Rachael Jolley, International Affairs Editor, The Conversation, Sam Phelps, Commissioning Editor, International Affairs, The Conversation
The US president, Donald Trump, claims to have “solved six wars in six months”. To work out if there was any substance to his claims, The Conversation international affairs editors Sam Phelps and Rachael Jolley interviewed six academic experts on those regions to find out what Trump actually did, and whether it made a difference.
India-Pakistan armed conflict in May 2025
Natasha Lindstaedt, a professor in government at the University of Essex, said that Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have both claimed that they were able to broker some kind of peace deal between India and Pakistan, and that the US got directly involved in delivering peace.
“But this has been denied by India and Pakistan. They’ve rejected it, and they claim that it was resolved between themselves. We don’t have any way of really verifying it.”
India and Pakistan don’t tend to agree on a lot, but they tend to agree on the idea that Trump was not the reason for some kind of end of hostilities on May 10, and that it was reached bilaterally with no third party intervention, she said.
They were very clear that they reached an agreement on May 7 with no third party intervention, she said.
She added: “Trump sees himself as a peacemaker, a deal maker. This is part of his identity, and he’s leaning into this, hoping that people are going to believe it.”
Verdict: Trump’s claim doesn’t stand up
Thailand-Cambodia border dispute in July 2025
Petra Alderman, manager of the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, said Trump’s intervention in the Thailand-Cambodia conflict helped push the two countries towards a ceasefire. But, in her view, long-term prospects for peace are by no means guaranteed.
“This is a multi-layered conflict that combines territorial, nationalist and dynastic grievances. At its heart is a colonial legacy of disputed border territories that have historical significance to both countries and have been used to stoke nationalist sentiments in Cambodia as well as Thailand.”
Alderman said Thailand was initially resistant to any mediation of the conflict that claimed more than 33 lives in four days and saw hundreds of thousands of people displaced. The breakthrough came when Trump phoned leaders of both countries, effectively threatening a suspension of trade talks.
“As both countries have export-dependent economies, neither could have afforded Trump’s ‘liberation day’ tariffs. Securing a trade deal with the US took precedence over the border conflict but did nothing to resolve its root causes. Future flare-ups are still possible.”
Verdict: Trump’s claim stands up (for now)
DRC and Rwanda’s long-running conflict
Jonathan Beloff, a postdoctoral researcher at the department of war studies at King’s College London, said the US-brokered peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ignores the history of the two countries.
Beloff argued Trump’s claim that the agreement ends 30 years of fighting is historically inaccurate. After the end of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans fled into eastern DRC. The refugees included elements of the genocide regime who wanted to finish their genocide.
This led to the first Congo war (1996-97) and second Congo war (1998-2003). And while these wars have now finished, the DRC remains fractured with over 120 rebel groups. “However, there have been periods of friendlier relations between the two countries. Thus, the Congolese situation should not be seen as a single war but instead as several conflicts.”
A lack of governance and proper economic strategies in the DRC, Beloff added, is also a breeding ground for rebel forces. The agreement provides scant details about how to address these issues, which led to a recent breakdown in the Congolese negotiations with the M23 rebel group.
“Fundamentally, Rwanda and the DRC were willing to have this relatively vague agreement to appease Trump, with at least the Rwandans sceptical of whether the Congolese will honour it. He did not end the war, but at best stalled the conflict for now.”
Verdict: Trump’s claim is overblown
Kosovo-Serbia conflict averted in summer 2025
Stefan Wolff, a professor of international security at the University of Birmingham, said there have long been regional tensions between Kosovo and Serbia. “Tensions have recently escalated again, so it’s far from a resolved situation.”
But, he said, there was no indication either now, or in 2020 when Trump or his envoy, Richard Grenell, brokered the so-called Washington agreement, of any real danger of violent escalation of the kind seen back in the 1990s when a war broke out between the former Yugoslav republics. But overall, he added, none of the underlying issues between the two countries had yet been resolved.
“Serbia still has a lot of domestic problems, which goes back to the collapse of the train station of Novi Sad and massive student protests and the heavy-handed crackdown by the Serbian government.” So, he added, there were still a lot of different moving pieces in the region.
Wolff felt that it was impossible to independently verify if Trump had done anything significant in 2025 to deescalate any kind of emerging conflict between Kosovo and Serbia. However, “it is true that he did get an agreement on the normalisation of economic relations between Kosovo and Serbia back in 2020”.
Trump signed bilateral agreements between the US and Kosovo and between the US and Serbia, which it was hoped to lead “economic normalisation” between the two Balkan states as well as increased religious freedoms and restitution of property.
Wolff added: “If there really was something significant [in 2025], there would be more evidence.”
Verdict: the significance of any intervention is unclear
Armenia and Azerbaijan’s 35-year conflict
Ayla Göl, a senior lecturer in international relations at York St. John University, said the US-brokered peace framework between Azerbaijan and Armenia in early August marks a historic milestone in this 35-year conflict.
“On paper, the draft deal offers a clear path to improved relations. But it has no concrete plan for the return of the over 100,000 Armenians who fled Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023.”
Göl added that demands by Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, for amendments to the Armenian constitution to “eliminate territorial claims against Azerbaijan” could strengthen the Armenian opposition and derail the peace process.
The peace framework also includes a pact to develop a transit corridor through Armenia, connecting Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan. The US will be given exclusive rights to develop the route, which will be known as the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, for “up to 99 years”. This is a double-edged sword, says Göl.
“The Trump route could strengthen American security commitments in the region or create new geopolitical competition. It could, for instance, strain Armenia’s relations with neighbouring Iran, which views the transit corridor as a strategic threat.”
Verdict: peace deal not yet signed, but it’s a start
Israel-Iran conflict summer 2025
Scott Lucas, a professor of international politics at University College Dublin, said that the question of who ended the Iran-Israel conflict, which began in June 2025, should also be considered in terms of how it started.
“The fact of the matter is that when the Israelis attacked Iran, they effectively sidelined the US-Iran negotiations, which were ongoing. At that point, the Trump administration didn’t object to the fact that their attempt to deal with Iran’s nuclear programme had been completely undone by the Israeli assault. So to simply say that Trump ended the war between Israel and Iran ignores the whole 12 days and how that occurred.”
That Trump intervention, in which he told Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to limit the strikes, came only after the Iranians and Qatar and the French had all been involved in trying to deescalate the conflict. “So you can’t claim credit for ending a war when you helped escalate that war in the first place,” said Lucas.
He added: “The Iranian regime didn’t want a war with Israel, and right now they certainly do not want to go into confrontation with Israel. They’re trying to regroup after a series of effective defeats for their position in the region, in Lebanon, in Syria, and to an extent in Iraq. So they’re not spoiling for a fight, and they’ve got serious domestic issues that are going to occupy them. The open question here is whether Netanyahu would go back and launch another attack on the Iranians.”
Verdict: An earlier Trump intervention could have avoided conflict
Overall, while clearly Donald Trump’s second administration has achieved some positive results on the international stage, the US president’s claim to have solved six conflicts in six months does not fully stand up.
