Trump and the Art of Peace

Media Said Trump Would Bring War. They Were Wrong.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Matthew 5:9

Just four days ago, India and Pakistan wandered down the perilous road to war, when India launched a series of missile strikes into Pakistan.

Just two days ago, India and Pakistan were exchanging drone and artillery fire—and the casualties which invariably tag along.

Just last night, Pakistan was launching “Operation Bunyan ul Marsoos” in response to India’s earlier missile attacks.

All last week, the question everyone following these events had to ask: would there be a nuclear war?

This morning, we possibly have an answer to that question: Not today. Not yet. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance have persuaded the leaders of both India and Pakistan to agree to a total ceasefire, and to participate in US-mediated talks.

Ceasefire

The conflict is not ended. The anger and the hatred have not abated. Indeed, the ceasefire may not even be holding, as India is accusing Pakistan of violating the ceasefire agreement.

But we should pause to note who is playing the peacemaker between the two countries: President Donald Trump and his Administration. The man who the Democrats were certain would lead the world into World War Three is the man who quite possibly just led the world out of it.

That should matter. And we should talk about it.

The Saudis Tried And Failed

A great many nations were disturbed by the prospect of the two nuclear-armed states apparently charging headfirst into all-out war.

Saudi Arabia had dispatched envoys to both countries in an attempt to mediate a pathway to peace.

While calls for de-escalation have come from around the world, a senior Saudi diplomat has had face-to-face meetings with both sides. Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s minister of state for foreign affairs, was in New Delhi on Thursday and went to Islamabad on Friday.

Several other Gulf States, all of whom have reputedly strong ties to one or both countries, were similarly supportive of peace.

Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in particular had been helpful in de-escalating previous border clashes.

In 2019, after India launched airstrikes inside Pakistan in response to an attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia sent their top envoys to help calm the tensions. The Emirates’ foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, flew to Islamabad and New Delhi. Saudi Arabia hosted both Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Pakistan’s then-leader, Imran Khan, within a month of each other.

Two years later, India and Pakistan issued a joint statement to uphold a long-ignored cease-fire along the Line of Control, the de facto border that divides Kashmir into regions administered by the two countries. The Emiratis hosted secret talks between Indian and Pakistani intelligence officials in Dubai to broker the thaw.

The Saudis have been influential voices for peace on the subcontinent in the very recent past. They did not seem to be influential this time, for reasons about which we can only speculate.

Gulf States Were Not Alone

Nor were the Gulf States alone in their efforts to prevent war.

Russia, embroiled in its own long and grueling war in Ukraine, offered to help defuse the situation.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reached out to his Pakistani counterpart Ishaq Dar last Sunday and offered to help.

The proposal came during a Sunday phone call with Pakistani Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"Particular attention was paid to the significant rise in tension between New Delhi and Islamabad," the ministry said, referencing Lavrov's conversation with Dar.

It has been reported that Pakistan had asked for Russia’s assistance in mediation, given the diplomatic ties it enjoyed with both nations.

In an interview to be published later by the TASS news agency, Ambassador Mohammad Khalid Jamali stated that Russia has a privileged strategic partnership with India and very good relations with Pakistan and that it could use its good offices to mediate, as it did in Tashkent in 1966, when the former Soviet premier helped to end the armed conflict.

China also was a voice for peace in this moment. Beijing had called for the two countries to look for ways to de-escalate tensions late last month.

“China welcomes all measures that will help cool down the current situation and supports carrying out fair and just investigations at an early date,” Guo Jiakun, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said at a press briefing on Monday, hoping Pakistan and India would uphold regional peace.

“As the neighbor of both India and Pakistan, China hopes that India and Pakistan will exercise restraint, work in the same direction, handle relevant differences properly through dialogue and consultation, and jointly uphold peace and stability in the region.”

China, like Russia and like Saudi Arabia, offered to mediate talks between India and Pakistan.

