As Donald Trump’s second term unfolds, it has become increasingly clear that the president’s foreign policy priority is to secure US-brokered ceasefires and peace agreements. The State Department claims that the administration has “ended” seven wars in seven months. The president himself has insisted that he has put an end to eight wars. The list is unusual, including countries that may not even have realized they were “at war.” More troubling is the suggestion that any of these conflicts has truly been resolved. As the Trump administration will soon discover, signing an agreement does not guarantee peace.
Conflict resolution is long, complex, and arduous. While negotiations and agreements may be the most visible aspects of this process, they rest on groundwork that ripens the environment for dialogue: trust-building measures like temporary ceasefires, back-channel contacts, and pre-negotiations to determine the framework for talks. Only after this foundation is laid do formal negotiations begin, usually lasting years and undergoing repeated rounds of stalled progress. According to data from the Peace Observatory, the world’s largest repository of peace negotiations, where global conflicts between 1989 and 2023 involved negotiations, they have averaged 29 distinct rounds of talks. Conflict parties know all too well the destructive and harrowing consequences of war, yet it may take years, sometimes decades, to come up with a better solution that everyone is willing to pursue.
Lengthy negotiations are often necessary to address the root issues of conflict. These can include complex, multifaceted institutional and structural issues that may require substantial reform to address — marginalization of specific groups, inequitable distribution of resources, contested borders, or even state collapse. Other questions concern implementation. Will a transitional government be necessary? Will militant groups be permitted to transition to peace-time political or civic actors? Will the UN or another international actor serve as a third-party monitor?
The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan, brokered with strong US support after nearly three years of negotiations, endured for years because it confronted the root causes of the two-decade war. The agreement addressed core grievances of political exclusion and resource control through provisions on power sharing, distribution of wealth, and regional autonomy, leading to the independence of South Sudan in 2011.
In his haste to attempt to secure a Nobel Peace Prize, Trump appears to have rushed to secure quick wins on paper. His approach has meant excluding key conflict parties from negotiations (the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda), ignoring fundamental issues at the heart of disputes (India and Pakistan), exaggerating the severity of tensions (Ethiopia and Egypt), or overstating US involvement in outcomes (Cambodia and Thailand). Many of Trump’s resolutions contain few details, and raise more questions than they answer. The agreement between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda, signed in Washington on June 27, reads more like a wishlist than a realistic plan. It assumes all actors will comply without addressing their incentives, producing what one analyst called a “built-in stalemate.” As Kristof Titeca succinctly put it, it “leaves two politically impossible scenarios: M23 dismantles itself, or Kinshasa accepts permanent M23 control over part of its territory — an outcome equally unacceptable to the Congolese government.”
Even lengthy negotiations are not a guaranteed path to lasting peace — the Peace Observatory’s data shows that only 27% of negotiations end in agreements, and almost 45% of these agreements subsequently collapse. What makes the difference is not simply signing a deal but the presence of external pressure and accountability. Historically, the US has played a central role in sustaining the agreements it has brokered, using levers such as aid packages and strong diplomatic engagement to shape the behavior of conflict parties. Yet Trump, in his first months back in office, has worked to dismantle these very tools, undercutting his own capacity to ensure that any agreements he claims as victories will actually endure.
In Ethiopia, the USAID Office of Transition Initiatives observed these issues firsthand. More than two years after the signing of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (COHA) between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), ending a brutal war, people in Tigray still repeatedly appealed to the American community to ensure that the COHA was implemented and peace endured in northern Ethiopia. The deal had been mediated by the African Union, while the US, along with the UN and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, participated only as observers. Yet, on the ground, there was no distinction between mediator and observer — many believed the US had both the influence and the responsibility to hold the federal government and the TPLF accountable.
If that expectation exists even when Washington is only an observer, it becomes all the more acute when the US is the mediator. Yet, in the face of ongoing violence in eastern DRC — a direct violation of the June 27 agreement — the Trump administration has remained conspicuously silent. Its decision to list the conflict as “resolved” on the State Department’s X post shows the administration is shirking its role to enforce the agreement it brokered.
Trump’s fixation on outcomes over processes is already unraveling. On Oct. 2, the M23 announced the resumption of conflict against the DRC and its allies — a predictable collapse of one of his much-touted “agreements.” Durable peace requires patience, sustained engagement, and credible enforcement, all of which Trump has eschewed in his foreign policy — a reality underscored by his failed pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize.
As these agreements break down, the damage will fall not only on Trump’s reputation but also on Washington’s credibility as a reliable broker on the global stage. But the greatest costs will be borne by those living in these conflict zones, who will continue to shoulder the consequences of yet another failed agreement.
