What does it say about conflict and warfare in our time that it is so hard, in spite of often desperate humanitarian needs, to arrive at a ceasefire – or truce, or armistice or cessation of hostilities, denominations and legal ideas have varied over time, but the problem is the same, or is it?
Historically, the function of ceasefire has been an indispensable first step to peace in a conflict, a requirement for providing a space of calm and reflection on the part of the parties, so that – ideally, and with or without the presence of a third party facilitator or mediator or even arbitrator – way can be paved for orderly and rational deliberations towards a final settlement, peace.
Historically, too, there have been hindrances to arriving at a ceasefire, no matter how urgently needed in order to alleviate human suffering, classical hindrances. Sometimes it is the warring parties remaining uninterested or unpersuadable to consider ceasefire, often because the one party feels it has the current upper hand on the ground and opposes being limited in a continued offensive by a ceasefire, whereas the other party feels it has to improve its positions on the ground before risking a ceasefire that would risk freezing its inferior position. And/or that the mediating third party lacks the necessary leverage, financial, political or otherwise, to impose on the unwilling parties their reluctant acceptance of the mediator’s push towards ceasefire.
There is also the history of a long list of ceasefire cases in which the agreement, imposed or not, has been accepted by the (insincere) parties, knowing that the ceasefire will not hold, being too fragile or artificial, and that you can break it with impunity since you can always blame your opponent for the breakdown, saving for yourself an element of international goodwill. And then there is the factor of international involvement or entanglement which can work both ways, either, if the internationals are united in striving for a peaceful settlement (perhaps out of concern for a wider spread regionally or globally of the conflict) in pushing the parties towards a ceasefire, or in rendering a ceasefire extra difficult because of the entanglement. It all depends on the political context.
But then, and now we are approaching the initial question about today’s warfare, we have the tendency, more pronounced today than earlier, of the parties to refuse commitments to a ceasefire unless negotiations are focusing sufficiently of the root causes of the conflict as well as on the final settlement of the conflict, so that ceasefire is seen and treated rather as the end station than as the first step in a process, ultimately (hopefully) leading to peace. This means blurring the distinction, politically and analytically, between ceasefire and “peace”. It also means a trend, a new trend, for one of the parties (differing roles over time) or both to introduce various kinds and degrees of conditionalities, making it extra hard for mediators to argue for ceasefire. Meanwhile, the suffering of affected people drags on and on.
It is argued here that this trend in today’s world depends on a combination of three factors, distributed differently: 1. The current weakening of relevant institutional/multilateral representatives of the “international community” and foreign entanglement filling the vacuum left; 2. The return to the scene of major inter-state conflicts that tend to become internationalized because of interests at stake in tense state of global affairs; and 3. Military-technological advancements that tend to render difficult both negotiations for ceasefire/peace and any and all concepts of supervision of a ceasefire, temporary or lasting. Clearly, these factors are not exhaustive, but they may help explain the tragic fact that in today’s conflicts, big or small, ceasefires have proved to be strangely hard to arrive at, with tremendous humanitarian costs, as we are witnessing in the abovementioned three cases of Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan.
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Donald Trump, deeply frustrated with an uphill battle with the ceasefire conundrum in his quest for an image of “peacemaker” and the Nobel Peace Prize being the lead attraction, has in recent months had some successes providing comfort and encouragement. The peace process initiated in the protracted and bloody conflict in DRC between Rwandan, Congolese and M23 actors, influenced also by US interests in Congolese minerals, is one example, unsteady and uncertain but still a provider of hope after all these calamitous years. And a few days ago, Trump could be seen together with the leaders of the sworn enemies of Armenia and Azerbaijan, prime minister Nikol Pashinyan and president Ilham Aliyev respectively, the two praising Trump as the master mind of their historical peace treaty and pledging to formally submit a proposal on Trump to the Nobel Committee in Oslo.
But in the cases of Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, a ceasefire has remained elusive, after and in spite of months and years of efforts, and after Trump’s efforts since his return to the White House.
