The United States’ National Security Strategy document, released in December 2025, dubbed President Donald Trump “The President of Peace.” This title recognized his role in securing harmony across eight conflicts during his second term in office, as well as normalizing relations between Israel and a number of Arab nations during his first term in the historic 2020 Abraham Accords.
The president’s “peace” list officially includes conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Thailand, Egypt and Ethiopia, Kosovo and Serbia, India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda, and Israel and Palestine. However, despite Trump’s brokered deals, many of these countries have continued to experience violent outbursts with American interests actively working against some ceasefires—notably the recent joint US-Israeli attack on Iran.
As such, the question remains: has this presidential push for peace truly been a successful endeavor? While acknowledging the humanitarian aspects of conflict resolution, a critical eye must remain on regional stability, unique global contexts, and possible American interests that shape President Trump’s international “peace” initiatives. Despite President Trump’s broad claims of peace, the scrutinization of different successful, weak, and failing policies highlight the continuing struggle for Trump’s “peace” plans to achieve long-lasting security and stability in their international positions.
Likely the most promising of the president’s peace deals is between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The deal seeks to resolve a decades-old feud between the two nations, enemies since the collapse of the USSR, who have experienced on-and-off again fighting over their shared border. The repeated clashes have particularly affected marginalized Armenian populations, leading to allegations of ethnic cleansing in the Nagorno-Karabakh region which Azerbaijan seized in 2023. President Trump helped negotiate a peace deal between the two nations in August of 2025, with both states’ leaders praising the president’s efforts in securing the Joint Declaration of Peace.
In accordance with President Trump’s business-forward diplomacy, or his emphasis of economic incentives and interdependence to promote peace, the agreement hinges on a number of strategic economic ventures between the US and the two target states. In this case, the main investment comes from the revamping of rail infrastructure named the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP). The route, which would travel through Armenia and link Azerbaijan to its detached province of Nakhchivan, would provide regional stability for travel between the two nations, as well as an alternate trade route between Western Europe and resource-rich Central Asia, which avoids paths through Russia, China, or Iran. TRIPP would be supported by US capital and contractors, providing economic incentives towards the deal’s success to American firms as well as those in Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Other economic incentives include agreements regarding the creation of AI data centers and cooperation on nuclear energy between the US and Armenia, as well as gas deals between Azerbaijan and US company ExxonMobil. These ventures are intended to encourage the nations to normalize relations with the US and build greater prosperity, leading to long-term security between the states. While some analysts caution that constitutional reforms needed to cement the agreement may prove difficult to pass, the broader outlook for the conflict’s resolution remains cautiously optimistic, contingent on sustained economic growth and continued political stability in both nations.
Most of President Trump’s deals, however, are not so clean-cut. For example, take the Four-Day Crisis of 2025 between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan: while Trump’s intervention ended the immediate fighting between the two nations, the deeper tensions driving the conflict remain unresolved. The animosity between the two nations dates back to the 1947 Partition of British India along loose, ethno-religious lines, which triggered a bloody period of mass displacement. The modern-day conflict rests upon competing claims to the Northern Kashmir region, which rests between the two nations.
Not only is the conflict’s finality in dispute, but also the role of President Trump in the creation of the ceasefire. While Pakistan lauded the president for his efforts—securing Pakistan infrastructure deals and US access to Pakistani mineral wealth in return—Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi rejected President Trump’s role in the agreement, a stance that resulted in a 50% tariff on US imports from India. As a whole, Trump’s peace agreement between India and Pakistan lacks critical longevity and legitimacy, failing to provide a framework for demilitarization or a solution to territorial disputes over the Kashmir region.
Similarly, President Trump claims to have prevented imminent combative escalation between Serbia and Kosovo. The two nations have experienced tense relations since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, though the states have never reached full-scale conflict. While President Trump’s agreement is helping the states work towards economic normalization, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has rejected the claim that the dispute ever neared a tipping point—calling into question Trump’s framing of the deal as a prevented conflict rather than simply an agreement for economic normalization.
The dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has similarly never escalated to full-scale warfare. The Renaissance Dam, which would double Ethiopian energy production, could potentially restrict water flow to the downstream Nile—an outcome that alarms Egyptian officials due to their nation’s dependence on the river. President Trump’s inclusion of this disagreement in his peace count further brings into question the legitimacy of the president’s numbers.
When non-physical disputes such as Serbia-Kosovo and Egypt-Ethiopia are listed alongside devastating humanitarian struggles such as the war in Gaza and conflict in the DRC, they are flattened to seem equivalent in terms of impact or effect. These misleading figures reflect the political incentives of President Trump’s peace initiatives, with the inflated peace count serving as a repeated metric by which President Trump emphasizes his international success to domestic audiences.
A number of the president’s peace plans are failing outright. The core issue lies in these ceasefires’ lack of structured frameworks or institutions necessary for long-term peace. As such, these conflicts have experienced continued outbursts of violence even after the president has declared them resolved.
Cambodia and Thailand’s border crisis offers a clear example of this pattern—one where President Trump and other international actors negotiated a ceasefire in July 2025, only for the conflict to reignite months later. Unresolved claims over historic temples and militarized border zones drove a resurgence of violence in December 2025, which flared again in February 2026. The July 2025 ceasefire failed to include any solutions for these critical issues. While Trump has continued to include the crisis in his count of solved conflicts, violence remains a reality on the states’ borders.
Conflict between Rwanda and the DRC has similarly unraveled since the Trump-brokered peace deal. M23, a rebel group alleged to be supported by the Rwandan government that has displaced more than 450,000 civilians in 2025 alone, continues to maintain a violent military presence in the DRC’s resource-rich eastern provinces. Despite UN statements otherwise, Rwanda denies involvement in the group’s actions. President Trump briefly acknowledged the deal’s shortcomings, stating in February, “There’s little flare-ups every once in a while.” Even after this acknowledgement of the ceasefire’s failings, the conflict has remained in the president’s peace count.
President Trump has additionally failed to secure lasting peace in Gaza. During the president’s State of the Union address, he acknowledged that conflict in Gaza “proceeds at a very low level” and pushed for the creation of the Board of Peace as an international transitional administration in Gaza to coordinate rebuilding efforts. The Board, however, has come under scrutiny for its US-centric nature and ambiguous scope that implies it could take on other geopolitical conflicts in the near future, potentially serving as a vehicle for expanding American international influence under the guise of conflict resolution. All the while, regular Israeli fire is reported to continue in Gaza and civilian food insecurity remains high. While Trump’s ceasefire has helped pause the city’s heaviest fighting, safety is still not a guarantee for those living within Gaza.
Finally, President Trump has actively undermined the peace deal between Iran and Israel through a joint US-Israeli militant operation against Iran starting on February 28, 2026. The growing conflict has caused regional turmoil, impacting the safety and economic security of neighboring countries including Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE. As of March 3, these strikes have already killed at least 780 Iranians, including Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. American justifications for the strikes center on accusations of Iranian nuclear and weapon programs, as well as the Iranian regime’s alleged association with several terrorist groups. This strike violates the ceasefire announced on social media by President Trump in June of 2025. It represents the fragility of Trump’s “peace” deals, and the ease with which they can be undermined–even by President Trump himself.
For civilians, the announcement of a Trump-sponsored truce is not the promise of stability, but rather an imperfect respite from full hostilities. Even in relatively successful examples of President Trump’s “peace” deals, onlookers must remain critical of the original nature and scope of the disputes, possible US economic interests, and President Trump’s true diplomatic role in each crisis in order to understand the broader context of these agreements as well as their contested legitimacy in the president’s peace count. As hostilities between the US, Israel, and Iran continue, and President Trump touts his intentions to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, international audiences should remain hesitant to celebrate Trump’s ceasefires until long-lasting safety can be established for those living in the conflict regions. The life of the global citizen depends on it.
