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Data from over 100 failed ceasefires shows most are followed by offensives

135 points by JulianMorrison 10y ago

cjslep 10y ago
I'm surprised the author didn't mention the outlier for a very long and successful ceasefire (despite numerous border incidents): North Korea/China and South Korea/USA. It would've made the article seem a little more balanced to me.
- JulianMorrison 10y ago
  Eh, that's more like a proxy war stalemate. It's not quite the same thing.
  - ethanbond 10y ago
    What is a ceasefire if not a stalemate? Also it's not a proxy war to Koreans, obviously.
    - avn2109 10y ago
      A stalemate is when the belligerents have fought to a draw. A ceasefire is when they could fight more but choose not to.
      - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        In Korea, both sides definitely could fight more. So it's a ceasefire.
        hga 10y ago
        But you're not counting the "Chinese volunteers" who completely turned around the result of the initial war. After they withdrew, it's very questionable the North could have fought some more.
        Alupis 10y ago
        > it's very questionable the North could have fought some more China didn't enter the war "just because" - the main reason was the US encroachment on the Chinese border. By comparison, it would be as-if China was warring in Mexico, and the US decided to ensure China didn't continue marching northwards. Both China and the US more-or-less stood-down together, which left both North and South Korea in a tough spot - fighting could absolutely continue, however it would have been more of a drag on both nations without their "big brother" support. So, the ceasefire wasn't because one side of the other couldn't continue the fight - it was because both sides _could_ continue the fight, but both recognized it would be devastating for everyone. If we fast forward to today, it's unquestionable both sides (with or without foreign support) could continue to wage war on the other.
        hga 10y ago
        Well, it's demonstrably not "unquestionable", since I question every paragraph you've written above after the first. And most especially the last, for the North can't even feed its own army, and one of the many things standing in the way of reunification is the major difference in intelligence, height, and so on of the respective populations, the North being stunted from malnutrition. The South's hand has been stayed because they've not been willing to take the costs, especially to Seoul, infamously within heavy artillery range of the North, and of course our moderating influence. And now, of course, we've let the North get nukes....
        Alupis 10y ago
        "Could continue the war" isn't the same as "Want to continue the war". The ceasefire is/was a great way for both sides to "save face" and not admit defeat.
        emodendroket 10y ago
        Pretty impressive that a nation of starving imbeciles can have a successful nuclear weapons program.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I can see a decent argument that the Korean ceasefire is qualitatively different; it arose less from an attempt to stop fighting, and more from a conflict where no one wanted to keep fighting but peace terms couldn't be settled. It wasn't envisioned like ceasefires in Syria, Palestine, or Ireland, as a way to stop killings while peace talks happen. Having said that, it certainly deserves mention as an exceptional result. Many of the border incidents have been larger than the events that broke other ceasefires, but the fundamental peace has held.
- hga 10y ago
  despite numerous border incidents And, oh, more than a few attempts to kill the head of the government of South Korea? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangoon_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangoon_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_House_raid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_House_raid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuk_Young-soo#Assassination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuk_Young-soo#Assassination), naval combat ... this is a most hot "cease-fire", just look through the grab bag of topics here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:North_Korea%E2%80%93South_Korea_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:North_Korea%E2%80%93S... I count it as an abandoned armistice, which is what it started out as (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Armistice_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Armistice_Agreement), abandoned through the deeds and words of the North. Which, without another huge helping of "Chinese volunteers" simply lacks the military strength to do a whole lot more without retaliation they, or rather their nomenklatura, aren't willing to bear.
mzw_mzw 10y ago
There is a plausible argument that ceasefires and endless international community meddling make wars worse, not better, because they drag on as open sores for years instead of being resolved one way or the other. Interesting to see some data suggesting that's true.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Well in the sense that the powers involved in the ceasefire are also arming the belligerents that's probably true.
brador 10y ago
Ceasefires don't work... (by these measures we chose). I'm sure the civilians appreciate a good cease fire as a time to rebuild their lives, even if just a little. The alternative of just killing each other until all but one side runs out of bodies is not exactly proving better.
- Tempest1981 10y ago
  Right -- maybe they reduce the intensity of the ongoing fighting.
- JulianMorrison 10y ago
  Looking at the graphs, what they do is allow people to rebuild their lives for a moment - and then send an offensive to trash them harder. That appreciation was misplaced. Not that stopping war is bad, but that ceasefires don't stop a war.
  - brador 10y ago
    The goal of a ceasefire isn't to stop a war, it's to provide breathing room for diplomacy and the possibility of a peaceful solution focused on compromise. In that, it then makes sense that it fails so often to end a war given the parties inherent hatred required to go to war in the modern age.