First on Ukraine. At the time of writing the world was nervously awaiting the outcome of the first bilateral Trump-Putin summit since Trump’s return to power. Will there, in spite of almost everything, be an agreement on an unconditional ceasefire as a first step in a process leading to a final settlement, of sorts, as demanded by Ukraine’s president Zelinskyy, backed by strong and unified European support? Or will Putin – whether convincing Trump or not – repeat his long list of conditionalities, such that the question of, and need for, a ceasefire following Putin’s will is -again – kicked as a can down the road, rather as an end product than a starting point for settlement talks? A ceasefire agreement would be a big surprise, given what has been said all along from Moscow and given the military status on the ground and the mountain of uncertainties as regards how a ceasefire agreement would be supervised and by whom (Europeans?), but Trump and Putin are full of surprises.
One of the big questions before the Summit concerns how Donald Trump, for whom a ceasefire deal would be an indispensable feather in the hat, will react in case Putin resists the pressure for an unconditional ceasefire, instead seeking to engulf Trump in his conditionalities and his Russian narrative. We shall know soon. In any case, Ukraine will remain an important example of tremendous difficulties of reaching a ceasefire, in the absence of a third party with credible leverage.
And then the tragic case of Gaza. Incredibly, even after soon two full years of disastrous warfare and tremendous efforts to have the parties, the Israeli government and Hamas, accept a ceasefire that would pave the way for a release of the Israeli hostages, for an orderly negotiation on the future of Gaza and for a release of a massive humanitarian rescue mission for the suffering Palestinian civilians in Gaza, still (at the time of writing) no ceasefire agreement, whether permanent or temporary (as in December -23 and in January -25).
The main reason here is the protracted incompatibility between the war aims of the two sides, with Hamas refusing to surrender completely and hence seeking to survive (using the remaining hostages and Palestinian civilians as shield) by means of a compromise, and with Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition government refusing compromise and seeking “total victory”, hence a decision now to renew a ground offensive into Gaza city. As regards Donald Trump, in recent days preoccupied with preparing the Alaska summit with Putin, the big question has in recent weeks and months been whether there is, or is not, a limit to his support for Israel as led by Bibi Netanyahu and his radical coalition, and if there is a limit, or red line, where is it? Can he indefinitely tolerate Netanyahu over and over again defying the world’s demand for a ceasefire as a necessary prerequisite for handling the Gaza disaster, including propositions to that end by team Trump itself, knowing full well that the US and its White House, or Trump personally is the only actor with the power to seriously influencing a defiant Netanyahu?
Meanwhile, the suffering of starving and bombed-out Palestinians increases by the hour, and families of the Israeli hostages fill the streets of Tel Aviv with their rage and sadness. Rarely in the history of mankind has a ceasefire been so indispensable and still so elusive. For so long.
And finally, Sudan, that “forgotten” tragedy and disaster in a problem-loaded part – besides DRC at al – in Africa, a result of a personal power struggle between two men, Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan representing Sudan’s regular army, the SAF, and the leader of the rebel grouping RSF, Hamdan Dagalo. Here, too, efforts to save the country and its suffering population, at least temporarily, by means of a ceasefire have proved elusive, as demonstrated recently in a high-level US-Sudan meeting in Geneva between the new US envoy for Africa, Massad Boulos (whose son is married to Trump’s daughter Tiffany) and al-Burhan. Boulos brought with him a comprehensive US proposal for a nation-wide ceasefire and a massive humanitarian intervention, but apparently that came to nothing, for now at least, since al-Burhan rejected flatly any role for Dagalo and the RSF in a ceasefire arrangement.
In the continued absence of a ceasefire – due to the attitude and goals of the parties and the absence of a third party with sufficient leverage, whether the UN security council or the US or some other national actor, and the entanglement of neighboring and more distant countries – Sudan has now come to be stamped as the world’s biggest humanitarian disaster in terms of the number of people affected and displaced, and politically there is a clear tendency for the war-torn country to move towards partition, with the RSF entrenched in Darfur and Kordofan and the SAF-dominated part ruling from Port Sudan and the recaptured capital Khartoum.
It remains to be seen to what extent “peacemaker” Trump will display the will and the capacity to prioritize Sudan, among all the other, competitive policy areas.
But in all these cases, Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, achieving – or imposing – a ceasefire will probably prove to continue to be illusive – for the reasons discussed above. Wars, not least in our time, may be easy to start, but are nastily difficult to end.
So the question on how to end wars in our time, and to achieve peace in our time, seems to elude answers.