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Recently, U.S. President Donald Trump's foreign policy agenda has exhibited a marked bifurcation.On one hand, he has actively intervened to mediate disputes between India and Pakistan and between Thailand and Cambodia. He facilitated a peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. And he helped broker an understanding between Armenia and Azerbaijan.These efforts prompted several of the countries involved to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.On the other hand, the United States has undertaken virtually no substantive action with respect to Gaza. Amid widespread international condemnation, Washington has largely turned a blind eye to the Benjamin Netanyahu government's intensifying military campaign in Gaza, which has produced a severe humanitarian crisis that many analysts characterize as de facto genocide against the Palestinian population.At present, global attention is centered on the Russia-Ukraine war. Following a series of diplomatic setbacks, Trump's mediation efforts have taken a dramatic turn: He held a one-on-one summit with Vladimir Putin aimed at resolving the conflict, which has dragged on for more than three years.
While attempting to mediate the active “hot wars,” Trump has simultaneously initiated another form of global conflict — a large-scale tariff war. The contest began the moment he assumed office and has since expanded with unprecedented speed and scope. What started as a handful of executive orders targeting a few countries escalated by April 2 into the so-called Liberation Day tariffs (reciprocal tariffs), affecting nearly 100 countries and regions. Average U.S. tariff rates have risen to levels not seen since the 1930s, contributing to higher domestic consumer prices and significant disruptions to the global trading system. The broader process of globalization has been deeply shaken, with many bilateral and regional trade relationships undergoing fundamental restructuring.
As of mid-August, although Washington has nominally reached understandings with key partners such as the European Union, Japan and South Korea — and has partially suspended reciprocal tariff increases with China — the tariff war is far from over. Indeed, it may spill over into other domains, potentially evolving into novel forms of conflict in areas such as finance and currency policy.
This dual-track approach — provoking disputes and enabling crises on the one hand while pushing for negotiations and peace on the other — raises a fundamental question: What, precisely, is Trump seeking? If the objective is the Nobel Peace Prize, the contradictions are glaring. As of August 8, more than 60,000 civilians have died in Gaza. Many analysts contend that the scale of the tragedy approaches the threshold of genocide. The occurrence of such atrocities in the 21st century constitutes a profound setback for human civilization, one that diplomatic successes elsewhere cannot obscure.
Meanwhile, the tariff war has emerged as a momentous historical development. While some domestic supporters argue that it has strengthened the U.S. economy and fostered more balanced trade relations, a larger chorus of critics contends that it has generated widespread disruption. The systemic damage to globalization may take decades to repair. Some even argue that the negative impact of Trump's tariff war is comparable to that of a global conventional war.
Trump does not approach the grave issues of war and peace from a deeply or structurally informed perspective, nor does he make decisions on the basis of any settled doctrine. Consequently, it is difficult for observers to distill from his conduct a coherent set of principles. His mediation efforts tend to leave the root causes of conflict unaddressed, moving instead directly to the price-setting phase of cease-fire negotiations.In genuine crises, he has not exhibited the steadiness traditionally expected of statesmen. Although Trump reduced the internal turmoil of his first term by consolidating his team, and although loyal, professional aides have sought to repackage and refine controversial policies (partially offsetting the negative effects of his lack of conviction), they have not altered the fundamentals.
Trump's limited peace achievements in cases such as the India-Pakistan and Thailand-Cambodia issues likely reflect the parties' own reluctance to descend into protracted conflict. Peace was relatively low-hanging fruit and was attainable through pressure and deal-making. By contrast, Trump's repeated setbacks on the Russia-Ukraine situation stem from the conflict's deep historical accumulation and intrinsic complexity, which resist simple transactional solutions.
The tariff war did not escalate irreversibly largely because many of America's counterparts regarded it as a historical aberration — a departure from established patterns. To avoid destroying the infrastructure of globalization and to preserve space for future development, most countries adopted strategies of restraint and forbearance, refraining from escalatory countermeasures.
In practice, Trump is less engaged in choosing between war and peace than in trading off gains and costs, self-regard and inconvenience — a calculus consistent with his business background and experience as a producer of reality television. For him, the staging of peacemaking often matters more than peace itself, taking the form of backdrops, signing ceremonies, news conferences and punchy comments and images on social media, rather than the long-term stability that only decades of rebuilding trust and order can secure.All of this constitutes the Trump-era logic of war and peace: He conceptualizes international conflicts as negotiable assets subject to pricing mechanisms. By bypassing multilateral institutions and privileging direct, transactional engagement between strongman leaders, he is seeking to compress the timelines of conflict resolution and secure tangible outcomes within a single term. In the short run, this strategy can yield ostensibly impressive diplomatic results, but its long-term sustainability remains deeply uncertain.
Of course, the Nobel Peace Prize is not necessarily awarded to those who have made the most substantive contributions to peace. The prize itself carries a pronounced ideological valence, or emotional effect. Four U.S. presidents — Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama — have received it, though not all have met with universal acclaim.It would therefore not be inconceivable that the prize could be conferred upon Trump. At present, he appears increasingly impatient, and his team seems to recognize as much. A recent post on the White House's social media accounts proclaimed that “the world is calling for the Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded to Donald Trump,” a self-serving effort to build momentum in advance.