    - lisivka 10y ago
      All is fair in love and war. Ceasefire can be used for any kind of goal, including to gain tactical advantage.
      - brador 10y ago
        True, ceasefires can be used for many goals, but the goal of the third party who instigates a ceasefire is usually to bring the warring factions to a negotiating table. At least "officially".
noir-york 10y ago
To the contrary, cease fires work very well indeed! The article is just looking at things from the wrong perspective. seem to have been tactical pauses that the <party A> and <party B> used to re-supply and plan further operations The only reason the parties agree to a cease fire is to give themselves breathing room (logistics, maneuvering units, etc) to position themselves better for new offensive ops.
- erikb 10y ago
  And to calm the public for a while. Maybe have the press find some other interesting topics.
Bartweiss 10y ago
The Syrian case actually seems like a pretty unfair place to assess ceasefires, since many of them have been been based on incompatible demands. Just prior to the May ceasefire, the US suggested that it would only hold if Russia ceased bombings on moderate rebel groups. Russia replied that they would do no such thing, and that the ceasefire would only hold if the US considered treaties that would maintain Assad in power. The US, of course, had already rejected that possibility. The ceasefire was implemented, both countries condemned the other for doing the thing they had already promised to do, and it immediately dissolved. Everyone entered into the ceasefire with conditions they knew wouldn't be adhered to, so the whole thing has to be read more as an attempt to look devoted than an actual move towards peace.
AcerbicZero 10y ago
The title is a little bit too clickbaitish for my taste, but after reading the article I'd argue its only large scale ceasefires which have been proven to be ineffective. Small scale, company/battalion/regiment level ceasefires, not designed to stop the war, but designed to reduce the suffering of those wounded still stuck on an active battlefield, have demonstrated plenty of value.
digikata 10y ago
By definition don't ceasefires fail until the conflict is resolved on a long term basis (then in a sense the last ceasefire succeeds). It seems like a variation on the expression - "I always find it in the the last place I looked."
- akiselev 10y ago
  If you're fighting a war you want a ceasefire to achieve any goals made impossible by constant conflict, which may or may not be peace talks. The success of a ceasefire depends on those goals, not on whether or not it ends that conflict. Even during total wars, life must go on and there comes a time when everyone wants a break from the conflict even if they don't see a possible path to peace. For example, there's the famous WWI Christmas ceasefire [1], the WWII mini-ceasefires to help wounded soldiers [2], and plenty of more modern ceasefires that allow the labor pool to temporarily switch from war to agriculture for critical harvests [3]. Edit: Also, just because the peace talks don't succeed doesn't mean that the ceasefire is a failure. Peace is a lot harder to negotiate than a break in the fighting so naturally only a small fraction of ceasefires will result in peace. They fail when not only the peace talks break down, but when one or more sides uses the ceasefire for tactical gain, increasing distrust and making continuation of the peace process that much harder. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce [2] http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-hurtgen-forest-temporary-cease-fires-allowed-assistance-for-the-wounded-soldiers.htm http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-hurtgen-forest-temporary... [3] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/world/asia/harvesting-cease-fire-offers-respite-in-afghanistan.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/world/asia/harvesting-c...
  - digikata 10y ago
    Yes, I didn't intend my comment to mean there should be no ceasefires (or that there always should be ceasefires as a tool for peace for that matter). I think the article has the seed of some interesting data for analysis, but isn't at a strong conclusion yet. What might really be interesting to get to is if one can see in data if certain pre-conditions to ceasefires are associated with an increased likelihood to get to longer term peace - or just that they're not as employed as time to regroup-for-the-next-attack - though it's hard to see in data if those waves would have occurred anyway (there are flareups and lulls in conflict even without cease fires). On the flip side, in a very grim way, could more attacks, more intensely bring the conflict to an end more quickly?
Spooky23 10y ago
The problem here is that the author never really defines what the criteria for a ceasefire's success is. My understanding is that ceasefire is like a "timeout" -- a temporary stoppage to stop/lower the intensity of conflict to give an opportunity for cooler heads to prevail, evacuate wounded, etc.
Pica_soO 10y ago
What actually works, conflict resolving by party separation and having deterrents that could wipe out both sides leaders. Pakistan/India. Iran/Iraq. Russia/America. Conclusion, Nuclear weapons reduce Civil(ized) Wars.
- pizza 10y ago
  Aren't there lower bounds to the size of the parties for which this would be a guarantor of deadlock? As in, does this work at the gang-scale, or smaller organizations where physical violence is substituted with, say, fees?
edblarney 10y ago
I'm not very sure that such things can be compared in the manner they are being compared. Israel has a 'cease fire' with Egypt, Jordan that seems to be working. North/South Korea. Georgia/South-Ossetia. Bosnia/Kosovo/Croatia/Serbia. South Sudan (kind of). And I don't think that anyone is naive about how the one's that failed ended up failing ...
- falcor84 10y ago
  Israel has negotiated and signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. I don't understand in what sense you would say that these are 'cease fires', and how that relates to the article's point.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    Well, prior to the peace treaties, there definitely were armistices. So those armistices worked very well indeed.
