By Trevor Hunnicutt
(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump has campaigned, joined by some foreign leaders, for a Nobel Peace Prize. But he is unlikely to be the winner announced on Friday, despite just announcing a ceasefire and hostage deal over the war in Gaza.
The push for Trump to get what is arguably the world's most prestigious award came in the midst of an eight-month diplomatic spin through many of the world's thorniest conflicts. Close watchers of the Nobel process said Trump's Gaza deal probably
materialized too late to be considered.
Here are some of the international disputes where Trump has intervened since beginning his second term in January.
ARMENIA AND AZERBAIJAN
Trump brought together the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan on August 8 to sign a joint declaration pledging to seek peaceful relations between nations that have been at odds since the late 1980s.
"I got to know them through trade," Trump said later in a radio interview. "I was dealing with them a little bit and I said, 'Why you guys fighting?' Then I said, 'I'm not going to do a trade deal if you guys are going to fight. It's crazy.'"
The two countries had committed to a ceasefire in 2023. In March they said they had agreed on the text of a draft peace agreement, but that deal has not been signed.
The subsequent White House-brokered declaration falls short of a formal peace treaty that would place legally binding obligations on both sides. Issues remain, including whether an agreement requires Armenia to revise its constitution.
The leaders struck economic agreements with Washington that granted the U.S. development rights to a strategic transit corridor through southern Armenia. The Trump administration said this would allow for more energy exports. In documents released at the time, the corridor was named after Trump.
CAMBODIA AND THAILAND
Trump helped bring Thailand to the table for talks after long-simmering tensions with Cambodia spilled over in July into a five-day military conflict, the deadliest fighting between the two in more than a decade.
The U.S. president reached out to then-acting Thai Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai two days after fighting erupted along a 200-km-long (125 mile) stretch of the border. Trump withheld deals on tariffs with both countries until the conflict ended.
Up to that point, Bangkok had rejected third-party mediation and had not responded to offers of help from Malaysia and China, Reuters reporting showed.
Trump's intervention helped get Thailand to the table, according to Lim Menghour, a Cambodian government official.
Subsequent talks yielded a fragile agreement to end hostilities, resume direct communications and create a mechanism to implement the ceasefire. Trump went on to impose a 19% tariff on both countries' U.S.-bound exports, lower than he had initially floated.
Tensions remain. The new Thai leader, Anutin Charnvirakul, has so far downplayed Trump's future role in talks.
ISRAEL, IRAN AND THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES
Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas this week agreed to the first phase of Trump-brokered hostage and ceasefire deal.
The agreement marked a major step forward for efforts to end the two-year war in Gaza in which more than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed. The accord, if implemented, would bring the two sides closer than any previous effort to halt the war.
Supported by several key regional players, the deal also promises the return of the remaining hostages seized by Hamas in the deadly attacks that started the assault.
Key details remain to be ironed out, including how the devastated Gaza Strip will be governed when the fighting ends and the ultimate fate of Hamas, which has so far rejected Israel's demands it disarm.
Trump has supported Israel's efforts to disable other Iran-backed groups, including Hezbollah and the Houthi movement, and Tehran itself.
The U.S. president is working to expand the Abraham Accords, an initiative from his first term that aims to normalize diplomatic ties between Israel and Arab nations.
Trump initially pursued talks with Tehran over its nuclear program. Israel launched an aerial war on Iran on June 13 and pressed Trump to join in. He did on June 22, bombing Iranian nuclear sites. He then pressed Israel and Iran to join a ceasefire that Qatar mediated.
The situation remains bitter and unstable. Iran continues to reject U.S. demands that it stop enriching uranium for its nuclear program. And Israel has said it will strike Iran again if it feels threatened.
RWANDA AND DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
The rebel group M23 staged a lightning offensive this year and now holds more territory than ever in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Rwanda has long denied backing M23, but U.N. experts and Congolese leaders disagree.
Rwanda and Congo signed a U.S.-brokered peace agreement on June 27 under pressure from Trump.
But months later, fighting continues despite mediation efforts by the Trump administration and Qatar.
