When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

What if the United States isn’t ending wars, just interrupting them?

Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump — who has repeatedly described himself as a “President of Peace” — has intervened to halt conflicts across multiple crisis theaters. From Gaza and the Israel–Iran confrontation to Ukraine, the India–Pakistan conflict, and Southeast Asia’s Thailand–Cambodia border, U.S. diplomatic pressure helped impose ceasefires, halt escalation, and stabilize front lines. At the same time, the United States conducted hundreds of air and missile strikes across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and beyond, underscoring a striking paradox at the heart of Trump-era statecraft: a presidency that claims to end wars while relying heavily on coercive force to manage them. In each of these theaters, violence was paused, not resolved. Ceasefires held temporarily — political settlements did not.

This pattern raises a central puzzle. Why has U.S.-led crisis diplomacy proven increasingly effective at stopping wars in the short term, yet persistently incapable of ending them? The answer lies not in diplomatic incompetence or insufficient pressure, but in the changing objectives and limits of American statecraft itself. Ceasefires are no longer treated primarily as bridges to political settlement. They function instead as instruments of escalation management — mechanisms to contain risk, limit spillover, and restore short-term stability without confronting underlying long-term political contradictions.

Classical conflict resolution assumes that halting violence creates space for negotiation, legitimacy-building, and compromise. But many of today’s conflicts lack mutually acceptable end-states. Core issues — territory, sovereignty, regime survival, identity, and regional security hierarchies — remain fundamentally zero-sum. In such environments, even overwhelming external pressure can compel restraint without producing consent. Ceasefires emerge as tactical pauses imposed under duress, not political agreements rooted in shared incentives.

This distinction matters. As Johan Galtung famously argued, negative peace — the absence of active fighting — can be imposed externally through leverage, coercion, and crisis mediation. By contrast, positive peace — the reconfiguration of political, security, and economic relationships that makes renewed violence unattractive — requires legitimacy, consent, and structural change. The gap between the two has widened. The United States has become increasingly capable of enforcing the former while remaining unable, or unwilling, to produce the latter.

Trump-era diplomacy illustrates these tensions with unusual clarity. In cases ranging from Gaza, Israel–Iran, India–Pakistan, Thailand–Cambodia, and Russia–Ukraine, Washington has relied on diplomatic pressure, military signaling, economic threats, and crisis bargaining to impose pauses in violence. These interventions reduced immediate harm and lowered escalation risks, but they consistently avoided the deeper political work of reconciliation and settlement.

The result was not war termination but a model of crisis management in which ceasefires substituted for political settlement. By prioritizing escalation control over resolving the underlying bargaining failures that drive conflict, this approach suppressed violence without transforming the political conditions necessary for durable peace. The cases that follow show why claims of war ending under this self-styled “President of Peace” have proven difficult to sustain.

If U.S.-led crisis diplomacy has become adept at enforcing negative peace, the unresolved question is whether — and how — it can move beyond managing wars. Linking ceasefires to political pathways, applying leverage early on, and investing in political capacity could all help enable the conditions required for positive peace.

Gaza: Ceasefire as Containment, Not Comprehensive Settlement

Israel’s war on Gaza since October 2023 illustrates the limits of externally imposed restraint absent political transformation. Successive pauses in fighting — brokered under intense international pressure — temporarily reduced civilian harm and prevented regional spillovers, yet failed to alter the strategic logic driving the war. Ceasefires functioned as instruments of containment rather than steps toward settlement.

For Israel, military operations in Gaza were framed as necessary to reassert deterrence, degrade Hamas’s operational capacity, and restore credibility after the failure to prevent the Oct. 7 surprise attack. Israeli military officials cited the targeting of senior Hamas figures such as Yahya Sinwar, sustained strikes on Hamas’s tunnel infrastructure, and operations against affiliated networks beyond Gaza — including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi targets in Yemen — as evidence of restored deterrence.

Tactical pauses were tolerated by Israel to manage humanitarian pressure and international scrutiny, but they did not signal a willingness to revisit the underlying political question of Gaza’s governance or Palestinian statehood. For Hamas, survival itself constituted strategic success. Ceasefires allowed regrouping, preserved leadership structures, and reinforced its claim to relevance as a resistance actor, even amid devastating losses.

U.S. diplomacy proved effective in managing escalation but limited in scope. Washington leveraged military support, diplomatic cover, and regional relationships — including through frameworks such as the administration’s 20-point Gaza peace plan — to constrain Israel’s operations at critical moments and prevent the conflict from triggering a wider regional war. Yet it avoided articulating or enforcing a political end state and declined to use its leverage to drive conflict resolution beyond the immediate pause. The emphasis remained on timing, sequencing, and de-escalation, while the “day after” — Gaza’s political status, security arrangements, and reconstruction governance — was deliberately deferred.

The result was a cycle of suspended violence without altered incentives. Humanitarian pauses reduced immediate suffering for Gaza’s civilians but did not generate political momentum for a credible settlement. Temporary ceasefires lacked enforcement mechanisms, post-conflict frameworks, or credible pathways toward a durable security and governance arrangement. Each pause therefore contained the seeds of its own collapse.