  - ncallaway 10y ago
    If we say that a 'cease fire' that later turned into a 'peace treaty' doesn't count as a successful peace treaty then of course it looks like 'cease fires' only result in failures. If the resumption of hostilities qualifies as a failure, then I would have to say a permanent armistice and a peace treaty would have to be qualified as a success.
- rospaya 10y ago
  > Bosnia/Kosovo/Croatia/Serbia. The wars are over for a long time, these aren't ceasfires.
munificent 10y ago
> To systematically illustrate this pattern, I used various sources — news reports, reference books and archival material — to compile a data set of 105 failed ceasefires from 25 different wars. If you filter your dataset to failed ceasefires, why would anyone expect it to show that they work? What I think the data the author used shows is "Of the ceasefires that failed, it would have generally been better not to have had a ceasefire at all". Which is an entirely different thing from "You shouldn't try to have ceasefires at all."
- mnarayan01 10y ago
  Agreed 100%, and I'd go even further: Even the most honest attempt at finding "failed ceasefires" seems likely to over-emphasize ceasefires followed by offensive campaigns.
  - notahacker 10y ago
    Ceasefires that become formal armistices that become peace treaties generally don't continue to be referred to as "ceasefires", for a start..
- tgb 10y ago
  And those which do end, of course, generally end in an offensive, otherwise they wouldn't be worth ending. The question is whether that offensive would have been impossible without the ceasefire.
  - fapjacks 10y ago
    Basically, this work shows that if you're involved in a ceasefire, you had better not stop digging holes and filling sandbags in the interim.
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      How much are you increasing the odds of it failing by digging those trenches? (Or are you decreasing the odds? Both seem possible to me.)
deleted 10y ago
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midhir 10y ago
Being from Ireland I suspect they work best when accompanied by a process to get people an alternative to, and path out of, violence. It took a lot of goes before one stuck here. I have memories growing up of a ceasefire every other day, broken the next. Each ceasefire elicits some sort of confidence issue within the movement and towards their adversaries so that when they fail they often do so catastrophically (Canary Wharf etc). But it only takes one to stick...
- hga 10y ago
  I've recently read an explanation for the end of that conflict that makes the most sense of any I've read, not that I consider myself to be even minimally informed about it, and it was that the series of anti-material bombings that included Canary Wharf is what forced the U.K. to make a peace work, the massive damages to buildings and other infrastructure were just too much to sustain.
m3kw9 10y ago
Cease fire is used to buy time, most times both sides understands this
ihsw 10y ago
The ceasefire in Aleppo city worked pretty well -- once the RuAF siege on the east was lifted, the Salafist-Jihadist forces wasted no time indiscriminately shelling western Aleppo city and killing scores of civilians in a matter of days. At that point the RuAF and SAA had every moral right to respond in kind. It was always expected that there would be violations and it would fail, the idea is that they fail in a manner that benefits The Good Guys(TM). In this case, the al-Qaeda-linked Salafist-Jihadists supported by the CIA and Turkey will now be relegated to the sands of time, fading into obscurity (and rightly so). It is unfortunate that the SDF and related groups (ie: YPG/J) never receive the same political and military recognition that their radical Islamist counterparts do.
- hga 10y ago
  It is unfortunate that the SDF and related groups (ie: YPG/J) never receive the same political and military recognition that their radical Islamist counterparts do. Oh, I don't know, not counting those on the "Alt Right" (for which I'll define here as "the non-'neocon' Right, we have a lot more respect for the SDF in particular, the Kurds, not so much as soldiers vs. e.g. skirmishers), for tomorrow the rest of the US goes to vote to decide the outcome between one person who had a major hand in creating the contours of this outbreak of this conflict ("Hama Rules" reminds us it's quite a bit older than when any of these people having a role in it), and someone who'd be satisfied if the SDF and related groups terminate the Salafist-Jihadists et. al. with extreme prejudice and (start to?) return a semblance of peace to the region. Hmmm, as for the latter case, it wouldn't be the first time a US president had a major fight on his hand with "his own" CIA....
  - ihsw 10y ago
    I'm not sure what point you're trying to make from that incoherent babbling, but let's make one thing clear -- the YPG/J are regarded as some of the most well-trained and disciplined organizations in Syria. They're able to make great strides against Isil with minimal backpedaling, engaging in the toughest counter-terrorism and guerrilla operations the world has ever seen, in addition to long-lasting success in large-scale conventional warfare. US SOF have been very tightly embedded with them for a relatively lengthy period of time and the effects are definitely apparent. Their power structure is clearly defined compared to the FSA and other radical Islamists, whom are bereft with nepotism and weak professional cohesion, and I'm certain the schism within the current administration is between the US State Department+CIA and the US DOD. As for your jab at Hillary with your "Hama Rules" reference and your subtle allusion to whether Trump supports the SDF -- I am willing to argue that Hillary is just as clueless to the Middle East as Trump. The former will defer to our partners in the Middle East (eg: Gulf monarchies, Turkey) and pursue a policy of leading from behind while the latter will go with the status quo. Frankly I'd prefer the latter as the situation is unstable but there is definitely a positive trend with regards to knocking radical Islamist ideology down a couple notches.
scronide 10y ago
