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Did Trump really resolve six conflicts in a matter of months? We spoke to the experts to find out

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The US president, Donald Trump, claims to have “solved six wars in six months”. To work out if there was any substance to his claims, The Conversation international affairs editors Sam Phelps and Rachael Jolley interviewed six academic experts on those regions to find out what Trump actually did, and whether it made a difference.

Natasha Lindstaedt, a professor in government at the University of Essex, said that Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have both claimed that they were able to broker some kind of peace deal between India and Pakistan, and that the US got directly involved in delivering peace.

“But this has been denied by India and Pakistan. They’ve rejected it, and they claim that it was resolved between themselves. We don’t have any way of really verifying it.”

India and Pakistan don’t tend to agree on a lot, but they tend to agree on the idea that Trump was not the reason for some kind of end of hostilities on May 10, and that it was reached bilaterally with no third party intervention, she said.

They were very clear that they reached an agreement on May 7 with no third party intervention, she said.

She added: “Trump sees himself as a peacemaker, a deal maker. This is part of his identity, and he’s leaning into this, hoping that people are going to believe it.”

Verdict: Trump’s claim doesn’t stand up

Petra Alderman, manager of the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, said Trump’s intervention in the Thailand-Cambodia conflict helped push the two countries towards a ceasefire. But, in her view, long-term prospects for peace are by no means guaranteed.

“This is a multi-layered conflict that combines territorial, nationalist and dynastic grievances. At its heart is a colonial legacy of disputed border territories that have historical significance to both countries and have been used to stoke nationalist sentiments in Cambodia as well as Thailand.”

Alderman said Thailand was initially resistant to any mediation of the conflict that claimed more than 33 lives in four days and........

© The Conversation