Israel–Iran: Escalation Control Without Strategic Resolution

The Israel–Iran confrontation illustrates the widening gap between escalation control and political resolution in contemporary U.S. diplomacy. During the 12-day war, Washington moved beyond crisis management to direct participation, conducting coordinated strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities while simultaneously working to prevent the conflict from widening into a regional war. The resulting pause reflected effective escalation control — but not strategic settlement.

U.S. military action marked a clear inflection point. Strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure, carried out in coordination with Israeli operations, demonstrated Washington’s willingness to employ force to enforce red lines and shape the conflict’s upper limits. These attacks reassured regional partners and imposed tangible costs on Iran’s nuclear program, yet they were deliberately calibrated to avoid regime-threatening escalation. Force was used to punish and deter, not to compel political transformation.

Iran’s response reinforced this logic of managed confrontation. Tehran absorbed U.S. and Israeli strikes while preserving strategic ambiguity over its nuclear capabilities and retaliated through carefully calibrated actions, including an attack on the Al Udeid U.S. airbase in Qatar. Prior notification to Washington signaled an intent to restore deterrence without widening the war. For Iran, endurance and ambiguity — not escalation dominance — defined success.

Crucially, the post-conflict diplomacy reinforces this pattern. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s engagement with Trump in Florida in December, his fifth visit to the United States in 2025 — where Iran reportedly topped the agenda — signals that the confrontation remains unresolved. Rather than consolidating a political settlement or reimposing durable nuclear constraints, U.S. diplomacy has prioritized risk management and calibrated pressure — reflecting an approach that contains crises without resolving them.

India–Pakistan: Punitive Deterrence, External Claims, and Unresolved War Conditions

The India–Pakistan crisis following the April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack illustrates the widening gap between crisis interruption and conflict resolution. After the attack, India launched Operation Sindoor, a limited but forceful campaign of precision strikes against terrorist infrastructure identified by India in Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir. According to Indian officials, the operation concluded once its limited military aims — deterrence signaling and escalation control, however risky — were assessed to have been achieved. Fighting stopped, but the operational and political conditions that made renewed war likely remain intact.

Trump repeatedly claimed credit for ending the conflict, portraying U.S. intervention as decisive mediation. Yet this narrative obscures the actual dynamics on the ground. Washington’s role was confined to crisis communication and restraint signaling, not to structuring a ceasefire framework or brokering political compromise. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made clear that the cessation followed bilateral military-to-military contact after Pakistan’s military chief approached his Indian counterpart.

Crucially, India’s post-crisis behavior underscored the absence of reconciliation. New Delhi did not reverse its punitive measures — it institutionalized them. The suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty, complete closure of the Attari–Wagah crossing, cancellation of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Visa Exemption Scheme, expulsion of Pakistani military advisers, and reduction of diplomatic staff signaled a strategic shift: Terrorism would now trigger sustained systemic costs, not merely episodic retaliation. These measures hardened the crisis environment rather than stabilizing it.

Thailand–Cambodia: Externally Brokered Pauses, Internally Unresolved Conflict

The Thailand–Cambodia border conflict underscores the limits of externally imposed ceasefires in disputes where political and military calculations remain misaligned. Fighting escalated sharply in late May following the killing of a Cambodian soldier along the disputed frontier, culminating in tit-for-tat clashes and airstrikes in July. A ceasefire brokered under U.S. and Malaysian pressure temporarily halted hostilities, but it failed to produce durable stabilization.

The agreement reflected urgency rather than settlement. The ceasefire coincided with Trump’s regional visit, compressing diplomatic timelines and prioritizing political signaling over process. Absent clear sequencing, enforcement mechanisms, or sustained military buy-in, the arrangement halted fighting without reconciling competing threat perceptions or stabilizing command and control dynamics along the 800-kilometer border.

By early December last year, fighting resumed. Artillery exchanges and air strikes displaced nearly one million people and killed dozens, with both sides accusing the other of violations. The breakdown exposed the ceasefire’s core weakness: It managed symptoms while leaving underlying drivers — contested colonial-era demarcations, nationalist mobilization, and reciprocal militarization — untouched.

Subsequent diplomacy has focused on stabilization rather than settlement. Following a 72-hour ceasefire brokered after weeks of fighting, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — alongside U.S. and Chinese mediation — has emphasized restraint and de-escalation, but discussions remain confined to tactical deconfliction. The political dispute itself remains deferred.

Ukraine–Russia: Peace Through Strength, Consent Without Settlement

The U.S.-led diplomatic push on Ukraine represents the most ambitious contemporary attempt to convert battlefield leverage into political settlement. Draft peace proposals — featuring demilitarized zones, personnel caps, security guarantees, election provisions, and contested territorial arrangements — signal an effort to translate coercive pressure into an enforceable end state. Yet the initiative remains structurally fragile, not because leverage is absent, but because consent remains elusive despite devastating losses on both sides.

