Trump vowed to be a ‘peacemaker’ but foreign conflicts only ramping up on his watchSix months into his second term, conflicts are raging on three fronts.ByAlexandra HutzlerJune 18, 2025, 4:31 PM4:48Trump calls for Iran’s ‘unconditional surrender,’ calls Khamenei ‘easy target’President Donald Trump wrote a threatening post on his so…Show morePresident Donald Trump, in January’s inaugural address, predicted his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier.”Six months into his second term, conflicts are raging on three fronts around the world.Iran and Israel are trading strikes amid fears of an all-out war in which the U.S. could become involved. Russia carried out one of its deadliest attacks on Ukraine’s capital in months overnight earlier this week. In Gaza, people are struggling to find food and dozens have been killed in recent incidents near aid locations.”He’s clearly not a peacemaker, but he’s not a warmaker, either,” Aaron David Miller, a State Department diplomat in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations — now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace –ABC NewsLog InTrump vowed to be a ‘peacemaker’ but foreign conflicts only ramping up on his watchSix months into his second term, conflicts are raging on three fronts.ByAlexandra HutzlerJune 18, 2025, 4:31 PM4:48Trump calls for Iran’s ‘unconditional surrender,’ calls Khamenei ‘easy target’President Donald Trump wrote a threatening post on his so…Show morePresident Donald Trump, in January’s inaugural address, predicted his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier.”Six months into his second term, conflicts are raging on three fronts around the world.Iran and Israel are trading strikes amid fears of an all-out war in which the U.S. could become involved. Russia carried out one of its deadliest attacks on Ukraine’s capital in months overnight earlier this week. In Gaza, people are struggling to find food and dozens have been killed in recent incidents near aid locations.”He’s clearly not a peacemaker, but he’s not a warmaker, either,” Aaron David Miller, a State Department diplomat in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations — now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace — told ABC News.MORE: Trump on his ‘unconditional surrender’ demand to Iran: ‘I’ve had it’President Donald Trump walks to board Marine One on the South Lawn at the White House, June 15, 2025 in Washington.Tasos Katopodis/Getty ImagesTrump vowed speedy ends to the Israel-Hamas war and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two conflicts that broke out in the previous administration that Trump has labeled “Biden’s wars.” On the campaign trail, he often railed against “endless wars” and mused that he could resolve the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours — a comment that once in office he walked back as an “exaggeration.”Recent Stories from ABC Newssymbol”He has made comments on all of them that this could be done quickly or easily and that there are solutions to these three problems,” Miller said. “And yet, he has not been successful in even identifying what I would consider to be a potentially effective strategy for managing or let alone resolving them. And therein lies the challenge.”While Trump has made new diplomatic efforts a priority amid his flurry of initiatives during his first months, he’s expressed increasing frustration with the foreign leaders involved and continually condemns what he calls “the death” the conflicts have wrought.”He has followed through on his promises to try,” said Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations who worked as special representative for Iran and Venezuela in Trump’s first administration. “He has tried in Ukraine and he has tried in Gaza and he’s tried in Iran, and none of them has worked out.”One claim of success on the foreign policy front that Trump frequently makes, and says he can replicate by pushing trade deals, is how he says he stopped the recent fighting between India and Pakistan. Trump’s claimed he hasn’t received enough credit: “I got it stopped. I don’t think I had one story.”