Iran and Egypt also made similar entreaties. In a rare moment of global consensus, nearly all nations wanted India and Pakistan to choose peace.

Were these various nations jockeying for some geopolitical advantage by playing the peacemaker on the subcontinent? That is almost certainly the case. Even the Saudis’ previously successful mediation efforts are believed to have been in service of Saudi self-interests.

“They see mediation as a source of prestige and influence,” said Hasan Alhasan, a senior fellow for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank based in Bahrain. “But it’s also a way to protect their own security and economic interests.”

We can safely assume Russia and China had similarly mercenary motives for offering to mediate a peace process.

Yet we must acknowledge that the Gulf States, Russia, China, Iran, and Egypt all offered to help broker a peace.

And we must acknowledge that the Gulf States, Russia, China, Iran, and Egypt were all unsuccessful.

Peace Will Not Be Easy

We do well to take a moment to understand that even getting this ceasefire negotiated could not have been easy. Keep in mind this latest crisis between India and Pakistan began after a terrorist attack in Pahalgam, in the Indian-conrolled area of Kashmir, resulted in 26 dead.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by The Resistance Front, a Kashmiri insurgent militia which was banned by the Indian government in January of 2023.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi responded to the Pahalgam attacks by vowing swift retaliation.

“I strongly condemn the terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir. Condolences to those who have lost their loved ones. I pray that the injured recover at the earliest. All possible assistance is being provided to those affected,” PM Modi said in a tweet. “Those behind this heinous act will be brought to justice … they will not be spared!”

It may be part of Modi’s reaaction came from shock that TRF would apprently target tourists, something which has been a rarity even in Kashmir, where tensions are always simmering.

Much as the way 9/11 was taken personally by many Americans, we should presume that the Pahalgam massacre was a personal affront and a personal tragedy for all Indians.

It certainly did not help that TRF is believed to be an offshoot of Lakshar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terrorist group charged with the infamous 2008 bombing and shooting attack in Mumbai—and which is believed by many to have the tacit support of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service.

Whether the Pakistani government had any actual role in the Pahalgam massacre is ultimately irrelevant. The Pakistani government is burdened by the inevitable chain of affiliation from ISI to Lakshar-e-Taiba, and from Lakshar-e-Taiba to The Resistance Front.

The nations of the world quite naturally called for peace—but Indians called for blood.

There has been blood. Now the challenge is to find peace out of that blood. Just how difficult that challenge will be is underscored by the accusations by India that Pakistan has breached the ceasefire agreement.

Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said late Saturday that “there had been repeated violations of the understanding arrived between the two countries” on ceasing fire and accused Pakistan of breaching the agreement.

“We call upon Pakistan to take appropriate steps to address these violations and deal with the situation with seriousness and responsibility,” he said at a news conference in New Delhi. Misri said the Indian army was “retaliating” for what he called a “border intrusion.”

Indian news sources are reporting that drones have been observed in a number of cities on the Indian side of the Line Of Control.

Three-and-a-half hours after India and Pakistan reached an understanding on a ceasefire, Pakistani drones were spotted in a number of border cities, including Jammu and Srinagar. Jammu air defence system has been activated, sources said. Armed forces have been instructed to deal strongly with any instances of violations by Pakistan, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said in a late-night briefing.

Trump Was Not Supposed To Be A Peacemaker

Even if the ceasefire does not hold, it is to the credit of every diplomat from every nation who interceded with Pakistan and India on behalf of peace.

Even if the ceasefire does not hold, it matters that the nations of the world in this moment stood for peace. We want nations to stand for peace. I absolutely want nations to stand for peace, and I want the leaders of all nations willing to step up for peace whenever conflict arises. Even if the ceasefire does not hold, we should honor all those who stood up for peace, and I do honor them.

However, that means we must call out all those narratives during the 2024 election which asserted Donald Trump would lead everyone into World War III.

