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 c

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...