
Data from over 100 failed ceasefires shows most are followed by offensives - JulianMorrison
http://isnblog.ethz.ch/conflict/ceasefires-dont-work-we-have-the-numbers-to-prove-it
======
munificent
> 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."

~~~
inglor
I just want to point out that I'm living in a country (Israel) that has
ceasefires lasting tens of years (with Syria for example) even when the other
region is in internal conflict.

I'm not saying ceasefires are great but there are plenty of examples where
ceasefire treaties have ended wars. The dataset is extremely skewed.

~~~
pdeuchler
Are we letting this lie because we don't want to start a political debate in
this thread?

I don't mean to make any assumptions about the politics of the parent here
(and apologies if this paints you in an unreasonable light), but personally,
Israel is the last example I would use for successful cease fires[0]

[0] one of many examples, hopefully this one is non-partisan enough:
[http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/54341?lang=en](http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/54341?lang=en)

~~~
bzbarsky
> Israel is the last example I would use for successful cease fires

Because some of Israel's ceasefires have not been successful the successful
ones shouldn't be used as examples of successful ceasefires? I'm not sure I
follow the logic there....

------
digikata
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
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...](http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-hurtgen-forest-temporary-
cease-fires-allowed-assistance-for-the-wounded-soldiers.htm)

[3]
[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/world/asia/harvesting-c...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/world/asia/harvesting-
cease-fire-offers-respite-in-afghanistan.html)

~~~
digikata
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?

------
cjslep
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
Eh, that's more like a proxy war stalemate. It's not quite the same thing.

~~~
ethanbond
What is a ceasefire if not a stalemate?

Also it's not a proxy war to Koreans, obviously.

~~~
avn2109
A stalemate is when the belligerents have fought to a draw.

A ceasefire is when they could fight more but choose not to.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
In Korea, both sides _definitely_ could fight more. So it's a ceasefire.

~~~
hga
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
> 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
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....

~~~
emodendroket
Pretty impressive that a nation of starving imbeciles can have a successful
nuclear weapons program.

~~~
hga
Sort of, it's the least successful known, in that all others managed to light
off a successful "full power" device on their first try, their first was a
sub-kiloton fizzle
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_North_Korean_nuclear_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_North_Korean_nuclear_test)).

However, one should note that they're part of a worldwide network of nations
trying to achieve nuclear status _sub rosa_ , they're definitely not doing it
all by themselves. And of course their _nomenklatura_ that's executing this
nuclear program is by definition not starving. But the bulk of the nation is,
and rather uniquely, that includes the army, and that has _decisive_
implications on their ability to wage a general war against the South.

~~~
emodendroket
I'm a bit skeptical. North Korea is a highly militarized state and highly
dependent on military control. Surely if the military itself is starving we'd
see much greater instability than we actually do.

The most important reason the North can't reasonably go to war with the South
is that the South obviously enjoys US support and nobody would support the
North in such an invasion.

~~~
hga
_Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_

I don't know how the DPRK does it (it's notoriously opaque), but it would be
astounding if they didn't follow the 20th Century Communist model of having
political types police the military. As for the Korean People's Army, a few
minutes with Wikipedia turned up this acknowledgement of direct political
control
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_People%27s_Army#Commiss...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_People%27s_Army#Commission_and_leadership)):

 _The primary path for command and control of the KPA extends through the
State Affairs Commission which was led by its chairman Kim Jong-il until 2011,
to the Ministry of People 's Armed Forces and its General Staff Department.
From there on, command and control flows to the various bureaus and
operational units. A secondary path, to ensure political control of the
military establishment, extends through the Workers' Party of Korea's Central
Military Commission of the Workers' Party of Korea._

Now, this control is not tight like the infamous USSR Red army political
commissars
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commissar#Red_Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commissar#Red_Army)),
as can be discerned by how nowadays army units out in the field on non-
military duty are known to act like bandits. Including capturing and eating
small farm animals before they have to return to their barracks.

So, yes, a degree of skepticism is warranted, but there are too many reports
of this sort of thing to dismiss it. The Soviets certainly squared this
circle, albeit without the spur of pervasive malnutrition ... which, come to
think of it, can put a damper on mutinies and the like, if you barely have
enough energy to survive.

The Soviet approach to civilians, making them spend lots of time gathering the
necessities of life, is another way of suppressing dissent. The PRC was more
direct, get on the wrong side of your block or village political committee and
you'd no longer get your ration coupons and would starve to death. My PRC
roommates in the very late '80s reported this was the biggest effect of Deng
Xiaoping's opening of the food system, changing your fate to having to pay
more for a lot of your food.

------
mzw_mzw
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
Well in the sense that the powers involved in the ceasefire are also arming
the belligerents that's probably true.

------
edblarney
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
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.

