Trump’s Peace Policies: Effectiveness and Global Relevance – Expert Review by Dr. Pothireddy Surendranath Reddy 

Analysis by Dr. Pothireddy Surendranath Reddy

Introduction
Evaluating any president’s foreign-policy legacy requires separating headline moments from structural effects. Donald J. Trump’s approach to “peace” — a mixture of high-visibility summitry, transactional agreements, and an explicit preference for bilateral deals over multilateral frameworks — has produced some memorable outcomes (the Abraham Accords, summit meetings with North Korea, the U.S.–Taliban Doha deal, and the so-called Washington agreements for Kosovo and Serbia). Supporters hail these as pragmatic breakthroughs that reduced tensions and expanded diplomatic relationships; critics warn they were opportunistic, inconsistent, or even counterproductive to long-term stability. This essay weighs the useful elements of Trump’s peace policy against its limitations, focusing on actual outcomes, mechanisms of influence, and implications for global security and norms.

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1. What “Trump’s peace policy” actually looked like: mechanics and emphasis

Three features characterize Trump’s peace diplomacy. First, it favored direct, high-profile personal diplomacy: headline summits and public forums where the president himself served as the visible broker. Second, it emphasized bilateral, transactional deals — economic carrots, symbolic recognitions (e.g., embassy moves), and negotiated face-to-face accords — rather than multilateral institution-building. Third, the approach often linked security to economic incentives or explicit U.S. concessions (sanctions relief, recognition, or trade inducements) and prioritized quick, tangible outcomes that could be framed as wins domestically. These traits shaped both the kinds of agreements pursued and their reception abroad.

2. Clear achievements: concrete agreements and reduced friction in specific theaters

There are several measurable diplomatic outcomes under the Trump banner that supporters point to as evidence of usefulness.

The Abraham Accords. The normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states, beginning with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020, represented a material shift in Middle Eastern relationships: diplomatic recognition, the opening of direct channels, and the potential for sustained economic, technological, and security cooperation. For states that had previously avoided formal ties with Israel, the Accords opened immediate practical avenues for trade, tourism, intelligence sharing, and energy agreements — outcomes that reduce transactional frictions and create incentives for continued cooperation. The U.S. role as convener was pivotal. State Department+1

Kosovo–Serbia economic normalization. The U.S.-brokered Washington meetings in 2020 produced economic-oriented commitments between Kosovo and Serbia that were billed as steps toward reducing tensions in the Balkans and promoting regional economic integration. While not a political recognition package, the economic normalization documents created pragmatic platforms for cooperation on infrastructure, direct flights, and investment pledges. These economic ties can, in principle, lower the risk of conflict by entangling interests. Wikipedia+1

The U.S.–Taliban Doha agreement (February 2020). After almost two decades of war, the U.S. signed a formal accord intended to set a path for U.S. withdrawal and intra-Afghan negotiations. The deal — imperfect and contested — nevertheless established a diplomatic framework that had eluded previous administrations and set a timetable that pressured actors to negotiate political terms. In that sense, the policy prioritized de-escalation in a highly costly theater. State Department+1

Engagement with North Korea. Trump’s unprecedented summits with Kim Jong Un (2018–2019) opened direct lines of communication at the highest level. While substantive denuclearization agreements did not materialize, summitry reduced the immediate rhetoric of all-out confrontation and created a novel diplomatic channel that had been largely dormant for decades. For some advocates, that proved useful by lowering the immediate risk of miscalculation. armscontrol.org+1

Taken together, these episodes show that Trump’s approach could achieve rapid, visible diplomatic outcomes—particularly where incentives could be packaged into bilateral economic or symbolic concessions.

3. Why those results mattered: pragmatic gains and short-term stability

The practical benefits of these outcomes are real and should not be dismissed. Normalization of relations—whether between Israel and Gulf states or between Kosovo and Serbia—lowers diplomatic isolation, creates commercial incentives, and enables intelligence and security cooperation that can blunt extremist networks or stabilize trade corridors. Ending long-running kinetic commitments (or setting a timetable for withdrawal) can reduce cost, casualties, and the political fatigue that sustains foreign entanglements. Summitry with adversarial leaders can reduce incendiary rhetoric and create windows for technical negotiations. These are useful instruments in the diplomat’s toolkit, and Trump’s willingness to deploy them produced tangible, if uneven, returns.

4. The limits: durability, enforcement, and incomplete bargains

However, usefulness must be judged not only by the initial signature but by durability and enforcement. Several weaknesses reveal themselves across the major cases:

Transactional deals can be brittle. Agreements that rely on bilateral political will and personal relationships are vulnerable to changes in leadership, domestic politics, or shifting strategic priorities. Without institutional frameworks and multilateral reinforcement, commitments can wither if the domestic incentive structure changes.

Incomplete settlements and lack of sequencing. The U.S.–Taliban deal famously set timelines for withdrawal but left critical questions—power sharing, guarantees for human rights, and concrete verification mechanisms—largely for intra-Afghan negotiations. In practice, the lack of robust enforcement or effective guarantees created gaps that adversaries exploited. Observers have noted that the Doha deal’s ambiguities contributed to post-withdrawal instability. Wikipedia+1

Summitry without substantive deliverables. The North Korea summits reduced confrontation but produced no verified denuclearization steps. High-level meetings that end without durable, verifiable commitments can confer prestige to autocratic partners (improving their international status) without delivering reciprocal concessions. Critics point out the risk of legitimizing bad actors without parallel institutional checks. armscontrol.org+1

Selective emphasis undermines norms. Rewarding transactional concessions (e.g., recognition or economic perks) without tying outcomes to broader human-rights or normative benchmarks risks eroding international norms. When deals appear to trade off normative concerns for expediency, other states may emulate the model, weakening collective standards for accountability.