This is a odd generalization and mischaracterization of ceasefires. There's nothing intrinsically magical about a ceasefire. You can only truly judge their success by their circumstances and goals, not what happens after they end. We wouldn't have the peace we have now in Northern Ireland without negotiated ceasefires.
partycoder 10y ago
North and South Korea have been in cease fire for a while now. I think what won't stop are proxy wars, because a proxy war is more viable than a direct confrontation. In a world where economies are interconnected and interdependent you cannot afford a world among major [super]?powers.
yk 10y ago
I do not really find that surprising. The way I think about the observation is as an iterated prisoners dilemma, in which both sides have a history of defect. To expand a bit, wars happen when both sides prefer war to the terms of peace (and in this game theoretic view "terms of peace" does not include any assumption of reasonability, for one side "terms of peace" may well be getting annihilated), plus of course a breakdown of trust. So each side has to prepare for the defection of the other side and neither side trusts that the other side will stick to the cease fire, and has therefore an incentive to attack first.
emodendroket 10y ago
Here's the opposite case: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/world/middleeast/another-cease-fire-in-syria-it-could-matter-even-if-it-fails.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/world/middleeast/another-c... "The Surprising Science of Cease-Fires: Even Failures Can Help Peace"
doug1001 10y ago
not surprising--what i think is more interesting though is the why they don't work. I suspect casefires often fail despite both parties best intentions and efforts to properly execute a ceasefire. i've seen the term "prisoner's dilemma" in the comments here, and that's absolutely what it is--a game theoretic problem in which the strictly dominated strategy is to violate the ceasefire. In my experience (USMC infantry) a ceasefire requires an extraordinary degree of precise orchestration along both axes (vertically: squad -> platoon -> company -> battalion - brigade; and horizontally: infantry -> artillery -> air assets -> logistics). Add to that the difficulty of coordinating your own ceasefire effort with your enemy--while they are (ostensibly) trying to doing the same thing. the fact is that once a cease fire is agreed upon, and an authentic message delivered up and down the commands in battle, tanks and artillery will still continue to fire to allow the infantry to disengage. but what's the safest way to disengage with someone who's shooting at you? It depends. Troops in a defensive posture (i.e., "dug in") are highly unlikely to vacate their relatively safe positions because to do so means raising their exposure to enemy fire--and indeed they are still active during the casefire. so for instance to induce the infantry to withdrawal, indirect fire--artillery, mortars, tanks, air assets--will often substantially increase immediately after a ceasefire is communicated. Again, this is normal. But it just takes one officer who doesn't understand this and who thinks the other side has reneged and orders his unit to continue to attack the opposing infantry unit, which is now vulnerable having vacated their carefully prepared defensive positions.
M_Grey 10y ago
"We've abused these numbers to make a point the numbers themselves cannot support." -More honest headline.
tvladeck 10y ago
This is false (or at least a poor interpretation of the data). Ceasefires make it more likely that future ceasefires will succeed. Steven Pinker and others have looked into this extensively. Here is a write-up of the opposing take. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/world/middleeast/another-cease-fire-in-syria-it-could-matter-even-if-it-fails.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/world/middleeast/another-c...
- throwaway1892 10y ago
  Thank you for the link. This study is more interesting since it is showing how ceasefires succeed and fail and offer an explanation on how they work, which is more enlightening that the original article.
jheriko 10y ago
its kind of an interesting article, but the thing that snagged me and wouldn't leave my mind was this: > when U.S. aircraft mistakenly killed about 80 Syrian troops. you mean, it fell apart because of america and not russia like the newspapers said? and they never retracted it so they must have been right? i'm so glad i live in the west where our media is unbiased ¬ (i really wish i wasn't joking about that :()
- hga 10y ago
  Errr, what newspapers do you read? Using this Google search https://www.google.com/search?q=us+appologizes+for+bombing+syrian+troops https://www.google.com/search?q=us+appologizes+for+bombing+s... I find this errant bombing and often Obama's apology reported by the NYT, The Guardian and the Daily Mail (really, a lot better than the other tabloids) as just the most prominent papers on the first page, along with FoxNews (well, Murdoch does have papers as well), going to the 2nd page, The Telegraph and the BBC (non-newspaper) ... it's a pretty thorough cross section of the Left through the Right (most of the latter not mentioned in this posting).... Our intervention in that mess has been so maladroit, especially as of late, that pretty much everyone in the US is unfavorably reporting on it.
  - jheriko 10y ago
    train rags like metro mainly. they are not good quality sources, but they have very wide readership.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - hga 10y ago
      Not familiar with that one (can you supply a link to a website?), but since the Daily Mail's coverage of this is better.... Then again, the thing that's astounded me about the Daily Mail is just how good its reporting of very current events can be, including stuff that you might think would be obscure to it like the EF-5 tornado that ripped through my home city 4,500 miles away. Well, it killed 160, so "if it bleeds, it leads", but, still, their reporting on it was timely, accurate, and their collection of pictures was better than any paper in the region, two of which I snarfed for my own page on it.... Whereas I have nothing good to say about its tabloid competitors (and despair at what the Torygraph has become, etc. etc. but that's for another discussion).

