US president-elect Donald Trump has vowed to end wars. In line with his “America First” philosophy, he has prioritised those that drain the US treasury: the conflicts in Ukraine and the Levant.
Those appalled by the immense suffering from these wars will applaud their ending. Mr Trump aims to achieve this by “peace through strength” at the core of which is pre-emptive deterrence. His fans emphasise that his 2017-2021 spell in office was the most peaceful of recent US presidencies, despite progressive post-millennium turbulence. Whether that can be credited to Mr Trump or whether his policies seeded subsequent conflicts can be debated.
While the recent White House victors are impatient to make history, could they benefit from past lessons?
Wars appear to be the collective manifestation of the common human proclivity towards violence that is usually triggered by a combination of greed and grievance. These are, therefore, calculated acts that cannot be dismissed as irrational moves by unpredictable leaders.
Greed refers to the unjustified grabbing of someone’s territory, resources or power. This includes previous colonial European empires, and latter-day coups for authoritarian control as recently in the Sahel.
Wars of grievance include anti-colonial and anti-dictatorship struggles for rights and representation. There are many examples, including the US itself. Manufactured grievances are seen with the Cold War’s ideological battles, and religious conflicts such as by ISIS.
Wars, per se, are not prohibited. The UN Charter allows wars of self-defence and reserves the right to wage war – known as peacekeeping or peace-enforcement – when sanctioned by the Security Council.
But wars must be “just”, a concept with long religious rationale and now part of international law. Its key conditions are that wars must be declared openly, pursue a decent cause, such as defending a common good or opposing grave wrongs, and warriors must not seek revenge or self-interest.
After the Second World War, further considerations were added for “just wars”: using force only as a last resort, and reasonable prospects for success with expected benefits outweighing anticipated costs.
Other aspects of international law, notably the Geneva Conventions, require distinguishing civilians from combatants, taking feasible precautions to minimise civilian harm, and using force proportionately to avoid undue damage.
Despite noble intentions, humanising war is ever more difficult as tools and methods of warfare evolve as also the whole-of-society and urbanised settings that are bitterly contested, as in Gaza.
We live in the most violent period since the Second World War, with more than 120 armed conflicts raging around the world. Few of them are formally declared and their “just” nature is highly contentious – this being itself a reason for their perpetuation, often over decades. The Azerbaijan-Armenia dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh is one example.
Whatever its original cause, a war can easily assume a life of its own through a mistake, misunderstanding and mismanagement that enable expanding violence to escape human control. European wars that precede and include the First World War provide a graphic illustration of this. Secondary factors can emerge to make prolonged wars ever messier, as with the atrocities in Sudan and Myanmar.
Such violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including allegations of genocide, are only too common. They also inflame passions and make conflict resolution more difficult.
Along the way, truces often and repeatedly break down. And even when ceasefires eventually stick, conflict recurrence is probable for decades, such is the power of the trauma and insults exchanged during wars and transmitted down the generations.
Accountability and justice are supposed to break this self-perpetuating cycle with international mechanisms proliferating including the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and various tribunals. But they are easily sidelined, as in Ethiopia’s civil war over Tigray, or their glacial modus operandi means little impact in real time. We see that in Israel’s war in Gaza war or Myanmar’s pogrom against Rohingya.
Regardless of earnest manoeuvring to interrupt wars, history has another stark lesson. Wars usually end in two ways: in overwhelming victory for one side, or in a stalemate when opposing sides exhaust each other.
Only then do negotiated agreements succeed. But when these favour excessively the victor or unduly humiliate the loser, future conflict is seeded. That happened with Germany’s surrender terms in 1918, spawning Adolf Hitler’s rise and the Second World War. Israel’s current war in Gaza can be traced back to how the war that created Israel in 1948 ended.
The attraction of outright military victories is deceptive when subsequent re-setting opportunities are squandered. Post-War German and Japanese recoveries that ushered long-term peace are examples of wise and generous victor policies. The contrast is with Iraq’s turmoil after the western coalition’s success against Saddam Hussein.
An additional challenge is that crowning victors requires acknowledging losers, as in football – or US presidential elections. But today’s wars are not refereed with clear start and end times. So, it is difficult to know when a conflict ends or even if it does.
That is especially true with the War on Terror, as seen in Nigeria, Somalia, Mali, Mozambique and elsewhere. If losers will not acknowledge defeat, wars can smoulder on, as in Syria, or transform into different form, as with the Houthis in Yemen, or re-ignite when belligerent capabilities allow, as with the Taliban’s return to Afghanistan, Haiti’s gang violence or Pakistan’s long-running insurgency in Baluchistan.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the globe is littered with chronic instability. Luckier are places that advance to the status of “frozen conflicts”. Such as the partitioned Korean Peninsula, Kashmir and Cyprus. Also, the stand-off across the Kosovo-Serbia border, the post-Dayton situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or the nuclear-armed detente across the India-China and India-Pakistan frontiers.
Of course, peace is not simply the freezing of war. But the formula for un-equivocal and durable peacebuilding eludes us. That is unsurprising because peace grows from our hearts. It cannot be imposed from outside, be that social media outrage, international court judgements, moral cajoling by the UN or even the influence of a superpower.
Under these circumstances, freezing a conflict to reduce human suffering may be the best achievable objective.
That is previewed for Russia’s war in Ukraine by the incoming Trump administration. It will not please the warring sides. Others are horrified by the prospect of aggression being rewarded with territory and undermining international law to establish dangerous precedents for disputes elsewhere.
Conversely, if 37 million Ukrainians are freed from the fear of drones and missiles, 6 million refugees and 4 million internally displaced return home or make new homes, is sacrificing 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory to Russian occupation a price worth swallowing, unjust as that seems?
Only the people under direct duress can make such hard choices. But as they reflect on the pros and cons, they know that wars are costly but making peace is not cost-free either.
To be pushed by Mr Trump to make such calculations is not palatable to everyone but can, at least, be imagined for Ukraine. The Palestine-Israel arena is very different. It is so deeply polarised that to envisage transformation requires an unimaginable leap of faith that neither side is ready for.
Thus, the paradox of Mr Trump’s “peace through strength” doctrine is yet more violence to defeat Hamas and push back Hezbollah before achieving the modest objective of freezing the war. That means reverting to the controlled violence status prevailing before last October.
Unsatisfactory as that is for both legitimate Palestinian aspirations and Israeli security, will that be less costly in overall human suffering than the current open-ended violence? That is a moral choice, not only a political one.
Mr Trump’s unique deal-making style to stop wars will not build lasting peace over one presidential term. But a four-year pause in death and destruction is worth having. And perhaps this could stretch longer if the world – like him – also benefits from a stroke of luck.
