Donald Trump believes he's the president
of peace. The man who has now brought an
end to six different conflicts.
>> I've ended six wars and I thought this
maybe would be the easiest one and it's
not the easiest one. It's it's a it's a
tough one.
>> With Trump seeming to believe he can
bring an end to the conflict in Ukraine.
His Republican supporters say he now
deserves the Nobel Peace Prize with the
White House agreeing, stating that it's
well past time he got the award. So,
does Trump deserve it? And has he
actually stopped six wars?
>> Who if not President Trump deserves the
Nobel Peace Prize. President Trump in
six months did miracle.
>> Well, the president of Azabaijan thinks
both that he will end his nation's
conflict with Armenia and is deserving
of the award. Trump sat between the
leaders of both nations as they signed a
joint peace declaration that looks set
to end a decadesl long conflict over the
region of Norno, Carabac. But the deal,
which hopes to reopen key transportation
routes, is still seen as just a first
step towards a future long-term
commitment to a peace treaty.
Back in late July, Thailand launched air
strikes against Cambodia as an old
conflict over a disputed border came to
the four once again. With thousands
fleeing as Cambodia retaliated, Trump
warned both nations that he wouldn't
agree to any trade deal with either of
them unless they stopped the fighting.
Trump's threat was credited with helping
to bring about a ceasefire just days
later.
Trump has also been nominated for the
Peace Prize for his role in some other
recent wars. The Pakistani government
said they put his name forward for the
prize because they said he helped bring
an end to their 4-day conflict with
India in May. But India's Prime Minister
Narendra Modi claimed that the US played
no role in the ceasefire. and he
reportedly told Trump that India will
never accept third-party mediation on
the long-standing issue of Kashmir.
And also just a day after Pakistan made
its nomination for Trump, they then
condemn the president for bombing Iran.
But if Trump lost Pakistani support over
his decision to attack Iran's nuclear
facilities, he gained the praise and a
nomination from Israel with Benjamin
Netanyahu showing Trump the letter he
had sent the Nobel Peace Prize
Committee. Uh, it's nominating you for
the peace prize, which is welld
deserved, and you should get it.
>> Thank you very much. This I didn't know.
>> The Israeli leader was commending Trump
for his role in bringing to an end the
12-day conflict between Israel and Iran.
While that ceasefire has held, Trump has
been pushing for a nuclear deal with
Thran yet to materialize.
Another conflict Trump has referred to
ending is the one between the Democratic
Republic of Congo and Rwanda. And after
the signing of a peace deal, Trump was
told that the president of the Congo was
considering nominating him for the Nobel
Prize.
But the M23 rebel group, which is a key
player in this conflict, was not part of
the agreement, and the war is still
going on. And the M23 recently walked
away from peace talks with the DRC
government. And the sixth and final war
was one that never actually took place.
Trump has said he stopped a potential
conflict between Serbia and Kosovo. But
again, there's disagreement here. The
president of Kosovo said Trump was right
and that Serbia was planning to attack
Kosovo in May until the US president got
involved. But Serbia's leader denied
they had any plans to attack their
neighbor. Those are the six conflicts
Trump has claimed to end.
>> Some with ceasefires that involve him
but are not all solely down to him and
some are conflicts that are not
definitively at an end. And that could
be because of how Trump does foreign
policy. Rather than months of work by
diplomats to negotiate a deal, Trump
likes to start off with a big signing
moment where he lords peace when in fact
a lot more work still needs to be done.
>> Maybe the risk is that you forget or
neglect some of the important details
and and this might be this why might
make the peace very vulnerable because
then one or another side can return,
hey, we didn't discuss this or that
detailed. But will any of this lead to a
peace prize for Trump? It was recently
reported that he called Norway's finance
minister, Yen Stolenberg, who's also the
former NATO secretary general,
completely out of the blue and asked him
about a nomination. Donald Trump has
long spoken about the peace prize, both
his desire for it and his belief that
the committee will never give it to him.
>> Do you deserve the Nobel Prize?
>> Everyone thinks so, but I would never
say it.
>> They won't give me a Nobel Peace, but I
was going to say only give it to
liberals. Perhaps his desire for the
prize stems in large part from Barack
Obama's win in 2009.