135 points by JulianMorrison 10y ago

I'm surprised the author didn't mention the outlier for a very long and successful ceasefire (despite numerous border incidents): North Korea/China and South Korea/USA. It would've made the article seem a little more balanced to me.

JulianMorrison 10y ago
Eh, that's more like a proxy war stalemate. It's not quite the same thing.
- ethanbond 10y ago
  What is a ceasefire if not a stalemate? Also it's not a proxy war to Koreans, obviously.
  - avn2109 10y ago
    A stalemate is when the belligerents have fought to a draw. A ceasefire is when they could fight more but choose not to.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      In Korea, both sides definitely could fight more. So it's a ceasefire.
      - hga 10y ago
        But you're not counting the "Chinese volunteers" who completely turned around the result of the initial war. After they withdrew, it's very questionable the North could have fought some more.
        Alupis 10y ago
        > it's very questionable the North could have fought some more China didn't enter the war "just because" - the main reason was the US encroachment on the Chinese border. By comparison, it would be as-if China was warring in Mexico, and the US decided to ensure China didn't continue marching northwards. Both China and the US more-or-less stood-down together, which left both North and South Korea in a tough spot - fighting could absolutely continue, however it would have been more of a drag on both nations without their "big brother" support. So, the ceasefire wasn't because one side of the other couldn't continue the fight - it was because both sides _could_ continue the fight, but both recognized it would be devastating for everyone. If we fast forward to today, it's unquestionable both sides (with or without foreign support) could continue to wage war on the other.
        hga 10y ago
        Well, it's demonstrably not "unquestionable", since I question every paragraph you've written above after the first. And most especially the last, for the North can't even feed its own army, and one of the many things standing in the way of reunification is the major difference in intelligence, height, and so on of the respective populations, the North being stunted from malnutrition. The South's hand has been stayed because they've not been willing to take the costs, especially to Seoul, infamously within heavy artillery range of the North, and of course our moderating influence. And now, of course, we've let the North get nukes....
        Alupis 10y ago
        "Could continue the war" isn't the same as "Want to continue the war". The ceasefire is/was a great way for both sides to "save face" and not admit defeat.
        emodendroket 10y ago
        Pretty impressive that a nation of starving imbeciles can have a successful nuclear weapons program.
Bartweiss 10y ago
I can see a decent argument that the Korean ceasefire is qualitatively different; it arose less from an attempt to stop fighting, and more from a conflict where no one wanted to keep fighting but peace terms couldn't be settled. It wasn't envisioned like ceasefires in Syria, Palestine, or Ireland, as a way to stop killings while peace talks happen. Having said that, it certainly deserves mention as an exceptional result. Many of the border incidents have been larger than the events that broke other ceasefires, but the fundamental peace has held.
hga 10y ago
despite numerous border incidents And, oh, more than a few attempts to kill the head of the government of South Korea? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangoon_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangoon_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_House_raid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_House_raid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuk_Young-soo#Assassination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuk_Young-soo#Assassination), naval combat ... this is a most hot "cease-fire", just look through the grab bag of topics here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:North_Korea%E2%80%93South_Korea_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:North_Korea%E2%80%93S... I count it as an abandoned armistice, which is what it started out as (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Armistice_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Armistice_Agreement), abandoned through the deeds and words of the North. Which, without another huge helping of "Chinese volunteers" simply lacks the military strength to do a whole lot more without retaliation they, or rather their nomenklatura, aren't willing to bear.

mzw_mzw 10y ago

There is a plausible argument that ceasefires and endless international community meddling make wars worse, not better, because they drag on as open sores for years instead of being resolved one way or the other. Interesting to see some data suggesting that's true.

emodendroket 10y ago
Well in the sense that the powers involved in the ceasefire are also arming the belligerents that's probably true.

brador 10y ago

Ceasefires don't work... (by these measures we chose). I'm sure the civilians appreciate a good cease fire as a time to rebuild their lives, even if just a little. The alternative of just killing each other until all but one side runs out of bodies is not exactly proving better.

Tempest1981 10y ago
Right -- maybe they reduce the intensity of the ongoing fighting.
JulianMorrison 10y ago
Looking at the graphs, what they do is allow people to rebuild their lives for a moment - and then send an offensive to trash them harder. That appreciation was misplaced. Not that stopping war is bad, but that ceasefires don't stop a war.
- brador 10y ago
  The goal of a ceasefire isn't to stop a war, it's to provide breathing room for diplomacy and the possibility of a peaceful solution focused on compromise. In that, it then makes sense that it fails so often to end a war given the parties inherent hatred required to go to war in the modern age.
  - lisivka 10y ago
    All is fair in love and war. Ceasefire can be used for any kind of goal, including to gain tactical advantage.
    - brador 10y ago
      True, ceasefires can be used for many goals, but the goal of the third party who instigates a ceasefire is usually to bring the warring factions to a negotiating table. At least "officially".

noir-york 10y ago

To the contrary, cease fires work very well indeed! The article is just looking at things from the wrong perspective. seem to have been tactical pauses that the <party A> and <party B> used to re-supply and plan further operations The only reason the parties agree to a cease fire is to give themselves breathing room (logistics, maneuvering units, etc) to position themselves better for new offensive ops.

erikb 10y ago
And to calm the public for a while. Maybe have the press find some other interesting topics.

