By nearly any measure, 2025 has been an extraordinary year for peace deals. From Gaza to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the South Caucasus to Southeast Asia, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has churned out ceasefires and purported peace accords at a dizzying pace. Six major agreements have been signed in less than 12 months, some at least temporarily halting conflicts that have defied diplomacy for decades. While many of the deals already appear to be falling apart, the U.S. approach nonetheless looks likely to transform the practice of conflict resolution for a long time to come. If Trump’s transactional diplomacy becomes the default for resolving wars, the future looks very uncertain.
A New ‘Standard Treatment’
For more than 30 years, international conflict resolution followed what former WPR columnist Richard Gowan and Stephen Stedman have called “the standard treatment,” a three-step formula refined in the post-Cold War era: Negotiate a ceasefire, build an inclusive transitional government, and layer on international peacekeeping, constitutional design and peacebuilding support. The United Nations Security Council codified that logic into its mandates, which almost always follow the same logic: ceasefire, security sector reform, elections and development—in that order. The agreements that ended wars in the Balkans, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Rwanda during the 1990s all followed this model. They were slow, multilateral and norm-driven—liberal institutionalism in action.
The U.S.-brokered wave of peace agreements in 2025 has reversed that orthodoxy. These deals treat war less as a global threat or a humanitarian emergency than as a breakdown in commerce between reluctant but promising business partners. Washington’s method is to push for quick ceasefires backed by capital and investment, tying the fortunes of rival parties—and the peace itself—to shared profits.
