It seems like whenever I do hear about one, it’s pretty routinely violated(usually by a particular side like Israel but still). It feels weird to agree to one if there’s no intent to follow through.
Edit: Israel is a pretty clear example; which is that they’re conducting a genocide, but I’ve noticed this in Ukraine/Russia as well
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A ceasefire has a historical meaning, generally they were considered to be a durable agreement, often as a precursor to negotiations or some other attempt to resolve the conflict at hand.
Leaders in the conflicts you’re following actually have no intention of ending hostilities, the underlying contradictions that brought them to conflict are unresolved. However, saying you’re granting or negotiating a ceasefire makes you look like you’re trying to deescalate or be the responsible party.
So they’re agreeing to them for optics, or for limited relief from some of the effects of the war. But since both sides have different agendas they’re not lasting past the point of most expedience. The scary thing is that in the process they are degrading the tools and norms of diplomacy which will impair efforts to actually wind things down when the time comes.
Ceasefire and peace agreements also follow a 19th and 20th century logic of war really being politics and diplomacy by different means. It used to go something like this: you fight a war, you get a winning position where it’s more costly and dangerous to the enemy to keep fighting than to relent somewhat, you declare a ceasefire, extract concessions, and things go back to a tense but peaceful “normal”. Notice how this mostly happened in wars between peer nation states; colonial wars and invasions didn’t really sign treaties until the colonial power decided their position was absolute and they needed to get on with the extraction part ASAP.
Most wars in the 21st century have been wars of anhilation/survival and imperialist expansion, where each part sees the other as a crucial threat to their continued survival, and this logic doesn’t work as well. The tools and doctrine are still the same, because most leaders and institutions still use those norms from the last century, so they’re stuck using the same tools that don’t really work now.
Thank you, that’s was a very helpful explanation
Israel does not want peace. Military industrial complex does not want peace. Oil and commodities speculators (Wall Street) do not want peace. Techo fascists and Zionazis do not want peace.
Trump only did the peace deal to smooth things over the 4th of July weekend. 1 week later
back at it.What I don’t understand is Iran even thinking they could trust a deal. They should say they don’t negotiate with terrorists.
Sun Tzu says “words of peace, but no treaty, are a sign of a plot”
Ask the american indians
You cease, I fire
At least for Iran, the MOU/Ceasefire didn’t change any of the previous positions on the ground, the Strait of Hormuz is still firmly under Iranian control. The most recent ceasefires in the Russian SMO were for the Victory Day parades. I don’t see how a ceasefire really changes anything.
ceasefires require mutual respect. the US respects nothing. grains to heaps.
Because if there’s instability and war in the world there’s a high likelihood America is involved and the trillion dollar army is an excuse for monstrous behavior.
Listen, I joined Blackwater to kill people, not not kill people. I’ll kill all the children I want
-Graham Platner
Depends on each situation. They’re an inherently unstable situation unless they lead to a peace deal or other more permanent resolution.
- Sometimes they’re a precursor to a peace deal or a stage setter for negotiations
- Sometimes they’re a way to buy time to stockpile arms or supplies
- Sometimes they’re for religious/cultural reasons (typically shared reasons like a holiday or to bury the dead)
- Sometimes they’re deceptive so as to mislead an opponent with false intentions
Soldiers do what they want unless command structures are willing to discipline them for their actions.
Low level officers trying to keep control of their squads don’t report it. Or mid level officers trying to keep control of their low level officers don’t report it.
At every level of the command structure you have people playing a social game of trying to ensure that the people under them respect them enough to follow the orders they want them to follow. This results in letting many things go in order to avoid causing cascading morale problems.
You discipline that one dude, all his buddies side with him, all of those people now hate you, that’s a problem.
So ceasefires get broken and command structures don’t even know who specifically it was that did it. Especially when command isn’t particularly committed to the ceasefire and everyone down the chain knows that already.
I once saw someone on here describe the ceasefire agreements as “you cease, we fire”.
Just like Thanos, war (chaos) is inevitable while we ignore a rational living. Justice is important, not?
“As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.”
If you prefer physics over philosofy, think about 3rd Newton law avoiding the right of living beings having 1st Newton law (external forces = lack of respect if bro is not doing anything wrong, right?)