Bartweiss 10y ago

The Syrian case actually seems like a pretty unfair place to assess ceasefires, since many of them have been been based on incompatible demands. Just prior to the May ceasefire, the US suggested that it would only hold if Russia ceased bombings on moderate rebel groups. Russia replied that they would do no such thing, and that the ceasefire would only hold if the US considered treaties that would maintain Assad in power. The US, of course, had already rejected that possibility. The ceasefire was implemented, both countries condemned the other for doing the thing they had already promised to do, and it immediately dissolved. Everyone entered into the ceasefire with conditions they knew wouldn't be adhered to, so the whole thing has to be read more as an attempt to look devoted than an actual move towards peace.

AcerbicZero 10y ago

The title is a little bit too clickbaitish for my taste, but after reading the article I'd argue its only large scale ceasefires which have been proven to be ineffective. Small scale, company/battalion/regiment level ceasefires, not designed to stop the war, but designed to reduce the suffering of those wounded still stuck on an active battlefield, have demonstrated plenty of value.

digikata 10y ago

By definition don't ceasefires fail until the conflict is resolved on a long term basis (then in a sense the last ceasefire succeeds). It seems like a variation on the expression - "I always find it in the the last place I looked."

akiselev 10y ago
If you're fighting a war you want a ceasefire to achieve any goals made impossible by constant conflict, which may or may not be peace talks. The success of a ceasefire depends on those goals, not on whether or not it ends that conflict. Even during total wars, life must go on and there comes a time when everyone wants a break from the conflict even if they don't see a possible path to peace. For example, there's the famous WWI Christmas ceasefire [1], the WWII mini-ceasefires to help wounded soldiers [2], and plenty of more modern ceasefires that allow the labor pool to temporarily switch from war to agriculture for critical harvests [3]. Edit: Also, just because the peace talks don't succeed doesn't mean that the ceasefire is a failure. Peace is a lot harder to negotiate than a break in the fighting so naturally only a small fraction of ceasefires will result in peace. They fail when not only the peace talks break down, but when one or more sides uses the ceasefire for tactical gain, increasing distrust and making continuation of the peace process that much harder. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce [2] http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-hurtgen-forest-temporary-cease-fires-allowed-assistance-for-the-wounded-soldiers.htm http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-hurtgen-forest-temporary... [3] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/world/asia/harvesting-cease-fire-offers-respite-in-afghanistan.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/world/asia/harvesting-c...
- digikata 10y ago
  Yes, I didn't intend my comment to mean there should be no ceasefires (or that there always should be ceasefires as a tool for peace for that matter). I think the article has the seed of some interesting data for analysis, but isn't at a strong conclusion yet. What might really be interesting to get to is if one can see in data if certain pre-conditions to ceasefires are associated with an increased likelihood to get to longer term peace - or just that they're not as employed as time to regroup-for-the-next-attack - though it's hard to see in data if those waves would have occurred anyway (there are flareups and lulls in conflict even without cease fires). On the flip side, in a very grim way, could more attacks, more intensely bring the conflict to an end more quickly?

Spooky23 10y ago

The problem here is that the author never really defines what the criteria for a ceasefire's success is. My understanding is that ceasefire is like a "timeout" -- a temporary stoppage to stop/lower the intensity of conflict to give an opportunity for cooler heads to prevail, evacuate wounded, etc.

Pica_soO 10y ago

What actually works, conflict resolving by party separation and having deterrents that could wipe out both sides leaders. Pakistan/India. Iran/Iraq. Russia/America. Conclusion, Nuclear weapons reduce Civil(ized) Wars.

pizza 10y ago
Aren't there lower bounds to the size of the parties for which this would be a guarantor of deadlock? As in, does this work at the gang-scale, or smaller organizations where physical violence is substituted with, say, fees?

edblarney 10y ago

I'm not very sure that such things can be compared in the manner they are being compared. Israel has a 'cease fire' with Egypt, Jordan that seems to be working. North/South Korea. Georgia/South-Ossetia. Bosnia/Kosovo/Croatia/Serbia. South Sudan (kind of). And I don't think that anyone is naive about how the one's that failed ended up failing ...

falcor84 10y ago
Israel has negotiated and signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. I don't understand in what sense you would say that these are 'cease fires', and how that relates to the article's point.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  Well, prior to the peace treaties, there definitely were armistices. So those armistices worked very well indeed.
- ncallaway 10y ago
  If we say that a 'cease fire' that later turned into a 'peace treaty' doesn't count as a successful peace treaty then of course it looks like 'cease fires' only result in failures. If the resumption of hostilities qualifies as a failure, then I would have to say a permanent armistice and a peace treaty would have to be qualified as a success.
rospaya 10y ago
> Bosnia/Kosovo/Croatia/Serbia. The wars are over for a long time, these aren't ceasfires.