>> They gave it to Obama. He didn't even
know what he got it for. He was there
for about 15 seconds and he got the
Nobel Prize. He said, "Oh, what did I
get it for?"
>> But does any of Trump's work in recent
months or years warrant the prize? Well,
even his former rival from 2016, Hillary
Clinton, has said that if he could end
the war in Ukraine, should nominate him
for the prize, but only if he got
certain concessions for Ukraine. if he
could end it without putting Ukraine in
a position where it had to concede its
territory to the aggressor had to in a
way uh validate uh Putin's um vision of
greater Russia uh but instead uh could
really stand up to Putin, I'd nominate
him for a Nobel Peace Prize. With
regards to Ukraine, Trump's recent
meetings with Putin and then Zalinski
and European leaders offered some brief
hope that the start of the end might be
near, but that war still continues and
it's not clear whether a Putin and
Zilinski summit will happen soon or at
all. And again, both sides still have
many, many points to deliberate and
decide. work in progress currently and
it's too early to say what will be the
results but uh at at least uh President
Trump is pushing things to move on and
uh I think the important thing was that
he opened the communication link with
President Putin.
Let's not forget either that Trump
promised to not just end the Ukraine war
in one day, but the war in Gaza, too,
where the United Nations has just
confirmed there is famine in Gaza City,
as Israel approves new plans for an
assault on that very area. With more
than 500,000 civilians facing
starvation, destitution, and death, this
is a conflict that the president has not
focused on as much in recent weeks. His
support of the Israeli government in a
war that has claimed more than 60,000
lives means that Trump's critics can
argue the idea he should be awarded a
price for peace is a preposterous one.
Well, I'm going to talk now with Samir
Puri, the director of global governance
and security center at Chattam House. I
mean, firstly, Samir, what do you make
of Donald Trump's foreign policy so far
in the second term?
>> Well, it's actually been very activist.
uh it's been activist but primarily with
the US's interests in mind. It hasn't
really been activist with regards to the
betterment of others as the primary
motivation. It's also been principally
economic. That's the main lever Trump
has been pulling. It's been tariffs.
It's economic coercion. It's economic
rewards. Uh it hasn't really been very
militaristic aside from the bombing of
the Iranian nuclear uh uh sites. Uh but
overall I think it's a foreign policy
that's left the world in a very very
uncertain place especially US allies
which is probably the most strident and
striking outcome of the first six
months.
>> So when you hear Donald Trump talk about
these six wars that he's stopped and the
talk about a peace prize do you sort of
ignore that and think that's just
chatter?
It is probably one of the most egregious
expressions of Trump's ego, I think,
which is to place himself personally at
the center of world events. It's also
empirically quite contestable in terms
of the characterizations he's delivered
around actually kind of resolving and
ending wars. There's a big difference to
use a jargon between conflict management
and conflict resolution. He certainly
tried to manage some of these wars and
not all of that is unwelcome but in
terms of resolving the root causes
bringing uh different sides with
historical grievances to so that they
have a very stable lasting peaceful
future ahead of them which is kind of I
suppose the conflict resolution in its
purest form. He hasn't really done that
and a couple of the claims he's made
have actually been rebutted by some of
the parties involved notably India
Pakistan. India was very annoying at the
Indian government that he claimed to
have mediated an end to that particular
round of fighting.
>> So he's really a man who sort of
temporarily put some brief skirmishes to
a pause, but it's not really anything
longterm.
Yeah. And listen, there's nothing wrong
with conflict management that tries to
uh bring a particularly active phase of
fighting to a period of dormcancy. And I
would say, and let's be very fair to
Trump here, there isn't really much of a
precedent for US presidents to intervene
in the Gorno Caribach. That was Armenia,
Azabaijan, traditionally the realm of
the the the Russians. Nor has there been
much precedent for US presidents to
intervene in the DRC and Rwanda
conflict, which was for about 10 years
or so partially managed by UN
peacekeeping mission. So, it's actually
not unwelcome that these conflicts might
receive the attention of the US
president and the White House. But then
again, I think a lot of this will stand
and fall on how his o his overtures
towards Putin and Zalinski actually play
out in the coming weeks and months with
regards to Ukraine. The Nobel Peace
Prize is of course, you know, it's
centered in Europe and this is Europe's
huge big war, the biggest war since
1945, and Trump has st an enormous
amount of his personal prestige on
bringing it to an end. The prospects of
which don't look particularly strong at
the moment with regards to Russia and
Ukraine. Is that the issue here with
Donald Trump is that he likes the optics
but it gets bored by the details?
