WASHINGTON, D.C.—Since pretty much the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s term in office, commentators have joked that his advisers should take away his phone, most often in reference to his frequent convention-toppling social media pronouncements. But the news cycles of the past two weeks may raise more pressing concerns about his world-shaping voice calls.

There’s the July conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, which kick-started impeachment proceedings that, according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday, may have convinced a majority of Americans Trump should be removed from office.

There was the June conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping in which Trump — in the context of tense trade negotiations between the two countries — reportedly promised his government would remain silent about the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. (Silence on those protests has recently become a big public relations issue for private organizations such as the NBA and Apple, even as CNN reports that the State Department spiked a planned speech by its Hong Kong counsel on the subject in deference to the president’s wishes.

And then, just this week, a call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan led to Trump immediately announcing he’d withdraw the U.S. troops from the northern Syrian border to make way for a Turkish attack on longtime U.S. allies there. This swift change in policy was immediately and widely seen as a betrayal of promises the U.S. had made to one of its staunchest allies in the fight against ISIS in Syria, one that was expected to lead to slaughter and possible genocide against the Syrian Kurdish population. The BBC reported Thursday afternoon that the Turkish attack had killed both Kurdish fighters and civilians, and that the International Rescue Committee estimated 64,000 people had fled their homes as a result, a number that they project could reach 300,000.

In all three cases, long-standing U.S. foreign policy was suddenly altered in ways that seemed to fly in the face of stated or congressionally approved principles: supporting democracy and free speech in Hong Kong, and standing by allies under attack in Ukraine and Syria. In each case, the motive for the sudden change was either inscrutable, or seemed to be related to something other than these long-standing principles.

The reporting of these calls — and the world-shaking, often life-and-death results of them — has had an immediate and very obvious influence on U.S. domestic politics. Just look at the steamrolling pace the impeachment proceedings have picked up after coming to a near-standstill in mid-September. But they also have far-reaching implications for the international community.

A piece about the Syrian about-face in Foreign Policy magazine this week co-written by Eric Edelman, who served as Turkish ambassador and undersecretary of defence for president George W. Bush, says that what is at stake is not simply a humanitarian crisis, the future of Syria and stability in that part of the world, but “Washington’s credibility as an ally” — specifically, that what the recent move “seems to have destroyed is U.S. credibility.”

“The latest abandoning of U.S. allies has solidified an already widespread belief in the Middle East and beyond that the United States is not a reliable ally,” Edelman and former Turkish parliamentarian Aykan Erdemir wrote.

People might draw similar conclusions from the failure to speak up in support of Hong Kong, which one Trump administration official told The Atlantic was “a bellwether for China’s ability and intention to colour the world in a more authoritarian hue.” The Guardian reports that the Ukraine controversy has prompted people there “to ask if the United States can be viewed as a trustworthy ally in the country’s attempts to reform and stave off pressure from Russia.”

If years of diplomacy, apparently deeply felt national principles, congressional resolutions and negotiated agreements can be waved away in the course of a single phone call, what can you expect from the world’s biggest superpower?

Canadians watching all this might take some measure of reassurance from reports that Trump has been reported to call Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the phone unannounced, “as if they were friends.”

But columnist and author Windsor Mann recently urged caution for those who might consider Trump a friend.

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“If there’s a constant in Trump’s life, it’s betrayal. He has betrayed his business partners, his customers, his employees, his friends, his wives, and his voters. A man who is willing to betray those closest to him will not hesitate to turn his back on foreigners thousands of miles away,” Mann wrote.

Mann summarized what he thought those abroad might understand from Trump’s approach — in Syria and elsewhere — to foreign policy. “Lesson: So long as Trump is president, the United States cannot be trusted.”

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