Miranda Jeyaretnam
Even as a cease-fire between Thailand and Cambodia brokered by President Donald Trump earlier this year is falling apart, the self-styled “President of Peace” has continued to tout his ability to resolve global conflicts.
Trump has claimed credit for ending multiple wars around the world, but “peace in many of these contexts was secured because of perceived U.S. leverage over other parties,” Mark Cogan, associate professor of peace and conflict studies at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan, tells TIME. In the Thailand-Cambodia deal announced in October, Trump leveraged trade relations with the U.S. as political pressure. It also helped to buffer his own domestic case for tariffs, which have been blamed in part for affordability concerns. For Trump, says Cogan, peace is just transactional. A deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was ratified last week, promised Trump access to Congolese rare earth minerals—which could be key in allowing the U.S. to overcome rival China’s dominance of global supply of the minerals.
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