Upon returning to the US after his symbolically powerful meeting with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, at St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, President Donald Trump told reporters: “I think [Zelensky] wants to make a deal.” He also called for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to “sit down and sign the [peace] deal” that is reportedly in the works.
Such talk of “deals” has been common in recent months. Indeed, as international engagement with conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza has intensified, there has been a sharp spike, globally, in use of the term “peace deal”. At the same time, data from Google Trends suggests there has not been a similar increase in talk of “peace agreement[s]”.
This is perhaps surprising as, up to now, language surrounding peace negotiations has focused on building agreements, not deals. A search of the PA-X Peace Agreements database at the University of Edinburgh identifies more than 800 separate peace accords since 1990 that include “agreement”“ in their title. A similar search for the term "deal” returns one record.
