Abstract
This article examines how President Donald Trump’s approach to mediation reconfigures US peace diplomacy. Drawing on a mapping of conflict-management initiatives across both presidencies and analysis of the Abraham Accords, the Washington Accords between Rwanda and the DRC, and the Gaza ceasefire-governance framework, it identifies a neo-patrimonial playbook combining personalised elite brokerage, transactional inducement, geoeconomic statecraft, performance, selective institutionalisation and contingent durability. Rather than a complete rupture, Trump intensifies reliance on presidential authority, asymmetrical leverage, partiality and elite bargaining through populist and neo-patrimonial logics. The article contributes to debates on US mediation, populist foreign policy and the practice turn in International Relations by conceptualising Trumpian mediation as a spectrum spanning mediation, brokerage, coercive bargaining and geoeconomic statecraft. This playbook can generate diplomatic movement and visibility, but these effects should not be conflated with substantive conflict resolution: its outcomes remain marked by limited inclusion, contested legitimacy, uneven implementation and contingent durability.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 203-236 |
| Number of pages | 34 |
| Journal | Conflict, Security and Development |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2026 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- diplomacy
- geoeconomic statecraft
- Mediation
- neo-patrimonialism
- performative diplomacy
- populist foreign policy
- Trump administration
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