Donald Trump has reportedly said his phone conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was his “worst call by far”. As the head of a global superpower, Mr Trump will need to work on his telephone manner or America’s national interests will be badly compromised

It was never going to be an easy sort of phone call. When Mr Turnbull asked the Canberra switchboard to put him through to the Oval Office, he should have known this was going to be tricky. First, he was going to ask President Trump to honour a commitment made by former President Obama. The mutual loathing between the President and his predecessor seems to grow bitterer by the day, and Mr Trump is unlikely to view any commitment made by Mr Obama with generosity of spirit.

Second, Mr Trump was never going to be happy about taking in refugees that Australia simply refuses to. Here Mr Trump has a point: Australia could house them just as easily as the US. Instead, Mr Turnbull’s government pays Papua New Guinea and Nauru to keep them in inhumane camps until they can be offloaded elsewhere or returned. Third? Well, it was The Donald on the other end of the line, vainglorious as ever, fond of boasting and whose thin skin and erratic behaviour make him a challenging interlocutor at the best of times. Mr Turnbull was probably lucky to have lasted as long as he did – 25 minutes – in the ring.

Still, the reports that the US President hung up on the Prime Minister of Australia were rightly sensational. Australia, after all, spilled blood with the US in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, was its faithful ally in two world wars, and has enjoyed a formal mutual defence pact, the Anzus treaty, together with New Zealand since 1951.

Even so, The Washington Post reported that he told the Australian PM that their conversation was the “worst call by far”. The refugee resettlement deal, whereby 1,250 desperate souls were to be offered a new life in America, was a “dumb deal”. Sad to say, the Trump-Turnbull conversation is unlikely to retain the title of “worst” ever phone call between the White House and a friendly nation for very long. As a global superpower with military, political and economic interests in virtually every corner of the globe, either Mr Trump will need to work on his telephone manner – and, more appositely, the general policy of engagement with friends and allies – or America’s national interests will be badly compromised. Thus far, only the leaders of Taiwan and Israel have actually enjoyed a chat with the President. Of course, those came at the cost of offending China and adding further tensions to the situation in the Middle East.

With the focus on China, Russia, the Middle East, Mexico, the UK and the EU, the rest of America's important relationships, such as those with Australia, have gone by default. They still matter, however. When the President meets Shinzo Abe of Japan in a few days’ time, how will he reassure Japan that America stands by her defence, and won’t require the Japanese to contribute more to it or demand that they send some jobs back to the US in return for the nuclear umbrella? Would Mr Trump casually suggest, as he did last year, that the Japanese could develop (and pay for) their own nuclear arsenal?

Similarly with the South Koreans: what can Mr Trump say to the acting President to reassure them in a time of domestic political turmoil and the very-present lunacies of Kim Jong-un’s regime? Mr Trump did use his apparently good-natured phone call to Hwang Kyo-ahn to say America was “100 per cent behind South Korea”, but so far Mr Trump’s attitude to North Korea has been both unspecific and aggressive. In some of its more comical aspects, the Supreme Leader in Pyongyang is a mirror image of the increasingly unpredictable and belligerent Supreme Ego sitting in the White House. Mr Trump may suggest America uses its nuclear arsenal on the Korean peninsula, a terrifying notion not seriously suggested since President Truman sacked General MacArthur in 1951 for advocating them during the last war in Korea.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada appears to have made a better job of talking to Mr Trump; but the two men are yet to meet to discuss the dismantling of the North American Free Trade Agreement. On that issue the Canadians are in an honourable alliance with the Mexicans, something that cannot endear them to President Trump. The Trudeau-Trump summit could be one of the most difficult, a gulf of generations and outlooks personified. Prime Minister Modi of India, meanwhile, claims a White House invite for later in the year and an incident-free conversation.

Thus far, then, President Trump has mostly taken a markedly more hostile line with friend and foe alike. Where President Obama sought to normalise relations with Iran and Cuba, for example, Mr Trump has put them “on notice”. Where Mr Obama pursued the policy of European integration and support for traditional Nato allies, Mr Trump has sounded an uncertain note (apart from Theresa May’s notable intervention in the interests of Western security). Where every American president since Richard Nixon has sought to form a partnership with Beijing, Mr Trump is dismissive. The only nations, in fact, that Mr Trump wants to be closer to, such as Russia and Israel, are the ones where he ought to be most wary of entanglement.