Breathe
By Pia Taracena Goût
Diplomacy has many ways of expressing itself. In current times, the use of new technologies and forms of communication to get the message to its recipients has been discussed. In the case of the United States, the evolution of the use of such technologies by presidents for diplomatic issues has been very interesting.
Not only trips, statements, letters would be the most used means to advance positions and proposals on international issues, but, since Obama's time, the use of blackberry or e-mails became important instruments that allowed the message to reach the right people faster.
With the arrival of Trump to the presidency in 2016, an innovative way of doing diplomacy became fashionable in the country, digital diplomacy, widely used by the president to tell the world what he wanted or what he would do. The so-called tuitdiplomacy (a term coined in 2011 by Chu Wang, who posed the interesting question of whether to find a way to prevent wars on the platform from turning into real confrontations) was the way in which the president launched real shells that sent shivers down the spines of both friends and strangers.
It would seem that in this Trump 2.0 administration, the method by which the president instrumentalizes and strengthens his diplomatic capacity is a combination of messages on his Truth Social platform (which are also published on X), with press conferences, visits of different leaders to the White House and above all with phone calls.
In the case of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the telephone has been one of the favorite means of communication, especially with the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. With him, via the red phone, a relic of the Cold War, Trump sought in recent days to convince him of a truce in his conflict with Ukraine. The result of this telephone diplomacy was more beneficial for Putin than for Trump himself and to a much lesser extent for the President of Ukraine, Volodymir Zelenski.
Trump wanted a 30-day truce without conditions on all fronts and what was agreed to was a 30-day truce in which Russia will not attack Ukraine's energy infrastructure, that is, it will not attack power grids or water supply.
The differences in the transcripts of what was discussed are interesting. While the United States assures that it proposed to the Russian a possible ceasefire in the Black Sea, a possible total ceasefire and a permanent peace, the Russian one mentions 30 days, but not a total truce, but only to stop the attacks on the energy infrastructure (to which corresponded an immediate order from the Russian President to his military to stop the attacks). The communiqué seems to give more importance to an agreement for the organization of field hockey matches between Russia and the U.S. Will we now see the inauguration of field hockey diplomacy?
Donald Trump in his role as "mediator" of the conflict, sought the day after the call with Putin the Ukrainian president, also by phone, although not red. The call was important as the interview between the two at the White House was unsuccessful.
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