The administration of President Donald Trump is increasingly defined by a paradox: claiming to be a force for peace while simultaneously authorizing hundreds of military strikes across the globe. While U.S. Diplomatic interventions have demonstrably halted escalations in several conflict zones – from the Middle East to South Asia and Eastern Europe – these pauses have consistently failed to yield lasting political settlements, raising questions about the evolving objectives and limitations of American statecraft.
Since returning to office, President Trump has repeatedly described himself as a “President of Peace,” and his administration has intervened to halt conflicts in areas including Gaza, the confrontation between Israel and Iran, Ukraine, the India-Pakistan border region, and along the Thailand-Cambodia frontier. However, these interventions, while temporarily stabilizing front lines, have not resolved the underlying political issues driving the conflicts. Instead, ceasefires are increasingly treated as mechanisms for managing escalation rather than bridges to comprehensive peace agreements.
This shift reflects a changing understanding of conflict resolution. Classical approaches assumed that halting violence would create space for negotiation and compromise. However, many contemporary conflicts lack mutually acceptable end-states, with core issues – territory, sovereignty, and regime survival – remaining fundamentally zero-sum. In such environments, external pressure can compel restraint without generating genuine consent. Ceasefires, often emerge as tactical pauses imposed under duress, rather than agreements rooted in shared incentives.
The distinction between negative peace – the absence of active fighting – and positive peace – the reconfiguration of political and economic relationships to make renewed violence unattractive – has become increasingly pronounced. The United States has become adept at enforcing negative peace through coercion and crisis mediation, but less capable or willing to produce the conditions for positive peace.
Gaza: Containment Over Comprehensive Settlement
The recent conflict in Gaza exemplifies this trend. Successive pauses in fighting, brokered under international pressure, temporarily reduced civilian harm and prevented regional spillover, but failed to alter the strategic dynamics. Israel framed its military operations as necessary to reassert deterrence and degrade Hamas’s capabilities, while Hamas viewed survival as a strategic success. Ceasefires functioned as instruments of containment, allowing both sides to regroup without addressing the fundamental political questions of Gaza’s governance or Palestinian statehood.
U.S. Diplomacy focused on managing escalation, leveraging military support and diplomatic cover to constrain Israel’s operations and prevent a wider regional war. However, Washington avoided articulating or enforcing a political end-state, deferring discussions about the “day after” – Gaza’s political status and security arrangements. This resulted in a cycle of suspended violence without altered incentives, with humanitarian pauses failing to generate political momentum for a durable settlement.
Israel-Iran: Escalation Control Without Strategic Resolution
The confrontation between Israel and Iran further illustrates this pattern. U.S. Military action, including coordinated strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, demonstrated a willingness to enforce red lines and shape the conflict’s upper limits. However, these strikes were deliberately calibrated to avoid regime-threatening escalation. Iran responded with carefully calibrated actions, signaling a desire to restore deterrence without widening the war. The resulting pause reflected effective escalation control, but not strategic settlement.
Subsequent diplomacy, including a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump in December , underscored the lack of a comprehensive resolution. The focus remained on risk management and calibrated pressure, rather than on addressing the underlying political issues.
India-Pakistan: Punitive Deterrence and Unresolved Conditions
Following a terror attack in Pahalgam in April , India launched Operation Sindoor, a limited military campaign against terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir. A ceasefire followed, but India subsequently implemented punitive measures – suspending the Indus Waters Treaty, closing the Attari-Wagah border crossing, and expelling Pakistani military advisors – signaling a shift towards sustained systemic costs for terrorism. These measures hardened the crisis environment rather than stabilizing it.
Thailand-Cambodia: Externally Brokered Pauses, Internally Unresolved Conflict
The Thailand-Cambodia border conflict demonstrates the limits of externally imposed ceasefires in disputes where political and military calculations remain misaligned. A ceasefire brokered under U.S. And Malaysian pressure temporarily halted hostilities, but failed to produce durable stabilization. Fighting resumed in December , exposing the ceasefire’s core weakness: it managed symptoms without addressing the underlying drivers of the conflict, such as contested territorial claims and nationalist mobilization.
Ukraine-Russia: Leverage Outpacing Consent
The U.S.-led diplomatic push on Ukraine represents the most ambitious attempt to translate battlefield leverage into a political settlement. Draft proposals featuring demilitarized zones, security guarantees, and territorial arrangements have been put forward, but the initiative remains fragile. Ukraine is reluctant to concede territory, while Russia shows limited willingness to accept a settlement short of its maximal aims. The talks, including an extended meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky in Florida in December , have not narrowed the core political obstacles.
A New U.S. Doctrine?
The recently released U.S. National Security Strategy codifies this approach, prioritizing deterrence, rapid response, and escalation control over conflict resolution. This reflects an assessment that many contemporary conflicts are structurally irresolvable in the near term, and that U.S. Power should focus on containing wars and limiting spillovers, rather than on engineering peace.
While crisis diplomacy is necessary, it is not sufficient. To move beyond negative peace, the United States would need to explicitly link ceasefires to political pathways, apply leverage earlier and more visibly, and invest in political capacity-building. Without these shifts, U.S. Diplomacy will remain effective at halting wars while leaving the conditions that sustain them largely intact – producing pauses without peace.
