Eight for eight: deals, diplomacy and Donald Trump

In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump returned to a subject close to his heart: conflict resolution. Ending war once and for all is no easy task. It consists in reconciling the “superiority of power with the feelings of men”, as William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham, described it in 1775. The scale of the task notwithstanding, Mr Trump once again claimed to have ended eight wars. Indeed, the lives of 35 million people had been saved from nuclear war between India and Pakistan due to his involvement, he said.

The President made it known last month that he felt aggrieved that he had not been awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. In a text message to the Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Mr Trump said, “Your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS.” Before his State of the Union speech, President Trump had coined the phrase eight for eight: eight conflicts across three continents had, he claimed, been peacefully resolved in just eight months.

Set aside the fact that it is not the Norwegian government which awards Nobel peace prizes, has enough peace been achieved in the eight conflicts he cites in order to merit the award? To run through the report card: of the eight peace deals, three have held, three have not, and two were not exactly active conflicts to start with. The three that have held to date are the ones between Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, and Armenia and Azerbaijan. Breaches have since occurred in the deals between Thailand and Cambodia, Israel and Hamas, and Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Meanwhile, the “wars” between Egypt and Ethiopia and between Serbia and Kosovo weren’t exactly hot conflicts anyway at the time (2025). They are more like long running disputes with fundamentally entrenched matters to be tackled if genuine resolution is to be found.

Generally speaking, though, this report card marks a good enough outcome, and to have silenced a shooting match even for the time being is a positive step. However, in reality, the only one that looks in a more positive and secure place is the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Here, on 8 August 2025, both nations signed a joint declaration under US mediation, and initialled an agreement “On the Establishment of Peace and Interstate Relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan”. Signing and ratification of the full agreement are next, but matters have been peaceful since last year — no small thing for this 30-year conflict. One potential pitfall is an amendment to the Armenian constitution that would be required for the agreement to take effect. However, underscoring the value the US places on this peace process, Vice President JD Vance visited Armenia and Azerbaijan in early February 2026.

Aside from this, the issues between India and Pakistan, and Israel and Iran, are of course nowhere near settled for the long term. Both conflicts are heavily entrenched and have been rumbling across the course of many decades. The best we can say is that a ceasefire is presently holding — though if the US attacks Iran (a high probability at the time of writing), it is more than likely that Israel will be drawn into the conflict.

However, in defence of ceasefires, it is worth observing how much of a beating a ceasefire (or a less temporary peace agreement) can take before it is generally agreed to have collapsed. Often, the ideal that sits behind a deal setting out the terms of peace, or at least setting out a ceasefire, is more resilient than the cumulative effect of the pot-shots commonly taken at it following signing. In other words, the desire for success can be a powerful force holding peace together, particularly if the costs of collapse are considered high, or the exhaustion is mutual.

The counterpoint to this is that signed ceasefires (or even full peace deals) can sometimes be little more than the chance to hedge bets. They may be no more than a convenient pause in which to buy enough time to bring the respite needed to rearm and regroup, or rebuild morale. A ceasefire can offer a measure of stability without forward motion, with underlying grievances still festering.

Nonetheless, the breaches of the deals between Thailand and Cambodia, Israel and Hamas, and Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo since their respective settlements were trumpeted in July, October and December 2025 are insufficient to call them overall failures. What was addressed in last year’s deals were snapshots of wider and much longer conflicts, and it is perhaps unrealistic to expect complete closure to result. The longevity of these conflicts should indicate the amount of work required for a permanent settlement.

Any Nobel Peace Prize Committee will see clearly that there has been value in the work on all these situations. The fact is that stopping a conflict for the long term is an arduous task easily prone to backsliding. Durable conflict resolution does not tend to result from transactional engagement.

When you dig a little deeper into the US President’s “eight for eight”, a key point to emerge, then, is that permanent settlement is not a function of transactional deal-making as much as principled diplomacy. Only when the glare of publicity has died down and focus has moved on elsewhere does the real work begin. The conflicts in question are of a very long standing, many decades for each of them. This is the work of diplomats, not the rainmakers and dealmakers. Patience, persuasion, and relationship-building are required for addressing prolonged conflicts, providing the off-ramps and face-saving necessary to finally compromise with honesty and legitimacy.

Such diplomacy is distinct from Trump-style dealmaking, and has a better chance of leading to long term settlement. The President may not have earned his Nobel Prize yet, but bringing the parties to the table is a necessary and valuable first step to give the diplomats a chance.

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