~~~
ncallaway
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.

------
tvladeck
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-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/world/middleeast/another-
cease-fire-in-syria-it-could-matter-even-if-it-fails.html)

~~~
throwaway1892
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.

------
noir-york
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
And to calm the public for a while. Maybe have the press find some other
interesting topics.

------
Bartweiss
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.

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

------
emodendroket
Here's the opposite case:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/world/middleeast/another-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/world/middleeast/another-
cease-fire-in-syria-it-could-matter-even-if-it-fails.html)

"The Surprising Science of Cease-Fires: Even Failures Can Help Peace"

------
brador
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.

~~~
vidarh
> I'm sure the civilians appreciate a good cease fire as a time to rebuild
> their lives, even if just a little.

Note the quote towards the end of the article, which expresses the opposite:
Fear that worse will come at the end of it, because that's what happened last
time.

> The alternative of just killing each other until all but one side runs out
> of bodies is not exactly proving better.

I wouldn't say this article proves that your claim is wrong - it's not
providing enough data for that. But _if & the offensives following the cease
fires are sufficiently deadly to make up for the reduction during the cease
fires, it's certainly _possible* that it _is_ better to just keep going.

~~~
notahacker
Even if the post-ceasefire offensive raw casualty numbers are higher it also
matters who is dying and why.

Often the stated purpose of the ceasefire is to allow the civilians to leave,
or to allow the weaker party to surrender or relinquish their positions if
they choose to do so.

------
yk
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.

------
scronide
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.

------
Spooky23
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.

------
midhir
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
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.

------
jheriko
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
Errr, what newspapers do you read? Using this Google search
[https://www.google.com/search?q=us+appologizes+for+bombing+s...](https://www.google.com/search?q=us+appologizes+for+bombing+syrian+troops)
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
train rags like metro mainly. they are not good quality sources, but they have
very wide readership.

~~~
hga
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).

~~~
jheriko
> [http://metro.co.uk/](http://metro.co.uk/)

if you use public transport regularly you would have seen it. its probably the
mostly widely read paper in the london area together with the evening
standard. both are free, and most people don't go out of their way to buy
newspapers any more...

they aren't great sources, but they are also the most often used source of
news by many commuters in the london area

you do get them further afield, but there is not the same scale of public
transport usage.

------
partycoder
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.

------
Pica_soO
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
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?

------
m3kw9
Cease fire is used to buy time, most times both sides understands this

------
doug1001
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.

------
AcerbicZero
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.

------
ihsw
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
_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
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.

~~~
hga
I know nothing about the YPG/J, except what I just looked up to confirm that
they've got a number of Kurds, and my point about Kurds is that in general,
they _aren 't_ good at more than skirmishing.

That a group including a lot them could be formed that's "regarded as some of
the most well-trained and disciplined organizations in Syria" is hardly
incompatible with that observation, especially with US SOF involvement, the
latter something too many forgot or worse after the Vietnam War.

When compared to the typical modern Arab officered army, that they're a lot
more effective against ISIL is hardly surprising; I myself an interested in
how the SDF became so effective, although it could be a "do or die"
existential sort of thing.

"Hama Rules" wasn't intended as a "jab at Hillary", just an observation that
we're in the middle of a very long term conflict, which I'll add won't be
resolved as long as the jihadists lose this round as they did in the early
'80s.

The real jab, that's clearly drawing blood from others, is how they don't like
being reminded of the blood that'll be on their hands after they vote for
Hillary tomorrow.

~~~
ihsw
Well, let me just say that my statement is most definitely still incompatible
with yours: the YPG/J are one of the most well-trained, disciplined, and
professional army in the entirety of the Middle East. Yes, they rival that of
the IRGC in Iran and the TSK in Turkey, but not quite on the level IDF in
Israel.

Their only shortcoming is the lack of heavy weaponry and high-tech training.
That kind of specialty requires special connections or domestic heavy
industry.

How did they become so effective? I would put it as two parts: 1) do-or-die as
you said, and 2) rich history of duty, service, and honor. The former is pure
grit and there is no shortage of that on the radical Islamist side of things
but the latter requires a personal and social investment that is far more
rare.

