spies said. After the humiliation of his Oval Office meeting this year, she said, Zelensky had dramatically changed the way he interacted with Trump.
“He has avoided those kinds of scenarios where he ends up having an argument with Donald Trump,” she said. “He now prefaces every statement with how grateful he is to America. There, a lesson was learned.”
In Netanyahu’s case, the appeal to Trump’s desire to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize was not unique. Pakistan’s government formally nominated Trump in June, citing the president’s “decisive diplomatic intervention” during an outbreak of violence between India and Pakistan.
Trump has repeatedly complained, in public and in private, that he has not yet won the Peace Prize. He once posted on social media that “I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do”.
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And it’s not clear that a nomination from Netanyahu – who has been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip by the International Criminal Court – will help Trump’s case.
Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, an anti-war group, posted her thoughts on social media.
“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” she wrote. “Surreal.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
