Whenever I picture the world President Donald Trump may hand over to the person who follows him, I keep coming back to the same set of questions inspired by his idea for a new White House ballroom.

When Trump leaves office, will that ballroom still be an unfinished frame, or will it stand as a solid, completed project? Will its design problems, or the political controversy around it, make it something the next president cannot easily accept? And after all the money spent, will anyone be able to say it was worth it?

Trump, who has always been a real estate man at his core, is at least deeply invested in that ballroom. He wants it done before January 2029.

He seems far less ready, however, to build permanent answers to the world’s major geopolitical crises — including the Iran crisis he helped set in motion this year.

Trump and the people around him often present sweeping, high-altitude visions that sound impressive when described broadly. But so far, what they have delivered looks more like incomplete fixes than real settlements. They have helped arrange ceasefires in places as distant as Southeast Asia and have outlined a plan for Gaza. Yet the deeper forces driving those conflicts remain unresolved.

Trump still has several years in office to create stronger, more durable agreements. It would be difficult for any American president to solve multiple conflicts that have lasted for decades. But Trump has a habit of declaring success quickly, then shifting his attention elsewhere. Last October, after the Gaza ceasefire, he announced, “At long last we have peace in the Middle East.”

At the same time, he has weakened much of the U.S. government’s ability to do the slow work of peacebuilding. Because of that, his loose arrangements may be followed by new rounds of instability.

One Arab diplomat put it this way: a framework can create breathing room, but a true agreement changes how people act. In the Middle East, the diplomat said, many worry that frameworks become tools for managing crises instead of ending them.

I agreed to keep that diplomat, and several other officials, anonymous so they could speak openly about Trump’s handling of international crises.

Right now, officials from the Middle East and other regions are deeply concerned that Trump may step away from the Iran war before reaching a real resolution. He could accept an open-ended ceasefire. His team might present a polished set of bullet points promising that major issues, including Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missiles, will be addressed later.

But very few foreign officials believe Trump’s team will turn such a framework into a lasting, detailed agreement that begins to answer the fears of all the key players. Those fears include Israeli and Arab concerns over Iran’s support for proxy militias.

Part of the problem is that Trump keeps foreign policy discussions inside a very small circle. He also does not trust the U.S. bureaucracy that could provide experienced staff and technical knowledge. Through budget reductions, agency restructuring and outright dismissals, his administration has removed many government workers who specialized in conflict resolution or in countries such as Iran. Many American embassies still do not have ambassadors in place who could help keep talks moving.

Trump has also repeatedly offended and pushed away important countries that could be useful in building a serious agreement.

A Gulf Arab official predicted that the region could end up stuck in a space where there is neither real peace nor full war, only small clashes from time to time. That official said this may be the situation everyone lives with for a while.

When I asked the White House to respond to these worries, spokesperson Olivia Wales answered by using one of Trump’s own terms to describe the timing of my column.

She said this was being written less than two years into Trump’s presidency, and that while the “Panicans” keep panicking, Trump has shown again and again that people should “Trust in Trump.”

Trump often finds a way to claim victory no matter what the conditions look like.

He says he has already ended at least eight wars, and sometimes says the number is as high as 10. But in several of those cases, what he has actually done is pause fighting or reduce tension in disputes that continue underneath. India and Pakistan have not settled Kashmir. Thailand and Cambodia still disagree over their border. Congolese forces continue to battle Rwandan rebels.

One conflict Trump says he ended was the war between Israel and Iran last June, which the United States entered near the end. Trump did help bring about a ceasefire in that 12-day confrontation. But the question remains whether that was truly a separate war, or merely the opening phase of the war now taking place.

Then there is Gaza.

Trump and his envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, put together a broad, multi-stage framework meant to lead toward a long-term solution. Both Witkoff and Kushner, like Trump, come from real estate backgrounds and have also been involved in Iran talks.

At first, the Gaza plan appears to show careful planning. The ceasefire created by that framework is still holding, even though it has faced repeated pressure. But the time gained by the ceasefire has produced little movement toward a permanent peace.

The “Board of Peace” described in the framework has had trouble defining its role because of limited funding, logistical problems and doubts about its international and legal authority. Hamas has refused to give up its weapons and has mostly restored its control over the areas of Gaza not held by Israel. The proposed International Stabilization Force has not come together, as countries remain reluctant to send troops into an area that is still unsafe. Civilians in Gaza continue to suffer, packed into even smaller spaces than before.

A European diplomat described this kind of situation in literary terms, suggesting that perhaps the administration is more comfortable operating in uncertainty, something like Keats’ idea of negative capability, but applied to politics.

Uncertainty is not always a bad tool in policy. Many presidents have chosen ambiguity when a firm position could create political or security risks, as in the case of Taiwan. But ambiguity can also look weak and produce paralysis, as seen in the Biden administration’s struggle to take a clear position on Western Sahara.

When I tell American and foreign officials that ambiguity and partial measures may simply push problems into the future, they often answer that this is sometimes the only realistic option. Some problems cannot be solved inside one presidential term. And if a leader aims for a perfect, final peace deal, the result may be no deal at all.

Officials in the Trump administration, along with people close to them, urge patience. They argue that Trump and his aides still have time for additional steps and future breakthroughs. They cite the Abraham Accords and Trump’s hard-line China policies from his first term as examples of serious achievements that were carefully thought through.

Alex Gray, who served on Trump’s National Security Council during his first term, said ceasefires and negotiations that address immediate problems should not be dismissed. In his view, only by resolving those shorter-term issues can leaders hope to build more durable peace frameworks and meaningful changes to the world order.

A current Trump administration official added that many talks critics describe as stalled are actually moving forward, but are waiting for the proper moment.

Patience does matter in situations like Gaza, Iran and other long-running conflicts. But the important question is what is done with the time that has been gained. People with negotiation experience say that lasting diplomacy requires constant engagement and a willingness, at times, to pressure allies. It requires expertise. It also requires envoys who are focused intensely on specific problems, rather than officials trying to handle giant crises such as Iran, Ukraine and Gaza all at once.

Even when all those elements are present, a long-term agreement can take many months to complete. The final stage of negotiations for the Good Friday Agreement took almost two years.

A former U.S. official who worked on Middle East issues said Trump and his aides place more faith in speed and pressure than in careful rigor.

At the same time, many current and former officials from the United States and abroad argue that the Trump administration, together with Israel, made the Iran challenge far more difficult by moving into a war without adequate preparation.

Some believe Trump’s narrow and underdeveloped policymaking process led him into war while diplomacy was still possible. Analysts argue that if more American nuclear experts and Iran specialists had been included in the diplomatic conversations with Tehran before the war, they might have helped Trump’s envoys see that Iran had placed a serious offer on the table in February.

It is true that the United States has put an economic blockade on Iran, and that blockade could weaken Iran’s Islamist regime over time. But that same regime now controls the Strait of Hormuz, something it did not control before the war, and that is hurting economies around the world.

Regional officials say Trump and his aides must continue working toward a long-term, multi-layered settlement to the Iran war. The consequences are too large for him to simply look away.

One senior Arab diplomat said the effects are domestic and global, and too significant to ignore — larger than Russia, Ukraine, Gaza and Venezuela.

Dennis Ross, a longtime Middle East negotiator, said Trump’s successor will probably inherit some basic questions. Among them: has the use of force been discredited as an option? And should the United States remove its bases from the region?

If only ending foreign conflicts were as simple as constructing a ballroom.