The Art of the Ceasefire
Does this mean we are in an era of endless war, interrupted by temporary ceasefires? I posed this question to Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based think tank Chatham House. “This is what we have been witnessing in the Middle East for a decade now, as the international order has fragmented. Multilateralism has failed, if you will, to achieve peace agreements, and alignments between states have no longer been binary but have worked at cross purposes,” she told me. “This makes conflicts much more intractable and more difficult to resolve. » This phenomenon is exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s pragmatic diplomatic approach, namely his boundless confidence in his negotiating skills and his desire for quick victories. “It’s about the deal, about a short, easy victory, that doesn’t address the underlying roots of the conflicts that are almost certain to resurrect and persist,” Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former negotiator on Arab-Israeli issues for both Republican and Democratic administrations, told me. “It’s the Trump approach to everything.”
Since Trump returned to power, he declared himself the “President of Peace” who ended eight wars around the world. (Recently, he raised that total to ten.) The list includes fighting between India and Pakistan, a border conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Trump administration played a role in brokering ceasefire agreements in these conflicts. None have resulted in a lasting political or military resolution, and in all cases the threat of violent escalation remains high. In his State of the Union address, Trump claimed that U.S. efforts had prevented “a nuclear war” between India and Pakistan. Today, the two South Asian neighbors remain on high alert amid threats of retaliation and reports that both sides are preparing for more war. Clashes between Thailand and Cambodia resumed immediately following the US-brokered deal to withdraw troops from the disputed five-hundred-mile border. These troops are still there and significant mistrust remains a threat to peace. Decades of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan have ended, but unresolved differences remain and neither side has signed a formal, comprehensive peace treaty. In the DRC, Rwandan- and government-backed rebels “continue to strengthen and expand their military capabilities with foreign personnel and weapons despite ongoing peace efforts,” the Critical Threats Project, a U.S.-based research organization, wrote last week. “I wonder how much of these failures are structural, and how much of them are just a function of Trump because Trump has a really hard time resolving conflict,” Trita Parsi, an Iran expert and executive vice president of the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told me. “He’s so impatient and just wants to do a quick photo op, and as a result, he’s glossing over the real disagreements. He’s just creating a pause so he can pretend he’s resolved eight or nine conflicts, whatever the count is these days. But he hasn’t really done anything. Everyone’s kind of OK with that because you don’t want to end up on Trump’s bad side.”
The biggest foreign policy success of Trump’s second term is the twenty-point plan that helped secure the ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas in October. Trump personally pressured reluctant Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the deal and declared, “The war is over.” The ceasefire allowed the release of the remaining hostages, but the multi-step plan postponed the most difficult issues, which remain unresolved. Since October, Israeli strikes have killed hundreds of Palestinians, according to the UN, and Hamas has yet to disarm; its fighters reasserted control over parts of Gaza, paving the way for future conflict with Israel. “Gaza is divided, dysfunctional and sporadically violent,” said Miller of the Carnegie Endowment. “The Israelis have increased their percentage of control. They have killed over seven or eight hundred Palestinians since the agreement. This is not a ceasefire.”
The ceasefire in Lebanon also served no purpose. Trump took credit for the April 16 agreement between Israel and Lebanon, which Iran demanded as a condition for broader negotiations with the United States. “It has been my honor to solve 9 wars across the world, and this will be my 10th, so LET’S DO IT!” Trump posted on Truth Social. The ceasefire, although currently active, has failed to end the conflict. Israeli attacks have killed nearly four hundred people since April 16 and Israeli forces have continued to destroy villages and consolidate their territorial gains in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah, the Lebanese paramilitary force, attacked Israeli troops and targeted northern Israel with rockets and drones. Israel’s practice of regularly violating an active ceasefire has strained Iran’s understanding of its own ceasefire with the United States and Israel. “The Israelis want a state of endless war in which they will do what they did in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank against Iran, which is a lawn-mowing strategy,” Parsi said. “The end state is to be in a constant state of war in which you constantly have the ability to attack these neighbors to ensure that they will never amass enough power to challenge you.” The Iranians, he added, “absolutely will not agree to be part of the Israeli strategy of mowing the lawn. They are not looking for a pause or a half-deal that would only shift the nature of the conflict from one theater to another.”
