Trump touts his peace offers

[ad_1] <img src="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4810x3206+0+0/resize/1100/quality/50/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fd1%2F47%2F0d1e1c9e4745b55e8939612a9221%2Fgettyimages-2250174581.jpg" data-template="https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/4810x3206+0+0/resize/{width}/quality/{quality}/format/{format}/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fd1%2F47%2F0d1e1c9e4745b55e8939612a9221%2Fgettyimages-2250174581.jpg" class="img" alt="President Donald Trump reacts as he receives the FIFA Peace Prize during the FIFA World Cup 2026 Official Draw at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Dec. 5, 2025 in Washington, DC." fetchpriority="high"/> President Donald Trump reacts as he receives the FIFA Peace Prize in the course of the FIFA World Cup 2026 Official Draw at John F. Kennedy Middle for the Performing Arts on Dec. 5, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Patrick Smith/Getty Photographs North America disguise caption

toggle caption

Patrick Smith/Getty Photographs North America President Trump has made it well-known that he's coveting the Nobel Peace prize, and barely passes up the chance to say he has solved eight conflicts world wide in eight months.

However regardless of the efforts, the outcomes have been blended: some outcomes are precarious, and the president's function in brokering a deal is disputed. Others have merely unraveled

There are those you do not hear about a lot equivalent to Armenia and Azerbaijan. Serbia and Kosovo signed a peace settlement in 2020 throughout Trump's first time period in workplace with the assistance of NATO and the European Union. That deal has caught.

Trump claimed credit score for securing peace between Egypt and Ethiopia. The 2 international locations weren't at conflict, simply locked in a tense dispute over a hydroelectric dam on the Nile River.

Nonetheless, the offers all the time obtain a substantial amount of fanfare, says Max Boot, a senior fellow on the Council on Overseas Relations and writer of Reagan: His Life and Legend.

"President Trump trumpets each considered one of these offers as being basically peace in our time," he says. "However they had been all overhyped and oversold."

Boot says what Trump and his workforce are actually negotiating are ceasefires, not peace agreements. "And that is the essential distinction," he says. "With the ceasefire, it may well flare up into preventing at any second."

Take for instance, the peace deal between Thailand and Cambodia, which was hailed because the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord in late October. Preventing over a long-running border dispute flared up once more between the 2 sides a few month later, and as soon as once more over the previous week.

Then there's Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. A deal was reached in the course of the summer time however not formally signed till earlier this month. There was nice fanfare in the course of the ceremony in Washington for what Trump had referred to as a "wonderful triumph". But, the preventing raged between the DRC and Rwanda whilst either side sat all the way down to signal a cope with Trump.

Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO and at present a senior fellow on the Belfer Middle and Harvard's Kennedy Faculty, says lengthy, festering issues between international locations do not get solved by signing a bit of paper in Washington.

"That takes painstaking diplomacy, arduous work and quite a lot of quite a lot of time, he says. "And except you'll find a solution to resolve the underlying battle, international locations are keen to make use of drive to get their manner."

However Trump typically pushes again in opposition to custom and does issues his personal manner. Matthew Kroenig, senior director of the Scowcroft Middle for Technique and Safety on the Atlantic Council, says that is given Trump some success.

"His distinctive fashion typically produces surprising outcomes, basically declaring victory earlier than it is achieved," Kroening says, including that forces others to scramble and fill within the particulars. "As within the case with Gaza."

Trump took credit score for ending what he mentioned was an Arab-Israeli battle that had been occurring for 3,000 years. Daalder says Trump was capable of assist safe the discharge of all of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza over the previous two years. However there may be nonetheless low-level preventing, and no long-term decision in sight.

"We've not been capable of transfer past the ceasefire and the trade of hostages to constructing a long-lasting, peaceable state of affairs in Gaza," Daalder says, not to mention a long-lasting, peaceable state of affairs between Israelis and Palestinians. "Which is, in fact, the elemental cause now we have this battle within the first place."

Trump additionally helped dealer a peace deal between Israel and Iran. That got here after Trump inserted the U.S. into the battle by bombing a number of of Iran's nuclear websites.

Trump's efforts to unravel a long time lengthy tensions between India and Pakistan dealt a blow to U.S.-India relations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi disputed Trump's claims that he was instrumental in brokering a deal. Shortly after, Trump imposed 50% tariffs on most U.S. imports from India. Boot calls it a significant bump in relations between the 2 international locations.

"I believe though the ostensible cause for these huge tariffs is that India has been shopping for Russian oil, I believe the true impetus was that Trump was mad at Modi for not going alongside together with his claims of India into the India-Pakistan battle," Boot says.

Nonetheless, the Atlantic Council's Kroenig says Trump can take credit score for normalizing relations between Israel and several other Arab nations throughout his first time period in workplace, together with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

"(It is) fairly exceptional, getting these international locations to acknowledge Israel and open up commerce and journey," says Kroenig.There are nonetheless some conflicts seemingly past Trump's grasp — most notably Ukraine and Russia.

There are additionally complicated indicators from a president making an attempt to seize a Nobel Peace Prize, says Daalder. "The direct confrontation he is looking for with Venezuela, the opportunity of an precise conflict with Venezuela would go straight opposite to this concept that he is a peacemaker," he says.

This 12 months's Nobel Peace Prize went to María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition chief. Trump can take consolation in figuring out he has obtained a minimum of one award for his peace efforts: he was handed the inaugural FIFA peace prize from soccer's governing physique earlier this month. The respect included an enormous gold medal.