>> That is certainly one of the issues
that's very very prevalent in the
Ukraine uh attempt to to bring that one
to an end. Uh there's a big difference
between the summit, the great photo op
where leaders shake hands and all the
sort of the working level hard work that
goes into going through the
technicalities of things. There's all
sorts of issues in conflicts, hostage
exchanges, territorial uh final uh sort
of status, uh whe whether there's a
ceasefire that's sequenced in terms of
withdrawal of military forces, so on and
so forth. But I think the detail
obviously probably bores Donald Trump.
Uh the extent to which he and Witco uh
who's one of his most important point
people on these these conflicts actually
that Witkoff understands these
technicalities and that conflict
resolution is a very very difficult road
a very long journey. Uh and just one
example from you know closer to home
think about Northern Ireland with the
Good Friday Agreement. how long that was
uh that took to negotiate, how many
issues that came out from that, how
delicate that piece has remained uh
having to weather the storm of Brexit
and everything else in recent years. And
that's a small conflict in a fairly
contained geography, not necessarily in
a sort of a difficult g geopolitical
neighborhood. And so you compare the the
painstaking process is involved to bring
waring parties, waring communities to
dialogue, bring their political leaders
to to sign an agreement to deescalate
the conflict and to maintain that. That
takes an enormous degree of patience and
it doesn't appear that patience is a is
a quality that Donald Trump has in
abundance.
>> Donald Trump has at least when it comes
to Ukraine got the ball rolling. His
supporters would argue he's done more
than perhaps Barack Obama.
Just re recapping here from decade ago.
Barack Obama I think the world breathed
a sigh of relief following the George W.
Bush presidency which was obviously very
militaristic involving regime change
invasions and military interventions
after 9/11. But Barack Obama did largely
escalate the US war in Afghanistan at
that time to try to bring it to an end
and that didn't work. Fast forwarding,
you know, to today to Donald Trump.
Listen, let's let's judge his White
House and and his work by its outcomes.
I I would keep an open mind with regards
to Russia Ukraine. I don't think the
chances are good that the Trump uh sort
of overches to either side are going to
result in any kind of durable peace
deal. But there is still an ongoing
process. Previous presidents were much
more gung-ho and uh the idea that
Republican presidents use military
intervention even Ronald Reagan in more
limited circumstances uh Grenada and
other places. Donald Trump has a to his
credit seems like a genuine aversion to
warfare. He doesn't seem to have he
doesn't seem to locate any sort of valor
or heroism or sort of extension of his
ego through the use of US military
force. And I think that's why the US
bombing of those Iranian nuclear sites
is very much the exception that proves
that particular rule. It's also very
much an arms length military
intervention using air power uh and
cruise missiles so that you're not
getting your the US military is not
getting its hands dirty with boots on
the ground. So just just finally, if
Donald Trump, as you say, is very
concerned about his legacy,
how much do you think that should be
used by those
leaders uh around the world when they're
trying to pressure Trump to get peace in
Ukraine and even peace
uh an end to the conflict within Gaza.
um in some respects you do wonder
whether uh being set a goal uh very
clear uh to be awarded Nobel Peace Prize
um could actually spur him on but I I
don't it's not going to work necessarily
like that and I I think the the issue is
that u Ukraine Russia is the most
economically destabilizing conflict in
all these for for more parts of the
world I think Israel Gaza is is the more
morally hurtful one for the the larger
share of the global population and I
think there's an interesting
issue here which is which conflict do
you place the greatest priority for
resolving uh and I think obviously that
that depends on who you ask where you
look around the world um but I don't
think the Nobel Prize could necessarily
be wielded as a as an incentive like a
KPI uh you know you fulfill these sort
of things in your your annual appraisal
report in your job and you may be
rewarded this particular employee of the
month I don't think we can quite use
Nobel prize in that way
>> puri thank you very much for your time
thank you
>> thank