By Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently invoked his success at resolving international conflicts, casting himself as a global peacemaker while his aides and some foreign leaders push for him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
He has found Russia’s war in Ukraine to be far more vexing. Trump has put himself squarely in the middle of the diplomatic attempts to bring peace but has wavered on what he’s willing to do to achieve it.
Here are some of the foreign disputes Trump has intervened in since beginning his second term in January, using a mix of threats, inducements and the power of his office to shape the behaviors of allies and foes.
ARMENIA AND AZERBAIJAN
Trump brought together the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan on August 8 to sign a joint declaration pledging to seek peaceful relations between nations that have been at odds since the late 1980s.
“I got to know them through trade,” Trump said later in a radio interview. “I was dealing with them a little bit and I said, ‘Why you guys fighting?’ Then I said, ‘I’m not going to do a trade deal if you guys are going to fight. It’s crazy.'”
The two countries had committed to a ceasefire in 2023. In March they said they had agreed on the text of a draft peace agreement, but that deal has not been signed.
The White House-brokered declaration falls short of a formal peace treaty that would place legally binding obligations on both sides. One snag is over whether an agreement requires Armenia to revise its constitution.
The leaders also struck economic agreements with Washington that granted the U.S. development rights to a strategic transit corridor through southern Armenia. The Trump administration said this would allow for greater exports of energy. In documents released at the time, the corridor was named after Trump.
CAMBODIA AND THAILAND
Trump helped bring Thailand to the table for talks after long-simmering tensions with Cambodia spilled over in July into a five-day military conflict, the deadliest fighting there in over a decade.
The U.S. president reached out to acting Thai Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai two days after fighting erupted along a 200-km-long (125 mile) stretch of the border. Trump withheld deals on tariffs with both countries until the conflict ended.
Up to that point, Bangkok had rejected third-party mediation and had not responded to offers of help from Malaysia and China, Reuters reporting showed.
Trump’s intervention helped get Thailand to the table, according to Lim Menghour, a Cambodian government official working on foreign policy.
Subsequent talks yielded a fragile agreement to end hostilities, resume direct communications and create a mechanism to implement the ceasefire. Trump went on to impose a 19% tariff on both countries’ U.S.-bound exports, lower than he had initially floated.
ISRAEL, IRAN AND THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES
Trump has maintained strong U.S. backing for Israel as it pummels Gaza and tries to uproot Hamas. He has also supported its efforts to disable other Iran-backed groups, including Hezbollah and the Houthi movement, and Tehran itself.
The U.S. president is working to expand the Abraham Accords, an initiative from his first term that aims to normalize diplomatic ties between Israel and Arab nations.
But a solution to Israeli-Palestinian and Iranian conflicts has eluded Trump, just as it has all U.S. presidents for decades.
Washington provides weapons and diplomatic cover to Israel as its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed international condemnation of the humanitarian toll of his military campaign in Gaza.
Israel and Hamas agreed to a deal to halt fighting in Gaza in January, after Trump’s election but before his inauguration.
The deal had been mediated by Egypt and Qatar and also involved personnel from the outgoing Biden and incoming Trump administrations. Israel abandoned the ceasefire in March.
Talks toward a new ceasefire collapsed in July. Mediators are trying to revive a U.S.-backed ceasefire plan but Israel is also planning a new, expanded military operation in Gaza. Trump has blamed Hamas for not seeking a reasonable settlement of the conflict and pressured them to do so.
Trump initially pursued talks with Tehran over its nuclear program. Israel launched an aerial war on Iran on June 13 and pressed Trump join in. He did on June 22, bombing Iranian nuclear sites. He then pressed Israel and Iran to join a ceasefire that Qatar mediated.
The situation remains bitter and unstable. Iran continues to reject U.S. demands that it stop enriching uranium for its nuclear program. And Israel has said it will strike Iran again if it feels threatened.
RWANDA AND DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo signed a U.S.-brokered peace agreement on June 27 under pressure from Trump, raising hopes for the end of fighting that has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands more this year.
The fighting is the latest episode in a decades-old conflict with roots in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Rwanda sent thousands of soldiers over the border, according to analysts, to support M23 rebels who seized eastern Congo’s two largest cities and lucrative mining areas earlier this year. Rwanda denies helping M23.
