It was the latest evidence that Trump’s claims about ending eight wars in his pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize have never quite added up.
At the same time, more than half a million people fled revived border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand — two countries that, like their African counterparts last week, had a White House-sponsored ceremony in October.
That was after Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the US and others. Both sides have violated the deal, and Israel has since has killed at least 377 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
To be fair, those are all intractable, long-running conflicts. But at least they were wars to begin with.
In at least two of Trump’s eight, there was never any conflict to pacify in the first place. Take Egypt and Ethiopia, which last fought a war in the 1800s, or Serbia and Kosovo, where tensions have ratcheted up but no shots have been fired recently.
While Pakistan has tried to butter up Trump by giving him credit for resolving hostilities with India that flared in May, New Delhi has downplayed US involvement.
Armenia and Azerbaijan did end their nearly 40-year conflict over the status of a border region, and Iran was so weakened by the US-backed Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities in June that it’s essentially incapable of restarting its 12-day war with Israel.
On the renewed fighting in Southeast Asia, Trump said this week that he’d “have to make a phone call” to sort things out.
It may take more than that — in all of the wars he’s claimed to have ended, real or imagined. — Neil Munshi