We must call out Jared Moskowitz, Democrat from Florida, who in February of 2024 accused Donald Trump of “setting the stage for World War III”:

“Donald Trump, with what he’s talking about dealing with Russia, if Russia would start invading Europe, that would start World War III, by the way,” Moskowitz said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“Donald Trump is talking about that, and setting the stage. You can be sure every single world leader, other than Vladimir Putin, saw that and said ‘There is no way America can have him back as president’,” Moskowitz continued.

We must call out Anthony Glees, Professor Emeritus at the University of Buckingham and self-anointed “defense expert”, who said Trump would make WW3 more likely because he would not care who did what in the world, as long as they didn’t do it to the United States.

The US's main adversaries and enemies - Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Un and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - must not see Trump as "weak or disinterested" as it will "encourage" them rather than put them off the lust for war, Prof Glees said.

He added: "They believe that if they don't threaten the USA, then the USA will not care what they do to those they regard as their own enemies. And that's us.

"So I think we are all right to be apprehensive about Trump after his massive and stunning victory, even as we should believe he is not out for war but could end up getting one. He's now a fact of life and we must learn to live with him. But doing so will stretch us in the UK and Europe to the our limits and probably beyond them, and we will find ourselves forced by our weakness to witness many things that will horrify us."

We must call out the op-ed columnists in The Hill, who fretted that Trump would lose WW3 for the West.

Trump may be tired of “Russia, Russia, Russia,” but that is the stark reality he will face after he returns to the White House. Russia is not going away, but rather Russia is coming for him and our way of life.

Despite these dire predictions, and after considerable diplomatic wrangling, Donald Trump has moved both Ukraine and Russia towards the acceptance of at least a partial ceasefire agreement in their already-too-long war in Ukraine.

At the same time, Donald Trump persuaded Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy to sign a minerals development deal, which gives the US a vested interest not only in continued Ukrainian sovereignty but also Ukrainian territorial integrity.

Donald Trump is the President who is sitting down to fresh negotiations with Iran over that countries nuclear weapons program. Whether those negotiations will bear fruit we do not know at this time, but Iran wants direct negotiation with the US, and it is difficult not to see that as an encouraging sign.

Now it is Donald Trump and his senior Cabinet who managed to persuade India and Pakistan to a ceasefire.

These are not the actions of a man who wants war, or who is disinterested in the world outside the United States. These are the actions of a man who considers peace to be good for business. These are the actions of a man who deeply believes in the benefits of negotiation.

Can Donald Trump compel a ceasefire to hold on the subcontinent? No, no more than he can command Russia and Ukraine to commit a ceasefire and sit down at the bargaining table.

Has Donald Trump been taking concrete steps since the day of his inauguration to make peace more likely than less in the world? Yes.

Will those steps be enough to ensure peace in the world? Probably not, and we won’t know until the end of his Presidency if he made more peace than war.

We have conclusive and concrete evidence that Donald Trump wants peace in the world. He wants peace between Russia and Ukraine. He wants peace between India and Pakistan. He wants peace. People can dissect his motivations to their heart’s content, but let us at this point recognize that corporate media was once again wrong about Donald Trump.

I don’t know if Donald Trump will be successful in any of his peace efforts. I hope he will be, because I also want peace in the world.

I do know Donald Trump is making serious efforts to have more peace in the world. The evidences of that are reported even by the anti-Trump corporate media.

I do know that Donald Trump is not alone in wanting more peace in the world. The evidences of that are plain just in the number of countries willing to intercede with India and Pakistan in the name of peace. Whatever motivations various nations have for wanting more peace and less war, I am grateful for everyone who wants more peace and less war.

I’ll quibble about intentions after we actually have more peace. That’s when the intentions will matter.

We are rightly taught to revere the peacemakers in the world. It’s time the media admitted that Donald Trump aspires to be one of the peacemakers.

He’s earned that much respect.