Trump claims no other US president ever ended a war. Is it true?

During a White House meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President Donald Trump expanded on his oft-repeated boast about ending multiple wars and made an even bolder assertion: That no president had solved even one war before him.

Trump said on October 17 that people tell him, “‘Sir, if you solve one more, you’re going to be known as a peacekeeper.’ So to the best of my knowledge, we’ve never had a president that solved one war, not one war. (George W) Bush started a war (in Iraq). A lot of them start wars, but they don’t solve the wars. They don’t settle them, and especially when they’re not, when they have nothing to do with us.”
The US president is ignoring at least two instances of presidents personally overseeing negotiations that ended other countries’ wars, plus several others in which presidents’ designated diplomats successfully reached peace agreements following negotiations.

“Like a lot of Trump’s statements, it massively exaggerates what he’s done, while ignoring any history of what other presidents have done,” said David Silbey, a Cornell University military historian.

For our analysis, we did not count wars that the United States participated in militarily and won, such as World War II. Trump said he was focusing on wars that “have nothing to do with us”, and none of the eight wars he claims to have ended have primarily involved the US as a combatant.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told PolitiFact that Trump’s “direct involvement in major conflicts, leveraging tools from America’s military might to our superior consumer market, has brought peace to decades-long wars around the world in a fashion unlike any of his predecessors.”
Which wars have been settled by US presidents?
Japan became the first modern Asian power to defeat a European power in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and 1905. President Theodore Roosevelt helped mediate a settlement at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in 1905. Roosevelt was awarded the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the war.By the time President Jimmy Carter brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the White House to sign the Camp David Accords on September 17, 1978, Israel and Egypt had been at war for three decades, alternating between periods of hot and cold war. The agreement was the fruit of negotiations conducted at the presidential retreat, Camp David. Sadat and Begin won the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.
Which wars were settled by US diplomats on a president’s watch?
The Bosnian War
On November 21, 1995, the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia reached an agreement for peace in Dayton, Ohio, ending the Bosnian War, which began in 1992. The primary US officials involved in the negotiations over the Dayton Accords were veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke and Secretary of State Warren Christopher, along with leaders from Europe and Russia. The US president at the time was Bill Clinton.

Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’
The sectarian violence between Protestants and Catholics – known as “the Troubles” – in the United Kingdom-administered Northern Ireland persisted for roughly three decades before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, also known as the Belfast Agreement.

Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell spearheaded it, and it followed shuttle diplomacy – when an intermediary carries out a negotiation by traveling back and forth between the disputing parties – between Washington and Belfast. Clinton was also the president at the time.

Civil war in Sudan
Fighting between the government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, based in southern Sudan, ended in 2005 with the Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement, thanks to negotiations overseen by US Secretary of State Colin Powell. George W Bush was president at the time of the 2005 agreement. In 2011, a referendum led to the creation of a new country, South Sudan.

What has Trump previously said about settling multiple wars?
Trump has often repeated the exaggerated claim that he’s ended six, seven or eight wars.

Trump had a hand in ceasefires that recently eased conflicts between Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, and Armenia and Azerbaijan. But these were mostly incremental accords without a strong likelihood of long-term peace. Some leaders also dispute the extent of Trump’s role.

The US was involved in a temporary peace deal between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, but violence in the region has continued, with hundreds of civilians killed since the deal’s June signing. After Trump helped broker a deal between Cambodia and Thailand, the countries accused each other of ceasefire violations.