5. Effects on alliances and multilateral order: tension and fragmenting cooperation

A useful peace policy ideally strengthens alliances and bolsters multilateral institutions. Trump’s style — skeptical of international organizations, critical of traditional allies, and often transactional in security bargains — sometimes produced friction. Critics argue that weakening allies and sidelining multilateral forums reduces coordinated capacity for crisis management (sanctions regimes, NATO cohesion, UN diplomacy), making lasting peace harder to secure. Conversely, defenders contend that pressing allies to burden-share and emphasizing national interest can lead to more resilient partnerships. The net effect is mixed: some bilateral wins were achieved, but at a potential cost to long-term alliance cohesion and institutional leverage.

6. Strategic logic: “peace through transaction” vs. “peace through institutions”

Trump’s model resembles a “peace through transaction” logic: change incentives, offer economic or reputational benefits, and extract discrete concessions. The contrasting model—“peace through institutions”—relies on collective enforcement, legal frameworks, and slow institution-building. Each has tradeoffs. Transactional diplomacy can yield rapid, politically visible agreements that reduce immediate tensions. Institutional diplomacy builds enforceability and long-term stability but often moves slowly and is politically less attractive. The usefulness of Trump’s approach, therefore, depends on goals: short-term de-escalation and symbolic breakthroughs favored transactional methods; durable, enforceable settlements usually require institutions.

7. Unintended consequences and reputational costs

Several unintended effects complicate the calculus of usefulness. Summitry that confers status on adversarial leaders can inadvertently normalize problematic behavior (e.g., nuclear advances without verification). Deals lacking transparent verification increase the risk that one side will renege without immediate consequence. Moreover, perceived U.S. unpredictability can embolden rivals to act opportunistically, betting on decoupled U.S. responses. Finally, by elevating bilateral bargaining over multilateral consensus, the U.S. may weaken its leverage in contexts where coalition pressure is the key enforcement tool.

8. Where the approach worked best — and where it failed

Worked best in cases where: (a) there were clear economic incentives for parties (Abraham Accords, some Kosovo-Serbia commitments); (b) the parties already had latent reasons to cooperate but lacked a catalytic convener; or (c) the U.S. could credibly offer immediate material benefits. In such contexts, the U.S. could broker deals that reduced friction and opened cooperation channels.

Failed or underdelivered where: (a) mutual distrust required robust, verifiable institutions (North Korea denuclearization); (b) internal spoilers could exploit vacuums (Afghanistan); or (c) long-term political solutions required multilateral buy-in and capacity building rather than one-off economic pledges.

9. Policy lessons: how to make transactional gains more durable

If policymakers want to retain the speed and visibility of transactional diplomacy while avoiding fragility, they should consider hybrid strategies: couple high-level agreements with multilateral verification mechanisms; lock economic incentives into multilateral or third-party monitoring; sequence deals so that security guarantees, governance reforms, and human-rights protections are verifiable and enforceable; and maintain alliance consultation to preserve institutional leverage. In short, transactional diplomacy needs institutional scaffolding to translate temporary gains into durable peace.

10. Normative and ethical dimensions: what kind of peace do we want?

Useful peace is not only the absence of immediate conflict but the presence of durable justice, rights, and resilient institutions. Deals that trade off rights and long-term governance for short-term stability raise ethical questions about the kind of order being promoted. The world benefits from fewer active wars, but the form of peace matters: a coerced or unstable peace can be a prelude to renewed conflict. Policy should therefore weigh immediate de-escalation alongside commitments to human security and rule-based settlement.

Conclusion: useful, but incomplete — usefulness with caveats

Is Trump’s peace policy useful for the world? The answer is: sometimes. It proved useful in generating rapid, visible agreements that reduced tensions and opened practical cooperation channels—especially when economic incentives and political will aligned. But its transactional nature, reliance on summitry, and relative neglect of institutional enforcement limited the durability of outcomes in more complex or high-stakes theaters. The real utility of this style of diplomacy increases substantially if its gains are consolidated through multilateral frameworks, robust verification, and a longer-term strategy that addresses governance and rights. Without those complements, quick deals risk producing short-lived calm rather than lasting peace.

Selected links from relevant websites (for further reading)

• U.S. Department of State — The Abraham Accords Declaration. State Department

• Arms Control Today — Coverage and analysis of the Trump–Kim summits (Hanoi/Singapore). armscontrol.org

• Council on Foreign Relations — Backgrounder on the U.S.–Taliban peace deal (Doha agreement). Council on Foreign Relations

• American Society of International Law / Analysis — The “Washington Agreement” between Kosovo and Serbia. asil.org

• The Global Observatory — Critical perspectives on the challenges and potentials of transactional peace diplomacy. IPI Global Observatory

References (selected)

Wikipedia entries and contemporary news coverage on the Abraham Accords, North Korea summits, and Kosovo-Serbia agreements provide accessible overviews and document timelines for these episodes. Wikipedia+2Wikipedia+2

U.S. Department of State, The Abraham Accords Declaration. Available: U.S. State Department documentation on the Abraham Accords. State Department

Arms Control Association, Trump-Kim Summit Coverage (Hanoi 2019). Analysis of summit outcomes and denuclearization progress. armscontrol.org

Council on Foreign Relations, Lindsay Maizland, U.S.–Taliban Peace Deal: What to Know (March 2020). Council on Foreign Relations

American Society of International Law, The “Washington Agreement” Between Kosovo and Serbia (Insight, March 2021). asil.org

The Global Observatory, Making Peace Great Again? The Challenges and Potentials of Trump’s Approach to Peace Diplomacy (analysis). IPI Global Observatory