After 13 consecutive nights of U.S. strikes on Iran, President Donald Trump paused the bombing campaign, with his ambassador to the United Nations saying the move was intended to give diplomacy “a little bit of room.” Iran said it would halt retaliatory attacks as long as the U.S. pause held, even as Tehran denied seeking a return to negotiations. The sequence—military escalation, threats, and yet another diplomatic opening—has revived an old question: Can other governments realistically forge durable agreements with Trump?

The question extends well beyond Iran. Consider Washington’s dealings with China, the European Union, Canada, Mexico, North Korea, NATO allies, and Ukraine. Across these relationships, a familiar pattern emerges. The central problem is rarely the specific dispute on the table. It is Trump’s basic conception of negotiation. For him, diplomacy is not primarily a way to balance competing interests. It is a means of pressing others to accept America’s terms—and of staging a political victory. That fundamental disagreement over the nature of an “agreement” is what makes lasting deals so elusive.

Conventional negotiation theory, best captured in Roger Fisher and William Ury’s classic Getting to Yes, holds that durable agreements work only when each side believes its core interests have been protected. Lasting settlements depend on reciprocal give-and-take, allowing all parties to save face and claim at least some success at home. Governments remain committed because the benefits of compliance outweigh the costs of withdrawal.

Trump’s bargaining style owes far more to real estate and commercial dealmaking than to traditional statecraft. In business mythology, success often means extracting the greatest possible value while forcing the other side to yield. Transposed to international relations, that instinct turns diplomacy into a contest of dominance. Negotiations cease to be exercises in mutual accommodation and become a scoreboard on which only one side is permitted to win.

That impulse helps explain Trump’s preferred rhetoric: “the greatest deal ever,” “complete victory,” “total surrender,” and “maximum pressure.” These are more than slogans. They reveal a worldview in which any successful negotiation must demonstrate unmistakable American triumph. Within that framework, agreements that produce mutual gains resemble compromise at best—and weakness at worst.

The result is a turn away from positive-sum bargaining toward something much closer to a zero-sum game. Concessions to the other side—sanctions relief for Iran, tariff adjustments for China, or meaningful compromises with European allies—are registered not as sensible trade-offs but as American losses. Genuine diplomacy then becomes exceedingly difficult. No government can present an agreement to its own public as outright capitulation. Leaders need enough political room to describe an outcome as at least a partial victory. When one party insists that only its victory counts, that room disappears.

Trump’s method follows a recognizable script: impose maximum pressure through sanctions, threats, or military posturing, then offer talks, often after the other side has already been squeezed. By the time negotiations begin, Washington’s red lines are largely fixed. The discussion becomes less an exercise in creative problem-solving than an effort to persuade other governments to swallow prepackaged demands.

Such tactics can generate short-term leverage. But they also corrode the trust on which any enduring pact depends. International agreements survive not merely because they bear signatures, but because the parties believe those commitments will withstand political change. Trump’s first-term decision to abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) delivered a stark lesson to capitals around the world: Even formal U.S. commitments may vanish with a change of administration.

Governments now worry not only about the terms of a prospective deal, but also about whether the deal will survive. Entering a major agreement carries substantial domestic costs, including the expenditure of political capital, the risk of public backlash, and, in some cases, difficult legislative battles. States accept those costs only when they have confidence in an agreement’s longevity. When American commitments appear reversible at a president’s whim, the incentive to make painful concessions diminishes dramatically.

Trump’s highly personalized foreign policy further complicates matters. Decisions often appear to depend less on a consistent institutional strategy than on his rapport with individual leaders, his immediate domestic political needs, and the narrative he wishes to advance at a given moment. That personalization erodes predictability, one of the most basic conditions for agreements designed to endure.

The consequences extend far beyond U.S. adversaries. Even close allies are hedging against American volatility. European officials have intensified calls for “strategic autonomy.” China has accelerated the development of financial channels intended to expand the yuan’s international use, while governments across the Global South are diversifying their relationships to avoid excessive dependence on any single superpower. These shifts have multiple causes, but they are united by a growing skepticism that Washington’s commitments can be trusted to survive the next election cycle.

The deepest paradox in Trump’s approach is its combination of military coercion and diplomatic outreach. Defenders argue that pressure can drag adversaries to the negotiating table and secure concessions that more conventional diplomacy could not. In the short term, that claim is not entirely wrong. Yet the latest escalation with Iran also illustrates the strategy’s limits. Intensifying a conflict can harden positions, stir domestic defiance, and raise the political cost of compromise. Pressure may force parties into the same room, but it rarely produces the trust and reciprocal incentives required to make an agreement last.

Ultimately, the difficulty of reaching durable agreements with Trump is not simply a matter of personality or unpredictability. It reflects a deeper disagreement over the purpose of diplomacy. Trump treats agreements as instruments of unilateral victory. Most of the world, shaped by centuries of statecraft, regards them as imperfect mechanisms for managing competing interests through reciprocity and credible commitments. Even a major power cannot impose its entire wish list indefinitely.

That is the challenge confronting governments today. The problem is not merely identifying issues worth negotiating; it is bridging two fundamentally different ideas about what negotiation entails. As long as one side seeks mutual accommodation while the other demands compelled submission, the distance between signing a deal and building something durable will remain vast. Even after the papers are inked, doubts will persist—not only because of the text, but because of the philosophy that produced it. Governments negotiating with Trump will therefore seek more than political assurances. They will want enforceable mechanisms, institutional guarantees, and clear penalties for abandoning the bargain.