Why Donald Trump has stopped some wars but is failing with Ukraine and Gaza cover art

Why Donald Trump has stopped some wars but is failing with Ukraine and Gaza

Why Donald Trump has stopped some wars but is failing with Ukraine and Gaza

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 On July 28, in yet another twist in his unpredictable decision making, US president Donald Trump dramatically shortened his original 50-day ultimatum to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to call a ceasefire in Ukraine to a mere ten days. This is an unmistakable sign of Trump’s frustration with the Russian leader who he now appears to view as the main obstacle to a ceasefire in the war against Ukraine.Progress has been similarly limited in another of Trump’s flagship foreign policy projects: ending the war in Gaza. As a humanitarian catastrophe is engulfing the territory, Trump and some of his MAGA base have increasingly challenged Israeli narratives denying that after almost two years of war many Gazans now face a real risk of starvation.Yet not all of Trump’s efforts to stop violence in conflicts elsewhere in the world have been similarly futile. The Trump administration brokered a ceasefire deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which the two countries’ foreign ministers signed in Washington on June 27. The US president also claimed to be behind the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May after the two sides had engaged in several days of fierce combat after a terror attack in a tourist spot in Indian-administered Kashmir in which 26 people were killed by a Pakistan-backed rebel group. And drawing a clear parallel between this conflict and the border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand in July, Trump announced that he had pushed both of these two countries’ leaders to negotiate a ceasefire.All of these ceasefires, so far, have held. By contrast, the ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, to which Trump arguably contributed even before he returned to the White House as 47th president of the United States in January 2025, broke down in March and fighting has escalated ever since. A short-lived ceasefire in Ukraine in April was barely worth its name given its countless violations.Three factors can explain Trump’s mixed record of peace-making to date. First, the US president is more likely to succeed in stopping the fighting where he has leverage and is willing to use it to force foreign leaders to bend to his will. For example, Trump was very clear that there would be no trade negotiations with Thailand or Cambodia “until such time as the fighting STOPS”.The crucial difference, so far, with the situation in the war against Ukraine is that Trump has, and has used, similar leverage only with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. This led to a US-Ukraine agreement on a 30-day ceasefire proposal just two weeks after the now-notorious row between Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office.The mere threat of sanctions against Russia, by contrast, has done little to persuade Putin to accept whatever deal Trump might offer him. Threats from the White House — which were never implemented — did not work in January or May, and the Kremlin’s initial reactions to Trump’s latest ultimatum do not indicate any change in the Russian attitude.A second factor that may explain why Trump has had peace-making success in some cases but not others is the level of complexity of US interests involved. When it comes to US relations with Russia and Israel, there is a lot at stake for Trump. The US president still appears keen to strike a grand bargain with Russia and China under which Washington, Beijing and Moscow would agree to recognise, and not interfere in, their respective spheres of influence. This could explain his hesitation so far to follow through on his threats to Putin. Similarly, US interests in the Middle East — be it concerning Iran’s nuclear programme or relations with America’s Gulf allies — have put strains on the alliance with Israel. Trump also needs to weigh carefully the impact of any move against, or in support of, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his domestic support base.In the deal Trump brokered between Rwanda and the DRC, the issues at stake were much simpler: access for US investors to the mineral riches of the eastern DRC. After Trump acknowledged just days into his second term that the conflict was a “very serious problem”, Congo’s president, Felix Tshisekedi, offered the US a deal on the minerals in exchange for pushing Rwanda to a deal to end the invasion and stop supporting proxy forces in the DRC.This leads to the third factor that has enabled Trump’s peace-making success so far: simpler solutions are easier to achieve. Thailand and Cambodia and India and Pakistan can go back to the status quo ante before their recent fighting started. That does not resolve any of the underlying issues in their conflicts but returns their relations to some form of non-violent stability. It is ultimately also in the interests of the conflict parties to stop the fighting. They have had a chance to make their violent statements and reinforce what they will, and will not, tolerate from the other side. The ...
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