Even if they don’t solve the fundamental issues of a conflict, ceasefires are still preferable to continuing carnage. 

Ceasefires—the stopping of a war without full resolution of the underlying political issues—have not been in vogue lately. A recent feature article in The New York Times lamented that the conclusions of hostilities over the last few years have been nothing but ceasefires and have failed to form the basis for lasting peace. 

The recent change in President Trump’s posture regarding the war in Ukraine has been to abandon support for an early ceasefire in favor of broader peace talks, thus widening the gap between his position and that of most European leaders. Regarding the carnage in the Gaza Strip, the Trump administration is now disparaging the concept of “piecemeal deals” and aiming for something more comprehensive that involves freeing all hostages.

If there is a common thread to all this that reflects a genuine concern for peace and security, rather than just a belligerent’s interest in continuing a war, it is that without the resolution of underlying issues in dispute, a ceasefire may be a prelude to the later resumption of the war.

That is true, of course. A reminder is how Israel did not even wait for the expiration of a ceasefire in Gaza earlier this year and instead violated the agreement in March by resuming its assault. As for Ukraine, although the principal European states still favor an early ceasefire, a focus of their discussions has been how to deter or defend against a possible renewed Russian attack in the future.

Peacemaking, however, is an art of the possible. A full resolution of issues in dispute may be out of reach. When it is, a ceasefire is usually better than no ceasefire. The possibility of a future war is no worse than the reality of a continuing current war. In the meantime, silencing the guns interrupts the resulting death and suffering.

If it seems even possible to resolve issues in dispute amid an ongoing war, this is thanks to modern communications that enable real-time coordination between military operations and diplomacy. This was not the case in earlier eras, except where military command and political authority happened to be unified in the same person, such as Napoleon Bonaparte. The more common structure of war endings in those earlier times included an armistice, possibly accompanied by “preliminary” terms that partially addressed substantive issues, with full resolution of the issues coming only later, in the form of a peace treaty that diplomats negotiated well after combat had ended.

With or without modern communications, the practical inability to achieve full resolution often makes a ceasefire the only alternative to indefinite warfare. A leading example is the Korean armistice of 1953. In the 72 subsequent years, there has been no peace treaty between the two Korean states, yet no resumption of the Korean War either. Although the Kim regime in North Korea has been a nettlesome presence, three years of costly warfare had demonstrated that neither the US-led United Nations forces nor the Communist forces were able to wipe out the opponent on the other side of the 38th parallel.

Even war endings such as that of World War II, which may appear to constitute a definitive resolution of issues that led to the war, actually left many important matters to be resolved later. Japan retained considerable capacity for resistance in September 1945, and what was then commonly termed a surrender could also be seen as an asymmetrical armistice. It took several years of occupation to work out the shape of postwar Japan and its relationship with the international community. 

The United States and most of its allies finally signed a peace treaty with Japan in 1951. The Soviet Union was not part of that. Although Moscow and Tokyo issued a “joint declaration” in 1956 that restored diplomatic relations, there still is no Russian-Japanese peace treaty, largely because of an unresolved territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands. But again, there has been no resumption of the war.

Where the end of one war has seemed to plant the seeds for a later war—with World Wars I and II in Europe being the most conspicuous example—the use of a ceasefire cannot be blamed. The German revanchism that the Nazis exploited was fueled not by the armistice of November 1918 but rather by the punitive terms that European leaders wrote into the Treaty of Versailles the following year. It is implausible that any settlement negotiated while guns were still firing on the Western Front would have been any better on that score.

Sometimes, a postwar arrangement that is out of reach if incorporated into a formal agreement may be reluctantly accepted on a de facto basis by leaders who see no practical alternative. This describes the current situation in Ukraine. The course of the war has increasingly made it appear that Ukraine may never be able to get back either Crimea or the portions of the Donbas that Russian forces now occupy. But any formal cession of territory is too bitter a pill for a Ukrainian leader to swallow. It would be both unpopular with the Ukrainian public and a violation of the Ukrainian constitution. From the international community’s perspective, it would violate one of the most fundamental norms of the international order by formally rewarding aggression.

A ceasefire that does not try to resolve the future status of the relevant territories would leave the same result on the ground, without having to surmount the hurdle of a formal agreement that recognizes that result. A frozen conflict may not be a concept that most people will warm to, but it is better than an unending, boiling conflict. Given the wide gap between the negotiating positions of the belligerents in the Ukraine War and the complexity of the underlying issues, an unending war is likely the result of insisting that the war should not end without first resolving those issues.

In the horrifying situation in the Gaza Strip, which is less a war than a unilateral destruction of a population, each day without a ceasefire is another day of suffering, with dozens more civilians getting killed. Looking more broadly at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, full resolution of the underlying issues would go well beyond the current horrors in Gaza and address fundamental issues of Palestinian self-determination that extend as well to residents of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

Here again, the distinction between de jure and de facto acceptance of a situation, and the role a ceasefire can play, is central. This is true regarding Hamas, even though Hamas is not the main issue in any resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Far from being bent on destroying Israel, Hamas has repeatedly made clear that it would accept an infinitely renewable hudna, or truce, with Israel. In other words, it would be satisfied being part of a Palestinian state living peacefully side-by-side with Israel, as long as it did not have to sign a document that would constitute formal recognition of what it regards as the oppressor of the Palestinian people.

Of course, even a de facto peace may be out of reach as long as the United States supports an Israeli government that is determined not only to destroy Hamas but to ethnically cleanse Palestinians and forever deny them their own state, as well as having additional reasons to continue warfare indefinitely.

Similarly, the biggest barrier to peace in Ukraine is Vladimir Putin’s apparent calculation that Russia’s greater size can enable it to win a prolonged war of attrition, a war Putin launched to reduce Ukraine to a vassal state.

US policy toward these and other conflicts should not be shaped by such obduracy on the part of an aggressive belligerent. The United States should press for an early ceasefire in each case and utilize its available leverage accordingly. If successful, this would curb the suffering, the destruction, and the risks of escalation. It would not preclude later resolution of underlying issues, without holding peace hostage to such resolution.

If a pro-ceasefire policy runs counter to the preferences of a belligerent that is endeavoring to deny the rights and independence of another nation, that is all the more indication that such a policy is right.