While interviewing U.S. Vice President JD Vance on NBC's "Meet the Press" in August 2025, Kristen Welker spoke with Vance at length about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Trump administration's effort to facilitate a diplomatic end to the war. At one point, Welker asked if it would give a green light for China to invade Taiwan and for Russia to invade more countries if Russia were allowed to keep any of the territories it illegally seized.
In response, Vance said that Ukraine will ultimately make the decision on the territorial lines it draws. He then continued by saying every war ends with negotiations. "This is how wars ultimately get settled," Vance said. "If you go back to World War II, if you go back to World War I, if you go back to every major conflict in human history, they all end with some kind of negotiation."
A clip of Vance's quote was viewed over 25 million times on X (archived). The quote was also shared, and questioned, on other social media sites, such as Reddit (archived) and Facebook (archived).
Vance didn't elaborate on what he considered to be a major conflict, but not even WWII ended with a negotiation between the defeated Axis powers and the Allied powers. There are many other examples of wars that did not end with a negotiation. Therefore, Snopes is rating this claim false.
Although both Germany and Japan surrendered during WWII in 1945, the two nations did so at different times. Germany signed an unconditional surrender in May 1945. German General Alfred Jodl proposed a surrender of only the German forces facing the western Allies, but the Allies demanded that Jodl surrender all German forces unconditionally, according to the Truman Library Institute. Jodl replied with a complete acceptance of the Allies' terms. The Allied forces ultimately wrote Germany's act of surrender, which also noted that the United Nations would impose an act of surrender on Germany itself.
Similarly, Japan's surrender in WWII was unconditional, although Japan did attempt to negotiate for at least one condition. Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced his surrender to the Allies on Aug. 9, according to the National WWII Museum. When the Japanese Foreign Ministry transmitted its intent to unconditionally surrender the next day, it stipulated its understanding that the Allies' demands did not require the emperor to step down as Japan's head of state. The Allies responded that they would accept Japan's surrender, but the emperor could remain only in a purely ceremonial capacity. The Japanese Foreign Ministry accepted those terms, and Hirohito announced the country's unconditional surrender to the Japanese people on Aug. 14.
The Allied powers did negotiate with each other over how they'd handle the surrender of the Axis powers in the Yalta Conference and later the Potsdam Conference. But those conferences, the latter of which occurred after Germany's surrender but before Japan's, did not include any of the defeated nations and was strictly between leaders of the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union.
There were supposed to be negotiations to end WWI, but the Allied delegation essentially left Germany "no room for negotiation" in its armistice offer, according to the National WWI Museum and Memorial. In fact, the Palace of Versailles described the Allies rejecting German attempts to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles that officially ended the war:
Negotiations had proved difficult. The treaty had been drafted during a peace conference held in Paris starting on 18 January; but Germany had been shut out of the deal-making, while the Allies debated the matter alone, unable to agree amongst themselves: France wanted to definitively remove the German threat and cripple the country, Great Britain wanted to preserve its status, the USA dreamed of a peaceful world with the establishment of the League of Nations, and Italy wanted to take over the territories it had been promised in 1915. The treaty was eventually presented to Germany on 7 May. It was very harsh. The counter-proposals submitted on the 29th were all rejected. Germany refused to sign. On 17 June the Allies gave Germany five days to decide or have the war resume. Germany accepted the "diktat".
More recently than either of the World Wars, the U.S. backed out of the Vietnam War two years before it officially ended on April 30, 1975. On that day, North Vietnam captured the capital of South Vietnam, Saigon, "and restored peace to Vietnam," according to U.S. Department of State under George W. Bush. There was no negotiation or treaty except for the ceasefire in which American troops exited the conflict two years prior and that only the U.S. abided by. North Vietnam unified Vietnam as a whole under its government upon conquering South Vietnam.