Opinion How should the world deal with Sharif-Trump conversation? 

“I am ready and willing to play any role that you want me to play to address and find solutions to the outstanding problems,” Trump was reported to have said.

The Trump team has since then released their own, reserved acknowledgment in a three-sentence statement that referred to the conversation that transpired with Sharif as “productive” and that Trump is “looking forward to a lasting and strong personal relationship with Prime Minister Sharif.” However, it disavowed the flowery language used in the Pakistani version.

It is not hard to understand the eagerness of Sharif and his cabinet, as clearly the glowing praise in superlatives must have been unexpected music to their ears, the glee of which led them to release a verbatim transcript of Trump’s words in an uncustomary move, with reckless abandon — an act criticised by many in the White House circle as a clear violation of diplomatic protocol.

Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, however, said that this breach by his government was a “demonstration of how easily Pakistani leaders misread the signals of their American counterparts”, according to the New York Times. Reading and misreading the signals of the US President-elect is however part of a greater dilemma at the moment.

Was Trump, who has little foreign policy experience, aware of what he was doing? The consensus is a resounding “no”. Forbes reported that his “flattering” conversation with Sharif shows that he has no awareness of the issues between the US, Pakistan and India.

American presidents in the past have been conscious that their words carry weight and have consequences, which makes them circumspect in their remarks. But Trump, as we know, is not just any American President-elect — he is an outsider to the job and the protocol that goes with that level of communication, much to the recent mortification of the State department and diplomacy.

The goof-up led the White House Press secretary, Josh Earnest, to weigh in, urging the President-elect to make use of the policymakers and diplomats’s ready expertise “in planning and conducting his encounters with foreign leaders.” It is however unclear to all at the moment to what extent he would avail of these services — now and going forward.

Understandably, that could lead to confusion and chaos if one doesn’t know how to interpret President-to-be Trump’s diplomacy — as in context of Pakistan — US’s troublesome and complicated ally with issues ranging from counter-terrorism to nuclear proliferation. Daniel F. Feldman, a former special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, told in a statement to the New York Times that “by taking such a cavalier attitude to these calls, he’s encouraging people not to take him seriously”. “He’s made himself not only a bull in a china shop, but a bull in a nuclear china shop”, he added, referring to the anarchy that could ensue from careless, mixed signals of the World’s most powerful leader-to-be.

Trump is the same candidate who during this campaign promised a complete ban on Muslims “in order to stop importing terrorism”, whose election resulted a slew of hate crimes against Muslims in the US and the one who spoke of tracking them all via a registry.

In 2012 he had famously tweeted – “Get it straight: Pakistan is not our friend. We’ve given them billions and billions of dollars, and what did we get? Betrayal and disrespect – and much worse. #TimeToGetTough”. What can we interpret now from his reportedly effusive, cozy call to the leader of the same “fantastic” country? Given Trump’s constant flip-flop in his positions and his penchant for talking in superlatives, coupled with his desire to be a pleasing charmer to his audience (Sharif, in this case), it has become a larger conundrum for the media and the whole wide world as to how to report his bursts and how to interpret their meaning and bearing on future policy.