In February, a Congolese senator contacted U.S. officials to pitch a minerals-for-security deal. Then, in March, Qatar brokered a surprise sit-down between Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame during which the two leaders called for a ceasefire. Qatar has also brokered talks between Congo and M23, but the two sides are yet to agree on a peace deal and violence continues.
At the White House, Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe told Trump that past deals had not been implemented and urged Trump to stay engaged. Trump warned of “very severe penalties, financial and otherwise” if the agreement is violated.
INDIA AND PAKISTAN
U.S. officials worried conflict could spiral out of control when nuclear-armed India and Pakistan clashed in May following an attack in India that Delhi blamed on Islamabad.
Consulting with Trump, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance pushed Indian and Pakistani officials to de-escalate the situation.
A ceasefire was announced on May 10 after four days of fighting. But it addresses few of the issues that have divided India and Pakistan, which have fought three major wars since their independence from the United Kingdom in 1947.
Days after the ceasefire, Trump said he used the threat of cutting trade with the countries to secure the deal. India disputed that U.S. pressure led to the ceasefire and that trade was a factor.
EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA
Egypt and Ethiopia have a long dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Cairo regards as a national security issue and worries will threaten its Nile River water supplies.
“We’re working on that one problem, but it’s going to get solved,” Trump said in July.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt later included Egypt and Ethiopia in a list of conflicts that “the president has now ended.”
It’s unclear what Trump is doing on the issue. In public statements, he has largely echoed Cairo’s concerns, and some of his statements have been disputed by Ethiopia.
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has vowed to open the dam in September over the objections of both Sudan and Egypt. Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who welcomed Trump’s comments on the issue, has vowed to protect his own country’s interests.
SERBIA AND KOSOVO
Kosovo and Serbia still have tense relations nearly five years after agreements Trump brokered with both during his first term in office to work on their economic ties.
Without providing evidence, Trump said in June he “stopped” war between the countries during his first term and that “I will fix it, again,” in his second.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008, almost a decade after NATO bombed Serb forces to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians from the region during a 1998-1999 counter-insurgency war.
But Serbia still regards Kosovo as an integral part of its territory. The countries have signed no peace deal.
Kosovo’s prime minister Albin Kurti has sought to extend government control over the north, where about 50,000 ethnic Serbs live, many of whom refuse to recognize Kosovo’s independence.
Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani said in July that “the last few weeks” Trump had prevented further escalation in the region. She did not elaborate, and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic denied that any escalation had been forthcoming.
RUSSIA AND UKRAINE
Trump, who said during the 2024 presidential campaign that he could solve the war in Ukraine in one day, has so far been unable to end the 3-1/2-year-old conflict that analysts say has left more than 1 million people dead or wounded.
“I thought this was going to be one of the easier ones,” Trump said on August 18. “It’s actually one of the most difficult.”
Trump’s views on how to best bring peace have swung from calling for a ceasefire to saying a deal could still be worked out while the fighting continued.
He has threatened tariffs and sanctions against Putin, but then backed off them again after an Alaska summit where the two leaders appeared before backdrops that said “Pursuing Peace.”
Trump, who has sometimes criticized and sometimes supported Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, this week said the United States would help guarantee Ukraine’s security in any deal. He subsequently said he had ruled out putting U.S. troops on the ground in Ukraine, but the U.S. might provide air support to help end the hostilities.
Europeans have worried that Trump might push Zelenskiy to accept a proposal from Putin that included significant territorial concessions by Kyiv and limited security guarantees from Washington.
Despite talk of a possible meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy, there was no let-up in the fighting. Russia this week launched 270 drones and 10 missiles in an overnight attack on Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said, the largest this month.
SOUTH KOREA AND NORTH KOREA
Trump in June vowed to “get the conflict solved with North Korea.”
The U.S. president and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held three summits during Trump’s 2017-2021 first term and exchanged a number of letters that Trump called “beautiful,” before the unprecedented diplomatic effort broke down over U.S. demands that Kim give up his nuclear weapons.
North Korea has surged ahead with more and bigger ballistic missiles, expanded its nuclear weapons facilities, and gained new support from its neighbors in the years since. In his second term Trump has acknowledged that North Korea is a “nuclear power.”
The White House said in June that Trump would welcome communications again with Kim. It has not responded to reports that Trump’s initial efforts at communication with the North Korean leader have been ignored.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Fatos BytyciEditing by Colleen Jenkins and Alistair Bell)
Comments