For Ukraine, territorial concessions remain politically radioactive, threatening domestic legitimacy and regime stability. Even proposals offering enhanced military capacity, long-term Western security guarantees, and expanded training and arms transfers confront hard limits imposed by national identity and public sacrifice. A ceasefire that formalizes territorial loss risks being perceived as capitulation, regardless of strategic compensation.

For Russia, meaningful compromise remains strategically improbable. Moscow’s battlefield posture, manpower generation, and tolerance for economic strain suggest confidence in long-term coercion. Negotiations serve tactical purposes — managing relations with Washington, delaying sanctions, and shaping attribution of blame — rather than signaling readiness to accept an outcome that secures Ukraine’s sovereignty or locks in Western alignment. High-level engagements, including the extended Trump–Zelensky meeting in Florida in December last year, underscore these limits. While dialogue deepened, Zelensky’s presentation of a 20-point peace plan — encompassing security guarantees, force caps, and managed territorial arrangements —did little to clarify whether core political obstacles had narrowed. Key questions remain unresolved: the credibility of external security guarantees, the acceptability of territorial outcomes to Ukraine, and Russia’s willingness to consent to any settlement short of its maximal aims. The talks reinforced the gap between the diplomatic process and political convergence.

A New U.S. Doctrine? Crisis Management Over Conflict Resolution

The newly released U.S. National Security Strategy codifies the logic evident across these cases. It prioritizes deterrence, rapid response, force posture, and escalation control while largely sidestepping pathways to political settlement. Stabilization replaces transformation — risk management substitutes for resolution. Conflict is treated as a condition to be contained rather than a problem to be solved.

Rather than articulating end states, the strategy emphasizes preventing deterioration — holding lines, shaping adversary behavior, and buying time. This reflects an implicit assessment that many contemporary conflicts are structurally irresolvable in the near term, given incompatible political objectives and eroded legitimacy. The role of U.S. power, therefore, is to prevent collapse and regional spillover, not to engineer peace.

Recent diplomatic behavior aligns with this posture. From Ukraine to Gaza, from South Asia to Southeast Asia, and even in the Western Hemisphere — through actions such as the kidnapping of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and seizure and subsequent return of Venezuelan vessels — Washington has shown growing capacity to impose outcomes at the point of crisis, but far less willingness to grapple with the political settlement that follows. These interventions function less as pathways to conflict resolution than as instruments of coercion and risk management.

Crisis Diplomacy Is Necessary — But Not Sufficient

Therefore, U.S.-led crisis diplomacy has proven effective at halting violence and preventing escalation, but its success has been narrowly defined. Across these cases, ceasefires delivered at most negative peace — the temporary suppression of fighting — without generating the political settlement, legitimacy, or institutional change required for durable resolution.

Seen in this light, the limits of recent diplomacy become clearer. In Gaza, restraint substituted for decisions about postwar governance. In the Israel–Iran confrontation, deterrence substituted for movement toward settlement. In Ukraine, leverage outpaced consent. In South and Southeast Asia, pauses held without reconciliation. What emerged were tactical intermissions imposed under external pressure, not pathways toward positive peace, which would require reconfigured political relationships and accepted end-states.

This pattern reflects not diplomatic failure so much as doctrinal realism. Many contemporary conflicts lack mutually acceptable end-states, and U.S. policymakers increasingly operate on the assumption that political transformation is neither feasible nor worth the cost. Crisis diplomacy, in this sense, is doing exactly what it is designed to do: containing wars and limiting spillovers, not resolving the conflicts that produce them.

The consequence, however, is a world in which wars increasingly “end” without ending. Ceasefires freeze violence without resolving it, stabilizing conflicts at higher levels of risk and leaving recurrence built into their foundations. Until political incentives change — and legitimacy, security, and governance are addressed — claims of war termination will continue to outpace reality. Peace, in this framework, is not achieved: it is postponed.

From Crisis Management to Positive Peace

If the United States were serious about moving beyond negative peace, it would need to rethink how crisis diplomacy is used. Three shifts would matter most.

First, ceasefires would need to be explicitly linked to political pathways and a “day after” planned for, however imperfect — using diplomatic cover, reconstruction aid, or sanctions relief to incentivize incremental steps toward governance, security arrangements, or negotiations.

Second, Washington would need to apply leverage earlier and more visibly, signaling in advance how military assistance, economic access, and diplomatic protection will change if parties obstruct political transition or settlement. Leverage reserved solely for stopping violence rarely reshapes postwar incentives.

Third, the United States would need to invest in political capacity, not just stabilization —supporting interim governance, security institutions, and economic frameworks capable of sustaining restraint once fighting stops.

While none of this guarantees durable peace, without these shifts, U.S. diplomacy will remain effective at halting wars while leaving the political conditions that sustain them largely intact —producing pauses without peace.

Gopi Krishna Bhamidipati is a scholar of international relations and a non-resident senior fellow at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington, D.C. He holds a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech and specializes in Middle East geopolitics and India’s foreign policy.

Image: The White House via Wikimedia Commons