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President Trump wants to be known as a peacemaker, and claims to have ended or prevented eight wars in just an eight month period. For those who were not aware that so many conflicts were actually in progress or even impending, let alone ended or avoided, here is a synopsis.
Although the two countries have been at loggerheads for some 30 years since the Balkan wars of the 1990s, there had been no military action during this period. Nonetheless, in June, Mr Trump announced that they were "going to go at it, going to be a big war". He said he had told them that, if they fought, he would end all US trade with them and, according to him, "they said, well, maybe we won't go at it".
Despite heightened tensions between Serbia and Kosovo, there is no real evidence that they were on the brink of war in June 2025!
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the River Nile was completed early 2025. Egypt has been concerned about the project, worried that water supplies would be affected. After 12 years of effort, the two countries had failed to reach any agreement. Donald Trump vowed to solve the dispute "very quickly", but was openly in favour of Egypt. As expected, Ethiopia resisted this move, making any resolution even more complicated to resolve.
After almost four decades of on-off conflict, the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a peace agreement at the White House Oval Office this August. There had actually been no significant fighting between them for almost two years.
In July, after a few days of fighting along their joint border, President Trump threatened he would cease negotiations on reducing US tariffs for both countries unless the hostilities were ended. As the two Asian nations are heavily reliant on exports to America, they reached an agreement in August.
The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda have been at each other's throats for decades. Trump promised increased US trade and, especially, greater US investment in the primitive Congolese mines that produce cobalt and other minerals essential to American smartphone makers and other technology companies. Consequently, a peace agreement was signed in Washington in June.
However, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda have since accused each other of persistent ceasefire violations. In July, some 140 people in the DRC, including women and children, were slaughtered by Rwandan-backed rebels.
For almost 70 years since the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, there have been persistent skirmishes, even outright wars, between these neighbours. Most recently, in May, cross-border military strikes erupted after an allegedly Pakistan-funded attack in Kashmir, which is administered by India.
After less than a week of hostilities, Mr Trump announced that the USA had mediated talks that resulted in a "full and immediate ceasefire". Pakistan thanked him and, later, recommended him for the Nobel Peace Prize, an award for which the president admits he has longed.
India was less complimentary, asserting that the agreement had been reached through established channels with little or no US involvement.
On 13th June, this year, Israel bombed a number of nuclear sites in Iran. Over the next several days, the USA followed up with a series of strikes on a number of similar targets, thereby ending the conflict. There was no agreement on a more lasting peace, although some analysts commented that Iran had been weakened significantly.
In early-October, Israel and Hamas agreed a ceasefire deal put forward by Mr Trump. It suspended their two-year conflict in Gaza, which had resulted in the deaths of an estimated 70,000 Palestinian men, women, and children.
The cessation of hostilities is pretty much all that has been agreed, with few details on the disarmament of Hamas and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, along with the future governance of the shattered enclave.
There was a similar agreement in January of this year. It never advanced from the first part of its three-stage plan and collapsed after just two months. Already, in a series of near-daily strikes since the latest ceasefire, Israel is said to have killed over 300 more Palestinians in Gaza.
For some of these settlements, the Americans were pushing on already-open doors. The countries involved were, either, not committed to full-scale conflicts or had already been seeking ways to end them. In other cases, the cessation of conflict has been fleeting or has not led to a more permanent agreement.
Even so, President Trump has been at least one, if not the, decisive factor that achieved peace in a good number of these ceasefires, even if the agreements remain largely untested.
All eyes are now on the, possibly, ninth conflict that he will likely claim to have resolved. That, of course, is the war that has followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and which, so far, has been estimated to have cost the lives of well over 500,000 combatants and civilians on both sides.
This October, an American outline for an agreement seemed to give Russia everything it wants. It may even be that the 28-point plan was actually drawn up by Russia, judging by the transcript of a late-October call between two Russian officials in which one said: "We'll just make this paper from our position, and . . . let them [the USA] do like their own."
Ukraine's European allies, including the UK, have drawn up an alternative proposal, but, whatever the outcome, President Zelensky will remain beholden to America, its money, and its weapons. Even if Europe's intervention secures a more balanced deal, that US choke-hold makes it likely Ukraine will end up ceding territory and other national assets to an amoral and brutal aggressor.
Consequently, it will become acceptable for a country, like Russia, to cite spurious geopolitical history as cause to invade a neighbour. On that basis, the US proposal could even be used by China to justify an invasion of Taiwan.
Furthermore, by approving Russia's 2023 invasion, in effect, Trump's plan makes it possible, even probable, that Putin will strike again. As Sanna Marin, the former premier of Finland, commented: "To end the conflict, Russia must leave Ukrainian territory". Her country's 830-mile border with the invader gives her opinion particular weight.
Meanwhile, Russia shows no sign of ending its military operations in Ukraine, judging by Vladimir Putin's recent vow that he is ready to fight "until the last Ukrainian dies".
So, whether actual, imagined, or imminent, have eight wars been ended or suspended by President Trump? Only if one's definition of peace is merely the absence - and only for the time being - of actual fighting.
More tellingly, the Trump plan for Ukraine requires that $100 billion in frozen Russian assets be invested in US-led efforts to rebuild and invest in the battered nation, with America receiving 50 percent of the profits.
That kind of provision is a hallmark of Mr Trump's approach to peacemaking. In several cases, there is a commercial advantage for all, or any combination, of America, the Trump Organization, himself, and his family.
In Azerbaijan, for example, he secured the creation of a US-operated transport route over land leased for 99 years from Armenia, while US oil giant Exxon nailed a deal with Azerbaijan's state energy business. Meanwhile, Affinity Partners, an investment firm controlled by the First Son-in-Law, Jared Kushner, negotiated a $500 million Belgrade property development bonanza on the back of the ceasefire agreement.
However, this triumph of cynicism over sincerity is dwarfed by the extent of Trump's dealings with Middle Eastern countries. The first transaction was in 1995, when he sold a New York hotel to a Saudi prince. Since 2020, according to Forbes, activity has accelerated.
The magazine claims that, in this period, the president and his family closed at least nine deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Affinity Partners raised over 70 percent of its $4.8 billion in assets from those three countries, while the extended Trump family received an estimated $50 million from Saudi-connected deals in 2024 alone. Qatar's gift to the president of a $400 million airliner, earlier this year, was the icing on the cake.
It is surely no accident, therefore, that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE have been the US president's principal aiders and abetters in securing a ceasefire in Gaza. With the addition of Egypt, the trio are now working on a solution to the atrocity-fuelled civil war in Sudan.
No matter how crooked the path that leads to it, peace is an unalloyed good. However, it is clear that the current American approach is driven by commercial interests, rather than by any wish to find long-term solutions. Lasting peace is not achieved in a single deal, but through an often-lengthy process of further negotiation on enforcement and security, disarmament, monitoring, and a host of legal details.
Any evaluation of Donald Trump's claims as a peacemaker has to take into account his numerous threats of invasion and suppression. He has despatched a naval flotilla, including the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the world's largest warship, to international waters off Venezuela.
These ships have been responsible for the deaths of more than 80 Venezuelans, Colombians, and other South Americans in a series of strikes against small boats that, without any evidence, have been accused of smuggling drugs. In late-November, Trump went an ominous step further, saying that US military operations in Venezuela itself would "start very soon".
Nigeria, too, has become a target. Africa's most populous nation, more-or-less evenly composed of Christians and Muslims, has suffered a spate of attacks by Muslims on Christians and vice versa. Mr Trump has condemned only the attacks on Christians, threatening to send in the US army, "guns a-blazing". The Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, responded that his Department of War is "preparing for action".
Donald Trump has also threatened to take over Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. He wants access to the island's minerals, especially the rare earths needed by American tech companies, and has refused to rule out using either military force or economic coercion to get it. He also wants to make Canada the 51st US state.
Both threats can be viewed as mere bluster and unlikely to happen. Nonetheless, this President of Unpredictability, initially dismissed as unlikely even to be in the White House, has a full three years left in which to realise his vision and make yet more money. Anything can happen - and probably will.
Ask Google 'what is peace?' and its AI-powered response will be that it is "a state of harmony between nations or groups, often achieved through negotiation, justice, and mutual respect". Tacitus, the Roman historian, said that "a bad peace is even worse than war".
None of President Trump's ceasefire deals has delivered either justice for the protagonists or mutual respect between them. The guns may have gone silent, but no mechanisms for the encouragement or enforcement of longer-term settlements have been put in place. Trump's peace is even worse than war, therefore.
It appears that almost every agreement Trump has achieved is riddled with embedded uncertainties, unresolved differences, and lack of commitment.
Those doubts and divisions may not resurface over Christmas and the New Year, but they are likely to make a mockery of any New Year good wishes.
Part 1: The Trump Effect
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Last updated: 11 December 2025 | © KIS Bridging Loans 2024 | Terms & Conditions