Donald Trump is a man of extraordinary talents. He can end wars. Just not the ones he starts.
Most mortals spend a lifetime on this inflammable planet and stop zero wars. Trump has decided to specialise in this specific field.
Let us count. He stopped seven wars. Or eight. He often forgets how many. At the United Nations he said seven, so seven it is. He said so at every available microphone thereafter. He told the Nobel Peace Prize committee, repeatedly, loudly, and without the committee’s consent. They remain unmoved.
Seven wars. All stopped. All by the same man. Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The President of Peace. The Closer. Let us go through them.
India and Pakistan. The nuclear near-miss.
A day before Trump announced the ceasefire, Vice President JD Vance had declared the conflict “fundamentally none of our business”. Then Trump got involved. A “FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE” was announced. He claimed he threatened tariffs of up to 250%. Pakistan’s leadership thanked him profusely. India said no American mediation happened, the ceasefire was bilateral, his claims were baseless. Pakistan’s calculation was simpler: you confirm you stopped a nuclear war by exaggerating the number of jets fallen, we confirm you’re a genius, you get a Nobel Prize, our military chief justifies the promotion he was going to snatch anyway.
Thailand and Cambodia. Stopped. Restarted. Stopped again. Restarted again.
In July last year, a border dispute killed dozens and displaced 300,000. Trump swooped in, threatened high tariffs, called both prime ministers, and announced peace. “By ending this War, we have saved thousands of lives. I am proud to be the President of PEACE!” Wonderful. Then the ceasefire collapsed. He brokered it again in October.
It collapsed again in December. He announced another ceasefire.
Thailand’s prime minister said there was no ceasefire. Cambodia’s defence ministry confirmed the Thai were still bombing. Trump, undeterred, said the next day: “Who else could say, I’m going to make a phone call and stop a war between two very powerful countries?”
Nobody else, sir. Nobody else would say that. That is correct.
Congo and Rwanda. Historic. Glorious. Completely on fire.
Trump brought the Congo and Rwanda leaders to Washington for a ceremony he called a “glorious triumph”. He stood at the podium, beaming. The two leaders avoided each other’s eyes and didn’t shake hands.
Fighting flared up a day after the deal was signed. The ink had not even dried. The ink was not even wet. The peace talks had not included the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group actually responsible for most of the killing, which is the kind of detail that slips your mind when you’re focused on the optics.
Over 400 civilians were killed in the weeks following the deal. Burundi’s foreign minister called it “a humiliation for everyone, and first and foremost for President Trump”. Trump was unfazed.
Armenia and Azerbaijan. The one that actually happened. Mostly.
Credit where it is due. Trump got the leaders to the White House in August and finalised a peace agreement after four decades of conflict. Real diplomacy. Genuine achievement. Neither side has since ratified the deal.
Azerbaijan wants Armenia to amend its constitution. Armenia’s voters would almost certainly reject that. The disputed land, Trump offered to develop with American developers (he himself is one), which is one approach to peacemaking. Name a corridor after yourself. Build a hotel. Also, the President of Peace has since confused Armenia with Albania and called Azerbaijan “Aber-baijan”. The man cannot pronounce the country he saved.
Israel and Iran. He ended the war he helped start.
Israel and Iran fought for 12 days in June. Trump helped start it by giving Israel a “clear green light” to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, then joined in and bombed Iran himself. Then he brokered the ceasefire. Then he claimed credit for ending it.
This is the Trump doctrine in its purest, most crystalline form. Light the building on fire. Help fight the fire. Accept the award for putting it out. Wish it was the Nobel.
Kosovo and Serbia. The war that wasn’t.
No shots were fired. No bombs were dropped. No territory was seized. Kosovo and Serbia have been in frozen tension since 2008. That is not a war. That is the Balkans being the Balkans, which is their natural resting state, like froth over Yamuna, like dug-up roads in Mumbai.
Trump said war was imminent. Kosovo agreed and nominated him for the Nobel Prize. Serbia denied everything. One suspects correlation.
Egypt and Ethiopia. The war that definitely wasn’t.
Two countries arguing over a dam on the Nile. No shots, no bombs, no boots. Dispute unresolved. Trump put them on the list. By his definition of war, India and China have been at war since 2017, and France and Britain since approximately the Hundred Years War, which Trump may also have claimed to have stopped.
Ukraine. Gaza.
The two actual wars. The ones with daily body counts and actuaries instead of journalists. The ones he was going to solve in 24 hours, then in a few months, then definitely soon. Ukraine is still going after a year. Gaza is still going, in spite of a ceasefire.
When he stood at the United Nations, listed his seven stopped wars, and the two real wars were ongoing in real time. The irony was structural. Nobody pointed it out. This is how Trump survives: the gap between claim and reality is so vast that satire cannot cross it.
And so here we stand. The White House website declares: President Trump is the President of Peace. He received the FIFA Peace Prize, presented by the FIFA head with his own colourful legal history.
He was nominated for the Nobel by Pakistan, Cambodia, Israel, and several nations that needed something from him immediately. He did not win. The Nobel went to someone else, Ms Machado, who then handed her medal to Trump because “if there’s anyone who deserves it, it is President Trump”. The peace president is collecting peace prizes to make them show pieces.
I run, I ran. Iran.
There’s a war going on as I write this. Has been on for over a month. This war, unlike the other two ongoing wars, is crushing the confidence of nations across the world.
Economies are under stress. Trump promises to end this one soon. In days, in weeks. Sooner.
Iran has refused to crumble. Tehran is matching air strike for a missile strike, for over a month. Tehran tit for Trump’s tat. Rat-tat-tat.
The regime change objective dissolved in the rubble. Trump is firing the ones he hasn’t yet thrown under the bus in a regime change around him. The war he is neck-deep in is the one war he cannot spin, cannot tariff his way out of, cannot announce settled on a Friday evening or Monday morning to manipulate the markets.
He claims victory one day, bombing Iran to the Stone Age, force-opening the Strait of Hormuz. The next day, Hormuz is not his headache. He flips the narrative just when it flops. The world that once feared his tariff wars now prays for a return to them.
The man who can stop all wars cannot stop the one he started.
That is the only war that ever really mattered. He is losing it, magnificently, on live television, every single day. This peace president is a piece. The only piece.
Jai ho.
