How do peace researchers define 'ending a war' versus achieving a ceasefire, and which conflicts meet those criteria?
Executive summary
Peace researchers distinguish a ceasefire—a temporary suspension or limitation of fighting—from the actual “ending” of a war, which is typically marked by a peace agreement or treaty that resolves underlying political issues; some formal instruments such as armistices sit between these poles by halting combat without producing a legal peace [1] [2]. Empirical work shows a hierarchy of cessation types (cessation of hostilities, preliminary ceasefire, definitive ceasefire) with progressively greater durability when they include enforcement, disarmament and reintegration measures—yet many suspensions of fighting never translate into settlement [3] [4].
1. What peace researchers mean by a “ceasefire” versus “ending a war”
In scholarly usage a ceasefire refers broadly to a negotiated or unilateral suspension of active hostilities—ranging from brief truces and humanitarian pauses to formal, territorially extensive cease-fire agreements—but it does not by itself resolve the political causes of conflict or legally terminate a state of war, roles reserved for peace treaties or comprehensive settlements [1] [5]. Peace researchers further parse ceasefires into types: cessations of hostilities (rapid, low‑trust, often nonbinding), preliminary ceasefires with compliance mechanisms, and definitive ceasefires linked to disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR)—the latter most likely to produce durable peace because they restructure the combatants’ incentives [3] [4].
2. Armistice, truce and the legal fog between fighting and peace
An armistice is a formal military convention to stop fighting across a theatre and can approach a de facto end of hostilities, but it is not identical to a peace treaty and may leave belligerents technically at war until a treaty is concluded—classic examples include the 1918 Compiègne armistice that halted World War I fighting before the Treaty of Versailles, and the 1953 Korean Armistice that stopped combat yet left no peace treaty, keeping the peninsula legally in a state of armistice rather than peace [2] [6]. Legal and humanitarian authorities stress that cease‑fires and armistices are instruments to reduce violence or create negotiation space, not juridical ends to war—an important distinction for policymakers and lawyers [1] [5].
3. Which conflicts meet researchers’ criteria for “ended” versus merely “paused”
By the definitions above, conflicts that concluded with a formal, ratified peace treaty are treated as ended in research; World War I moved from armistice to peace treaty and is treated as terminated in that sense [2] [7]. The Korean War, by contrast, despite a durable 1953 armistice, is commonly described in scholarship as not ended because the armistice did not produce a peace treaty and political settlement—parties remain technically at war [6] [2]. Contemporary ceasefires such as those brokered to pause fighting in Gaza are treated as temporary cessations or humanitarian pauses unless followed by comprehensive settlement; researchers caution that such pauses often leave the core political disputes unresolved [3] [8].
4. What makes a ceasefire likely to become an ending rather than a pause
Empirical studies find that ceasefires incorporating costly compliance mechanisms and DDR elements—what scholars call “preliminary” and “definitive” ceasefires—are associated with longer suspensions of violence and a higher probability of evolving into peace, whereas low‑cost cessations of hostilities are vulnerable to relapse and exploitation by parties seeking tactical advantage [4] [3]. Alternative perspectives note the political economy of mediation: third parties sometimes prefer short-term cessations to reduce suffering or to buy time, even when long-term settlement is unlikely, reflecting humanitarian agendas or geo‑strategic interests that do not necessarily align with durable peace [8] [4].
5. Limits of available reporting and implications for assessment
The available sources map the conceptual taxonomy and offer empirical patterns (1990–2019 data) about durability, and document classic case studies like WWI and Korea, but they do not provide an exhaustive list of every conflict’s status; therefore claims about specific modern conflicts must rely on case‑by‑case treaty text and political settlement evidence beyond these summaries [3] [6] [2]. Analysts should therefore judge “ending” versus “pausing” by whether a binding political settlement resolving root causes has been negotiated and institutionalized—not merely by whether guns fall silent—which is the litmus test scholars use to distinguish negative peace from the positive, settlement‑based end of war [9].