The insurgency is the latest episode in a decades-old conflict with roots in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
In February, a Congolese senator contacted U.S. officials to pitch a minerals-for-security deal. Qatar, meanwhile, has also brokered talks between Congo and M23, but the two sides are yet to agree on a peace deal.
At the White House, Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe told Trump that past deals had not been implemented and urged Trump to stay engaged. Trump warned of "very severe penalties, financial and otherwise" if the agreement was violated.
INDIA AND PAKISTAN
U.S. officials worried conflict could spiral out of control when nuclear-armed India and Pakistan clashed in May following an attack in India that Delhi blamed on Islamabad.
Consulting with Trump, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance pushed Indian and Pakistani officials to de-escalate the situation.
A ceasefire was announced on May 10 after four days of fighting. But it addressed few of the issues that have divided India and Pakistan, which have fought three major wars since their independence from the United Kingdom in 1947.
Days after the ceasefire, Trump said he used the threat of cutting trade with the countries to secure the deal. India disputed that U.S. pressure led to the ceasefire and that trade was a factor.
EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA
Egypt and Ethiopia have a long dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Cairo regards as a national security issue and worries will threaten its Nile River water supplies.
"We're working on that one problem, but it's going to get solved," Trump said in July.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt later included Egypt and Ethiopia in a list of conflicts that "the president has now ended."
It is unclear what Trump is doing on the issue. In public comments, he has largely echoed Cairo's concerns, and some of his statements have been disputed by Ethiopia.
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed opened the dam in September despite objections from both Sudan and Egypt. Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has vowed to protect his own country's interests.
SERBIA AND KOSOVO
Kosovo and Serbia still have tense relations nearly five years after agreements Trump brokered with both during his first term in office to work on their economic ties.
Without providing evidence, Trump said in June he "stopped" war between the countries during his first term and that "I will fix it, again," in his second.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008, almost a decade after NATO bombed Serb forces to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians from the region during a 1998-1999 counter-insurgency war.
But Serbia still regards Kosovo as an integral part of its territory. The countries have signed no peace deal.
Kosovo's prime minister Albin Kurti has sought to extend government control over the north, where about 50,000 ethnic Serbs live, many of whom refuse to recognize Kosovo's independence.
Kosovo's President Vjosa Osmani said in July that over "the last few weeks" Trump had prevented further escalation in the region. She did not elaborate, and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic denied that any escalation had been forthcoming.
RUSSIA AND UKRAINE
Trump, who said during the 2024 presidential campaign that he could solve the war in Ukraine in one day, has so far been unable to end the nearly four-year-old conflict that analysts say has left more than 1 million people dead or wounded.
"I thought this was going to be one of the easier ones," Trump said on August 18. "It's actually one of the most difficult."
Trump's views on how to best bring peace have swung from calling for a ceasefire to saying a deal could still be worked out while the fighting continued.
He has threatened tariffs and sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin but backed off them after an Alaska summit where the two leaders appeared before backdrops that said "Pursuing Peace."
Since then, he has expressed increasing frustration with Putin.
Trump, who has sometimes criticized and sometimes supported Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has expressed openness to helping with Ukraine's security in any deal. Exactly what such support would entail is unclear.
Europeans have worried that Trump might push Zelenskiy to accept a proposal from Putin that included significant territorial concessions by Kyiv and limited security guarantees from Washington.
SOUTH KOREA AND NORTH KOREA
Trump in June pledged to "get the conflict solved with North Korea."
The U.S. president and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held three summits during Trump's 2017-2021 first term and exchanged a number of letters that Trump called "beautiful," before the unprecedented diplomatic effort broke down over U.S. demands that Kim give up his nuclear weapons.
North Korea has surged ahead with more and bigger ballistic missiles, expanded its nuclear weapons facilities, and gained new support from its neighbors in the years since. In his second term Trump has acknowledged that North Korea is a "nuclear power."
The White House said in June that Trump would welcome communications again with Kim. Kim said in September that there was no reason to avoid talks with Washington if it dropped its demands that his country give up nuclear weapons.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Additional reporting by Fatos BytyciEditing by Colleen Jenkins, Alistair Bell and Kate Mayberry)
