President Trump with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia at a signing ceremony at the White House. Photo / Tierney L. Cross, The New York Times
President Trump has cast himself as a global peacemaker. His interventions have calmed some conflicts, while in others his role is less clear.
President Donald Trump often says that he has resolved multiple wars since taking office in January and that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. “I’m averaging about a war a month,” Trump said in July in Turnberry, Scotland.
On Monday at the White House, during talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine aimed at moving toward a peace deal with Russia, he referred to “six wars that I’ve settled”. On Tuesday, in an interview on Fox and Friends, he said he had ended seven wars, though he did not specify which one he had added.
“I really want to get to heaven,” Trump said in the interview, explaining his motivation for playing peacemaker, though he joked that he knew he was “on the bottom of the totem pole”.
Every US President has world conflicts land on his desk, and Trump has used the power of his office, including the threat of economic penalties, to intervene in several this year, leading to an end to fighting. In some cases, warring parties have credited him with advancing peace or calming hostilities. In others, his role is disputed or less clear – or fighting goes on.
Asked for clarification, the White House provided a list of the six wars he says he has resolved. It did not respond to a subsequent question about the seventh.
Trump brought the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to the White House this month to sign a joint declaration aimed at bringing their long-running conflict closer to an end. It was not a peace deal, but it was the first commitment toward one since fighting broke out in the late 1980s when a weakening Soviet Union unleashed interethnic strife in the Caucasus.
Both leaders praised Trump, who stepped into a conflict that had long been mediated by Russia, until President Vladimir Putin’s attention shifted after his 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
As part of the agreement, Armenia said it would grant the United States rights to develop a major transit corridor through its territory, the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity. The project has been described as an economic game-changer for the region that would better connect Europe with Azerbaijan and Central Asia.
But it is not clear when the route will open and on what terms. And major barriers to a lasting peace remain.
Azerbaijan continues to demand that Armenia change its constitution to remove mentions of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Azerbaijan took over in 2023. Azerbaijan also occupies small areas of Armenia, citing security concerns, and the countries have not agreed on a shared border. For now, the border between the two nations is closed, diplomatic ties remain broken.
In June, the top diplomats from Rwanda and Congo came to the Oval Office to sign a peace agreement aimed at ending a war that has raged for over three decades. Qatar also played a major role in the deal, which was intended to pave the way to a full peace agreement.
Trump called the accord “a glorious triumph”.
But talks on a comprehensive agreement have since faltered and deadly fighting has continued. On Monday, the main rebel group in eastern Congo, known as M23 and backed by Rwanda, threatened to renege on the US-backed deal, claiming that its primary foe, the Congolese army, had broken its terms.
Trump has taken credit for mediating an end to a military escalation between the two nuclear powers that broke out after a terrorist attack in Kashmir this spring killed 26 civilians.
India has acknowledged the American role in mediating but says it negotiated an end to the fighting directly with Pakistan. India claims that Pakistani officials asked for ceasefire talks under pressure from India’s military assaults. Pakistan denies this and has thanked Trump for helping to end the hostilities.
The differing accounts have contributed to a deterioration of relations between Washington and New Delhi, which is also playing out in Trump’s trade war. Pakistan, which said it would nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation, faces US tariffs of 19%. India, on the other hand, faces a crippling 50% tariff, a rate that could crush the country’s exporters.
After 12 days of strikes in June that included US attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, Trump abruptly announced a ceasefire agreement. He said the United States had mediated it and claimed that Israel had turned around its warplanes at his behest.
“It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability, and then, STOP THE WAR!” he posted on Truth Social.
Although neither side has disputed the American role in the truce, its durability remains in question. Talks have broken off between Iran and the United States on the future of Tehran’s nuclear programme, which Israel considers an existential threat.
And while American intelligence assesses that the US bombings badly damaged Iran’s most advanced nuclear enrichment site, some experts believe Tehran could eventually resume enriching uranium, which is needed to build a nuclear weapon, at other sites.
The two Southeast Asian neighbours engaged this summer in days of fighting that killed at least 42 people and displaced more than 300,000, one of the bloodiest conflicts between them in decades.
At the time, the Trump administration was discussing trade deals with a host of countries, and Trump said he had told the leaders of Thailand and Cambodia that he would stop trade talks unless they agreed to a ceasefire.
Two days later, officials met in Malaysia for talks organised by Malaysian and US officials and reached a deal to pause hostilities. “They will hopefully get along for many years to come,” Trump said afterward.
Critics of Trump’s approach say his intervention did not address the underlying issues of the conflict, though fighting has stopped.
Egypt and Ethiopia face not a military conflict but a diplomatic dispute over Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam. Still, there are fears that it might descend into fighting. (Trump said in 2020 that Egypt had threatened to “blow up” the dam.)
Trump’s diplomacy has done little to resolve the dispute. Ethiopia recently announced that it had completed the dam, with an official opening scheduled for next month. Egypt and Sudan continue to oppose the project, fearing it will limit the flow of water from the Nile River to their countries.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Jenny Gross, Ivan Nechepurenko, Declan Walsh, Aaron Boxerman and Sui-Lee Wee
Photographs by: Tierney L. Cross
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES