In his speech at the United Nations (U.N.), President Trump claimed (no fewer than four times) that he has “ended seven unendable wars.” This assertion, which he began repeating over the summer, is not only a gross exaggeration: it also betrays a flawed understanding of peace itself. Under the Trump administration, peace deals have been treated as an opportunity to secure resources and real estate. Recent agreements between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda, and between Armenia and Azerbaijan, illustrate this “resources-for-peace” approach. Both deals are fundamentally transactional. But by prioritizing American economic interests and quick fixes over a sustainable peace, they promise to yield fragile outcomes at best.
DRC-Rwanda Peace Agreement
Trump claims that his administration’s mediation between the DRC and Rwanda “stopped”’ the conflict in DRC and yet, fighting continues unabated. The outcome was predictable. The peace agreement, signed in June, had more to do with securing U.S. access to Congolese minerals than finding a recipe for durable peace.
In DRC’s eastern provinces, more than 100 armed groups compete for land, resources, and political influence. Regional powers –– including Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi –– have further fueled the violence by backing rival forces to advance their own interests. Illicit mineral smuggling (enabled by instability and conflict) generates billions, funding militias and enriching foreign actors and corrupt officials alike. However, the complex factors driving the conflict –– including ethnic marginalization, land disputes, weak governance, and mass displacement –– received little to no attention at all in the Washington agreement.
The supposed crown jewel of the Washington deal is a regional economic framework designed to combat illegal trafficking, “de-risk” mineral supply chains and secure opportunities for U.S. investors. Trump hopes American involvement will generate revenue while challenging China’s dominance in the Congolese mining sector. To many people in DRC, however, American involvement merely revives a pattern of exploitation that has characterized the mining sector from pre-colonial and colonial times to the infamously corrupt Mobutu era. The latest version of the extraction model has foreign powers offering feeble security promises in exchange for resource access: a paradigm that only “erode[s] the sovereignty and bargaining power of mineral-rich nations such as the DRC.”
Fulfilling the terms of the regional economic framework will prove nearly impossible without an end to fighting. Yet the Washington agreement offers no viable path to sustainable peace. For one, Kinshasa has refused to move forward with the economic agreement until 90 percent of Rwandan troops have withdrawn from eastern DRC. Rwanda also provides significant backing to the M23, the most powerful rebel group in eastern DRC, but the agreement introduces a major loophole to de-escalation. Both countries are barred from supporting non-state armed groups “except as necessary” to implement the agreement. Interpretation of what is “necessary” will no doubt weaken the provision.
Meanwhile, the deal calls on DRC to disarm the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a militia with historical links to the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Rwanda frames the disarmament of the FDLR as a matter of national security, but critics argue that Rwanda exaggerates this claim to justify its intervention.
Though disarmament is an essential step toward peace, the Washington deal lacks the enforcement mechanisms needed to make it happen. Much of the FDLR operates within M23-held areas, and the Congolese army is notoriously weak: so weak, in fact, that the army has repeatedly outsourced its security operations to local militias known as Wazalendo. The result is a stalemate, for Rwanda insists that its withdrawal depends on DRC first neutralizing the FDLR. At present, neither side seems prepared to move first.
Commitments from the DRC and Rwanda (which, under the Trump deal, are nominal at best), account for only a small piece of the puzzle. Both Burundi and Uganda have troops in the region, but they were absent from the negotiations. What’s more concerning, none of the armed groups active in DRC were included in the peace deal, and Qatari-led talks between the Congolese government and M23 have largely stalled. Recent analysis suggests that the narrow focus on M23 has allowed other armed groups to fill the void.
Washington has made clear that funding peace is not a priority. Trump’s dissolution of USAID has already wrought devastating consequences in eastern DRC. Meanwhile, the administration has moved to eliminate funding for U.N. peacekeeping, while offering no viable alternative to the current mission in Congo.
The consequences of the poorly thought-out framework are already apparent: since the signing of the Washington agreement, violence in DRC has surged, brutal attacks on civilians have continued, and the M23 has further expanded its territorial control.
Armenia-Azerbaijan Joint Declaration
On August 8, Trump celebrated what he described as a “peace treaty” between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In reality, the Joint Declaration signed at the White House is neither a legally-binding treaty nor a credible roadmap to peace. It is merely a political statement that commits the two sides to “continue further actions” toward a stalled peace agreement whose text was finalized six months ago. That impasse remains unresolved, as Azerbaijan refuses to actually sign the peace treaty until Armenia adopts a new constitution. Armenia’s constitutional process could take years. And while this U.S. administration’s fleeting interest in the region may temporarily stave off conflict, the deal lacks the security guarantees, local buy-in, and justice mechanisms crucial to ensure long-term peace.
The centerpiece of the Joint Declaration is an investment deal. The so-called “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) will grant Washington exclusive development rights to an Armenian transit corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave. The route advances long-standing Azeri ambitions to connect the Turkic world, finalize a Middle Corridor between China and Europe, and secure an outlet for Azeri oil and gas.
For its part, Armenia hopes that U.S. investment will provide temporary security in an otherwise hostile neighborhood. That hope rests on shaky ground. Since the 2020 ceasefire, Azerbaijan has occupied roughly 215km of Armenian territory and terrorized border populations. President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly labeled Armenia as “Western Azerbaijan” and threatened to seize by force the TRIPP corridor (which Azerbaijan calls the “Zangezur” corridor). With a modernized military backed by Israel and Türkiye, and a demonstrated disregard for international law (see also here), Azerbaijan remains well positioned to pursue its irredentist ambitions.
Armenia, by contrast, holds little leverage in the negotiations. The United States and Europe have historically proved unwilling to intervene. And since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has abandoned its former peacekeeping role in the Caucasus. The EU border monitoring mission, tasked with tracking ceasefire violations, remains the last external presence in the region. And yet, Azerbaijan forced a provision in the peace agreement that would require its withdrawal.
Absent international accountability, the risk of renewed aggression remains acute. The Joint Declaration includes no security guarantees from the United States or other actors. To the contrary, American investment interests –– along with policy calculations vis-à-vis Russia and Iran –– could lead the Trump administration to turn a blind eye to future Azeri provocations. For the TRIPP corridor to live up to its name, the United States would need to make credible commitments to defend Armenia’s sovereign control over both the transit route and broader Syunik region.
The peace deal’s most glaring omission is the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh: a contested region which has been the epicenter of conflict for the last three decades. In 2023, Azerbaijan forcibly displaced Nagorno-Karabakh’s entire ethnic Armenian population through a brutal 10-month blockade and subsequent military campaign. At the time, Trump himself condemned the Biden administration for doing “NOTHING as 120,000 Armenian Christians were horrifically persecuted and forcibly displaced.”
Through a provision of the peace deal, Azerbaijan successfully pressured Armenia to drop its international legal cases, thereby depriving Nagorno-Karabakh’s 150,000 victims of justice. Though Azerbaijan would also drop its countersuits, they are significantly weaker and unlikely to succeed at the merits stage.
The deal also ignores the efforts of displaced Armenians to return safely to Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been mandated by the International Court of Justice but effectively obstructed by Azerbaijan policies. Since 2023, Azerbaijan has rushed to resettle the region while continuing its demolition of Armenian monasteries and cultural sites. Meanwhile, 23 Armenian political prisoners remain in unlawful Azeri detention. These fundamental omissions have the adverse effect of legitimizing Azerbaijan’s military aggression and rights abuses. And without justice, long-term reconciliation falls further from reach.
At the signing of the Joint Declaration, Trump proclaimed that after “Thirty-five years of death and hatred…now it’s going to be love and success together.” But given a paradigm that prioritizes economic access over reconciliation, even a cautious form of optimism is hard to justify.
Future Iterations of the “Resources-for-Peace” Approach
Looking forward, Trump may seek to replicate the “resources-for-peace” approach in other contexts, namely, in Gaza and Ukraine.
In February, Trump floated a plan for the United States to “take over” and “level” the Gaza strip and transform it into a “Riviera of the Middle East.” Experts quickly deemed the proposal a “straightforward crime against humanity.” And while it is welcome news that the both sides appear set to agree to a ceasefire as of October 9, it should not be lost on anyone that central to the larger proposed 20-point peace plan are a “Trump economic development plan” based on the model of the “the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East” (point 10), as well as “a special economic zone . . . with preferred tariff and access rates (point 11).”
A resolution to the war in Ukraine is no closer. Last month’s Alaska and White House summits yielded no progress towards any agreement, and Russia has since launched some of its most intense drone and missile attacks against civilian areas of the entire war. As the war rages on, the Trump administration may revisit earlier proposals for the United States to predicate its continued military support on access to Ukrainian minerals. Such a deal would smack of extortion rather than the fulfillment of commitments to an ally.
While the Trump administration’s peace efforts are lacking in both substance and durability, the goals of negotiating and building peace are nevertheless laudable. Going forward, the administration should recall that there is no simple formula for resolving protracted conflicts. That one cannot buy peace with mineral and real estate deals is just one instantiation of that very truth. As Peter J. Quaranto and George A. Lopez recently spelled out in Just Security, future deals must include the participation of local actors, third-party verification mechanisms, and solutions that respond to the complex drivers of conflict. More predatory actors, meanwhile, should be held accountable for past wrongs, not rewarded as a resources-forward peace deal is likely to do. These are not easy or straightforward tasks – if they were, peace would have taken hold long ago. But they are necessary ones, and Trump’s summer of peace theater has done little to advance them.