munificent 10y ago

> To systematically illustrate this pattern, I used various sources — news reports, reference books and archival material — to compile a data set of 105 failed ceasefires from 25 different wars. If you filter your dataset to failed ceasefires, why would anyone expect it to show that they work? What I think the data the author used shows is "Of the ceasefires that failed, it would have generally been better not to have had a ceasefire at all". Which is an entirely different thing from "You shouldn't try to have ceasefires at all."

mnarayan01 10y ago
Agreed 100%, and I'd go even further: Even the most honest attempt at finding "failed ceasefires" seems likely to over-emphasize ceasefires followed by offensive campaigns.
- notahacker 10y ago
  Ceasefires that become formal armistices that become peace treaties generally don't continue to be referred to as "ceasefires", for a start..
tgb 10y ago
And those which do end, of course, generally end in an offensive, otherwise they wouldn't be worth ending. The question is whether that offensive would have been impossible without the ceasefire.
- fapjacks 10y ago
  Basically, this work shows that if you're involved in a ceasefire, you had better not stop digging holes and filling sandbags in the interim.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    How much are you increasing the odds of it failing by digging those trenches? (Or are you decreasing the odds? Both seem possible to me.)

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midhir 10y ago

Being from Ireland I suspect they work best when accompanied by a process to get people an alternative to, and path out of, violence. It took a lot of goes before one stuck here. I have memories growing up of a ceasefire every other day, broken the next. Each ceasefire elicits some sort of confidence issue within the movement and towards their adversaries so that when they fail they often do so catastrophically (Canary Wharf etc). But it only takes one to stick...

hga 10y ago
I've recently read an explanation for the end of that conflict that makes the most sense of any I've read, not that I consider myself to be even minimally informed about it, and it was that the series of anti-material bombings that included Canary Wharf is what forced the U.K. to make a peace work, the massive damages to buildings and other infrastructure were just too much to sustain.

m3kw9 10y ago

Cease fire is used to buy time, most times both sides understands this

ihsw 10y ago

The ceasefire in Aleppo city worked pretty well -- once the RuAF siege on the east was lifted, the Salafist-Jihadist forces wasted no time indiscriminately shelling western Aleppo city and killing scores of civilians in a matter of days. At that point the RuAF and SAA had every moral right to respond in kind. It was always expected that there would be violations and it would fail, the idea is that they fail in a manner that benefits The Good Guys(TM). In this case, the al-Qaeda-linked Salafist-Jihadists supported by the CIA and Turkey will now be relegated to the sands of time, fading into obscurity (and rightly so). It is unfortunate that the SDF and related groups (ie: YPG/J) never receive the same political and military recognition that their radical Islamist counterparts do.

hga 10y ago
It is unfortunate that the SDF and related groups (ie: YPG/J) never receive the same political and military recognition that their radical Islamist counterparts do. Oh, I don't know, not counting those on the "Alt Right" (for which I'll define here as "the non-'neocon' Right, we have a lot more respect for the SDF in particular, the Kurds, not so much as soldiers vs. e.g. skirmishers), for tomorrow the rest of the US goes to vote to decide the outcome between one person who had a major hand in creating the contours of this outbreak of this conflict ("Hama Rules" reminds us it's quite a bit older than when any of these people having a role in it), and someone who'd be satisfied if the SDF and related groups terminate the Salafist-Jihadists et. al. with extreme prejudice and (start to?) return a semblance of peace to the region. Hmmm, as for the latter case, it wouldn't be the first time a US president had a major fight on his hand with "his own" CIA....
- ihsw 10y ago
  I'm not sure what point you're trying to make from that incoherent babbling, but let's make one thing clear -- the YPG/J are regarded as some of the most well-trained and disciplined organizations in Syria. They're able to make great strides against Isil with minimal backpedaling, engaging in the toughest counter-terrorism and guerrilla operations the world has ever seen, in addition to long-lasting success in large-scale conventional warfare. US SOF have been very tightly embedded with them for a relatively lengthy period of time and the effects are definitely apparent. Their power structure is clearly defined compared to the FSA and other radical Islamists, whom are bereft with nepotism and weak professional cohesion, and I'm certain the schism within the current administration is between the US State Department+CIA and the US DOD. As for your jab at Hillary with your "Hama Rules" reference and your subtle allusion to whether Trump supports the SDF -- I am willing to argue that Hillary is just as clueless to the Middle East as Trump. The former will defer to our partners in the Middle East (eg: Gulf monarchies, Turkey) and pursue a policy of leading from behind while the latter will go with the status quo. Frankly I'd prefer the latter as the situation is unstable but there is definitely a positive trend with regards to knocking radical Islamist ideology down a couple notches.

scronide 10y ago

This is a odd generalization and mischaracterization of ceasefires. There's nothing intrinsically magical about a ceasefire. You can only truly judge their success by their circumstances and goals, not what happens after they end. We wouldn't have the peace we have now in Northern Ireland without negotiated ceasefires.

