The US president hasn't invested enough political capital in the painstaking details of peacemaking. Instead, he has focused on short-term truces he can boast about in his quest for a Nobel prize.
US President Donald Trump likes to think of himself as a peacemaker. He also likes to point it out whenever he can. When attending the signing of a peace deal between Cambodia and Thailand in late October, he boasted that, “This is one of eight wars that my administration has ended in just eight months.” He went on to argue that it was an unprecedented feat. “I can't think of any president that ever solved one war... they start wars, they don't solve them,” he insisted.
As has been widely reported, Trump covets the Nobel Peace Prize, and such claims appear aimed at securing this award. But although Trump deserves credit for pressuring a range of leaders into ceasefires, does this make him a peacemaker?
Despite a handful of genuine successes, the majority of the eight conflicts have not been ‘ended’ by Trump. Closer scrutiny suggests the administration’s boasts are either exaggerated or premature. Trump may have got ceasefires over the line, but he has done little so far to turn them into lasting peace agreements.
The eight conflicts supposedly resolved by Trump are: the Hamas-Israel conflict; the Israel-Iran 12-Day War; the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict; the Thailand-Cambodia border dispute; tensions between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo; India and Pakistan’s border clashes; and disputes between Serbia and Kosovo, and Egypt and Ethiopia.
Of these, the latter two are the most spurious. Trump claimed in June that, “Serbia, Kosovo was going to go at it, going to be a big war. I said you go at it, there's no trade with the United States. They said, Well, maybe we won't go at it.”
Yet there was no active conflict to resolve, given that the states were not at war, despite Serbia not recognising Kosovo after it broke away. When pressed by the BBC, the White House pointed to Trump’s efforts to promote economic normalisation between the states in 2020. Yet this is hardly evidence of his ‘ending a war’.
With the exception of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, none of the other seven Trump claims to have 'ended' have such good prospects
Similarly, Trump claimed, "I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for keeping Peace between Egypt and Ethiopia," suggesting a role in the fact that ongoing tensions between the African neighbours over the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) had not erupted into war. Yet Ethiopia challenged his claims and, once again, there was no war for Trump to fix.
Trump's involvement in a third conflict, the flare-up between India and Pakistan in May, is similarly disputed. Although the White House claimed the ceasefire resulted from American mediation—and Pakistan nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize immediately afterwards—India insisted that the US played no role at all.
And even if the White House was involved, the deal did little to solve the long-standing disputes between Islamabad and New Delhi. They agreed to stop fighting, but little else.
Deals on the remaining five conflicts more evidently involved Trump, but of these, four share the trait with the India-Pakistan clashes that long-term issues remain unresolved. As for Thailand and Cambodia, Trump's threats to not lower tariffs on their imports apparently persuaded both states to engage more fully with Malaysian-brokered ceasefire talks.
And although White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt played up Trump's peacemaking credentials—announcing on X, "Give him the Nobel Peace Prize!"—the deal was an unconditional ceasefire that did little to address the decades-long land disputes along their shared 500-mile-long border. There was, moreover, little indication that Trump plans to convene or oversee more detailed talks about finding permanent solutions.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio stands with Rwanda's FM Olivier Nduhungirehe and Democratic Republic of Congo's FM Therese Kayikwamba Wagner, after signing a peace agreement in Washington on June 27, 2025.
A similar story played out when the foreign ministers of Rwanda and Congo travelled to the White House in June. At the time, Trump said he'd ended "one of the worst wars anyone's ever seen," but the deal he brokered merely saw the two governments agree to honour a ceasefire they'd already signed a year earlier.
More importantly, the M23 militia—which is allegedly backed by Rwanda and has done most of the fighting against Congolese forces in this conflict—wasn't even involved in negotiations. It dismissed the agreement and, unsurprisingly, fighting resumed in western Congo in August.
In the Middle East, Trump's peacemaking is similarly limited. While he asserted that US military intervention in the 12-Day War between Iran and Israel helped end the fighting, no effort has been made beyond this to explore any kind of peace agreement. Both states remain sworn enemies, and there is little to suggest tensions between them have been resolved. Indeed, some analysts predict that a renewed round of conflict in some form could erupt before the year's end.
Likewise, for all the support for Trump's ceasefire deal in Gaza from regional and European governments in Sharm El-Sheikh in October, the White House has not followed this up with a meaningful effort to address the root causes of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
US President Donald Trump waits to greet world leaders before a family photo at a world leaders' summit on ending the Gaza war, in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on 13 October 2025.
Indeed, the ceasefire seems to be hanging by a thread with repeated violations, and key aspects of Trump's 20-point plan—not least the composition of the peacekeeping force that is meant to be administering a post-Hamas Gaza—are not even close to being implemented. It is questionable whether Trump is sufficiently committed to peace to ensure his plan in Gaza comes to fruition, let alone then attempting to deal with the far bigger problem of addressing the two-state solution.
The Armenia-Azerbaijan exception
Of the eight conflicts, only one stands out as a genuine 'peace' negotiated by Trump. Armenia and Azerbaijan have been in a state of conflict since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and recently fought a 'hot war' over the disputed province of Nagorno-Karabakh. Yet the state's two leaders met and shook hands in the White House in August, and look set to normalise ties.
Crucially, Trump facilitated this by promising to support building a corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave through Armenia—an issue that had threatened to spark another war between Baku and Yerevan.
US President Donald Trump (C), Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (L) and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan display the agreement they signed in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on August 8, 2025.
Unlike the other conflicts discussed, the White House sought to grapple with some of the key issues between the combatants and help resolve them. Trump was helped by changing geopolitical conditions, notably the decreasing influence of Armenia's traditional partner, Russia, and Yerevan's consequent need to compromise and seek new alliances. Even so, Trump does deserve credit for brokering this deal, which, unlike others, has a good chance of lasting long term.
But this seems to be the exception. None of the other seven conflicts Trump claims to have 'ended' have such good prospects. Indeed, the vast majority look more like they are being held together with sticky tape, and many could erupt once again, after—or even before—Trump leaves office.
For the most part, Trump hasn't invested enough political capital in the painstaking details of peacemaking. Instead, he has focused on short-term ceasefires he can boast about in his quest for a Nobel prize that look unlikely to last. Trump might well have a talent for forcing through ceasefires, but his peacemaker credentials need a lot of polishing.
