- calendar_today August 8, 2025
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DONALD TRUMP is trying to further cement his brand as an international dealmaker. He said Monday he has already ended six wars in his second term and promised to make progress toward a similar resolution in the war in Ukraine. “I’ve done six wars — I’ve ended six wars,” the president said. “Look, India-Pakistan, we’re talking about big places. You just take a look at some of these wars. You go to Africa and take a look at them.”
Trump was speaking during a meeting at the White House with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and a group of European leaders, during which he also vowed “big results” on the war in Ukraine.
The White House had gone into the meeting touting Trump’s success as the “President of Peace.” In a statement earlier this month, it produced a list of claimed peace deals brokered in recent weeks under his watch in Armenia and Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Thailand, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo. Officials have also held up the so-called Abraham Accords signed during Trump’s first term normalizing relations between Israel and a number of Arab states.
Are These Deals or Diplomatic Stunts?
Not all of Trump’s successes have been universal in nature. When a tussle over Iranian influence brought Tehran and Israel to the brink of war last month, Trump put out a tweet that achieved a truce after 12 days of clashes. But the ceasefire between Israel and Iran stopped the violence but not the build-up of tension over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Other forays into peacemaking show limits in his personal brand of negotiation. Trump brokered a temporary halt to violence between Israel and Hamas militants in 2020 but that deal fell apart, and his first-term meetings with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un failed to make headway, with Pyongyang in 2022 amassing a larger nuclear arsenal than before.
Peace Deals with Promise
At the same time, Trump has also been able to sign off on some headline-grabbing breakthroughs, if with varying chances of sticking. Armenia and Azerbaijan in early March signed a White House declaration pledging to recognize each other’s borders and renounce violence. The document also pledged the opening of a U.S.-backed transport corridor to connect the two nations that the administration called the “Trump Route for Peace and Prosperity.” Aliyev lauded the result, calling it “a miracle” during a joint press conference with Trump. But analysts warn tough territorial disputes between the two states are left to be resolved.
Peacemaking by Economic Pressure
One of the more telling examples of Trump’s success in peacemaking came with fighting in Southeast Asia. After violence between Cambodia and Thailand over a disputed border killed 38 people in 2019, Trump threatened to suspend a trade deal with each government if the bloodshed did not stop. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) brokered the final agreement, but Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet still nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary statesmanship” and had his nominee accepted by the Norwegian Nobel Institute.
A similar move came in May when Trump stepped in to halt a border flare-up between India and Pakistan. The Pakistani government welcomed Washington’s role in calming tensions, but India was more coy and did not credit the U.S. with being a central mediator. The ceasefire is fragile, with the Kashmir dispute left open and able to trigger new conflict.
Trump’s Claims on Africa
In Africa, Trump has pointed to a deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in which the neighbors agreed to recognition of borders and the disarmament of militias. The M23 rebel group has publicly rejected the agreement, but analysts say it might hold. But as with other cases in which Trump has claimed credit, some point to other factors — in this case, U.S. strategic economic interests in a region in which Washington is vying with China for access to minerals.
Claims for Egypt, Ethiopia
Trump has similarly made claims on a seemingly intractable conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia over the construction of a massive dam project on the Nile. Trump has pushed publicly for a compromise deal to be reached, but no legally binding agreement has been produced. Another set of Trump administration points to normalization agreements signed between Serbia and Kosovo that date back to the first term. But the two countries remain at odds with recent dialogue driven by the European Union.
Achieving Lasting Peace?
Trump’s off-the-cuff style of foreign policy has favored splashy pronouncements and a penchant for personal branding over quiet diplomacy and produced mixed results in peacemaking. Some critics have argued his prior downsizing of the State Department and funding cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, for example, make it harder to translate temporary ceasefires and agreements into a durable peace.
However, others argue his interventions have at times been successful. Celeste Wallander, former assistant secretary of defense and now at the Center for a New American Security, said that when it came to improving ties between India and Pakistan, his role “was done in a professional way, quietly, diplomatically … finding common ground between the parties.”
As Trump now moves to shift his attention and firepower toward Ukraine, his record will provide some insight as to what to expect in what promises to be one of the bloodiest and most complex conflicts of the century. His past achievements so far show signs of both: headline-grabbing agreements that fall short of lasting peace, as well as some areas in which U.S. pressure has at times been able to halt a conflict from spiraling further.
