• by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, December 5, 2016

Donald Trump has yet to be sworn in as President of the United States, yet his impulsiveness and dearth of knowledge are already setting off diplomatic rows.

On Friday,Trump held a call with the president of Taiwan, a state not recognized by its titanic neighbor, China. In China’s eyes, Taiwan is a breakaway province and any direct legitimization of the island state represents an affront to China’s understanding of its own sovereignty.

Since 1979, it has been U.S. policy that Taiwan is not recognized as an independent nation, while also not accepting China’s claims over the island.

Trump’s call and subsequent tweets, where he attacked Chinese currency manipulation and military expansion, seem to signal a potentially volatile new direction for U.S.-China relations, and U.S. diplomacy as a whole.

The tweets, specifically, foreshadow a Twitter-presidency: one where the president of the United States may dictate foreign policy through his handle, completely circumventing the State Department and its trove of foreign policy experts.

While the incidence of Twitter-active heads of state is pretty high, President Obama has been very careful about tweeting from a personal account while in office. He only opened a personal account months after his second inauguration, in June 2013, and has not been much of a prolific tweeter during that period, with only 326 tweets over the three and a half years.

According to Twiplomacy.com, a  large majority of governments use Twitter to communicate with their constituents. As of 2016, there were  793 Twitter accounts belonging to heads of state in 173 countries -- about 90% of UN member states, representing 324 million followers around the world. According to the site, 100% of European and South American governments have a presence on Twitter.

Like his tweets, Donald Trump’s call with Taiwan is more evidence that we can expect an impulsive presidency. Twitter is by design a means of communication best used by the compulsive and those who desire immediate attention, qualities that most would deem dangerous for a head of state.

But that’s what we got in our president-elect.

“Policymaking, by contrast, requires coolness, deliberation and a weighing up of options. The danger is that Twitter diplomacy, for all its honesty, could exacerbate crisis instead of resolving it,” said the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus.

We can only hope that, against the odds, Trump realizes the delicate position he now holds and thinks before he tweets.