partycoder 10y ago

North and South Korea have been in cease fire for a while now. I think what won't stop are proxy wars, because a proxy war is more viable than a direct confrontation. In a world where economies are interconnected and interdependent you cannot afford a world among major [super]?powers.

yk 10y ago

I do not really find that surprising. The way I think about the observation is as an iterated prisoners dilemma, in which both sides have a history of defect. To expand a bit, wars happen when both sides prefer war to the terms of peace (and in this game theoretic view "terms of peace" does not include any assumption of reasonability, for one side "terms of peace" may well be getting annihilated), plus of course a breakdown of trust. So each side has to prepare for the defection of the other side and neither side trusts that the other side will stick to the cease fire, and has therefore an incentive to attack first.

emodendroket 10y ago

Here's the opposite case: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/world/middleeast/another-cease-fire-in-syria-it-could-matter-even-if-it-fails.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/world/middleeast/another-c... "The Surprising Science of Cease-Fires: Even Failures Can Help Peace"

doug1001 10y ago

not surprising--what i think is more interesting though is the why they don't work. I suspect casefires often fail despite both parties best intentions and efforts to properly execute a ceasefire. i've seen the term "prisoner's dilemma" in the comments here, and that's absolutely what it is--a game theoretic problem in which the strictly dominated strategy is to violate the ceasefire. In my experience (USMC infantry) a ceasefire requires an extraordinary degree of precise orchestration along both axes (vertically: squad -> platoon -> company -> battalion - brigade; and horizontally: infantry -> artillery -> air assets -> logistics). Add to that the difficulty of coordinating your own ceasefire effort with your enemy--while they are (ostensibly) trying to doing the same thing. the fact is that once a cease fire is agreed upon, and an authentic message delivered up and down the commands in battle, tanks and artillery will still continue to fire to allow the infantry to disengage. but what's the safest way to disengage with someone who's shooting at you? It depends. Troops in a defensive posture (i.e., "dug in") are highly unlikely to vacate their relatively safe positions because to do so means raising their exposure to enemy fire--and indeed they are still active during the casefire. so for instance to induce the infantry to withdrawal, indirect fire--artillery, mortars, tanks, air assets--will often substantially increase immediately after a ceasefire is communicated. Again, this is normal. But it just takes one officer who doesn't understand this and who thinks the other side has reneged and orders his unit to continue to attack the opposing infantry unit, which is now vulnerable having vacated their carefully prepared defensive positions.

M_Grey 10y ago

"We've abused these numbers to make a point the numbers themselves cannot support." -More honest headline.

tvladeck 10y ago

This is false (or at least a poor interpretation of the data). Ceasefires make it more likely that future ceasefires will succeed. Steven Pinker and others have looked into this extensively. Here is a write-up of the opposing take. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/world/middleeast/another-cease-fire-in-syria-it-could-matter-even-if-it-fails.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/world/middleeast/another-c...

throwaway1892 10y ago
Thank you for the link. This study is more interesting since it is showing how ceasefires succeed and fail and offer an explanation on how they work, which is more enlightening that the original article.

jheriko 10y ago

its kind of an interesting article, but the thing that snagged me and wouldn't leave my mind was this: > when U.S. aircraft mistakenly killed about 80 Syrian troops. you mean, it fell apart because of america and not russia like the newspapers said? and they never retracted it so they must have been right? i'm so glad i live in the west where our media is unbiased ¬ (i really wish i wasn't joking about that :()

hga 10y ago
Errr, what newspapers do you read? Using this Google search https://www.google.com/search?q=us+appologizes+for+bombing+syrian+troops https://www.google.com/search?q=us+appologizes+for+bombing+s... I find this errant bombing and often Obama's apology reported by the NYT, The Guardian and the Daily Mail (really, a lot better than the other tabloids) as just the most prominent papers on the first page, along with FoxNews (well, Murdoch does have papers as well), going to the 2nd page, The Telegraph and the BBC (non-newspaper) ... it's a pretty thorough cross section of the Left through the Right (most of the latter not mentioned in this posting).... Our intervention in that mess has been so maladroit, especially as of late, that pretty much everyone in the US is unfavorably reporting on it.
- jheriko 10y ago
  train rags like metro mainly. they are not good quality sources, but they have very wide readership.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - hga 10y ago
    Not familiar with that one (can you supply a link to a website?), but since the Daily Mail's coverage of this is better.... Then again, the thing that's astounded me about the Daily Mail is just how good its reporting of very current events can be, including stuff that you might think would be obscure to it like the EF-5 tornado that ripped through my home city 4,500 miles away. Well, it killed 160, so "if it bleeds, it leads", but, still, their reporting on it was timely, accurate, and their collection of pictures was better than any paper in the region, two of which I snarfed for my own page on it.... Whereas I have nothing good to say about its tabloid competitors (and despair at what the Torygraph has become, etc. etc. but that's for another discussion).