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volodymyr zelenskyy
Trump’s Manual for Not Turning a Cease-Fire Into a Lasting Peace
The U.S. president’s unholy affection for both Putin and Netanyahu will produce only the worst kind of cease-fire, the kind that the strong use as a prelude to their final push to eliminate the weak.
Mar 29, 2025
Israel has resumed its aerial bombardment of Gaza. The latest cease-fire, which lasted two months and led to the release of 33 Israeli hostages and 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, never made it out of its first stage. The Israeli government has now adopted a strategy of inflicting overwhelming violence until Hamas capitulates by releasing the remaining hostages.
Ukraine and Russia have accepted a limited cease-fire. Both sides have agreed to stop attacking each other’s energy infrastructure, but neither has actually adhered to this condition. U.S. President Donald Trump, who coaxed both sides toward this cease-fire, is reportedly furious. This week, Moscow and Kyiv agreed to extend this partial cease-fire to the Black Sea, though here, too, they don’t seem in a rush to stop their attacks. No serious analysts, including those in Russia, expect this cease-fire to hold.
A United Nations-brokered truce in Yemen lasted nearly six months in 2024 before fighting in the country between the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels and the Saudi-backed government started up again in the fall. The Trump administration has recently escalated air strikes against the Houthis in response to their revived efforts to disrupt shipping in the Red Sea.
Donald Trump promised that he would, like some authoritarian father figure, force warring parties in Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere to stop fighting and get along. Only the credulous believe in this avatar of Trump as peacemaker.
Last year, a cease-fire in Syria came to an end when rebels, with the go-ahead from Turkey, caught government troops by surprise when they seized Aleppo and kept going. A little more than a week later, they were in control of the capital of Damascus and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was on his way to Moscow.
Cease-fires have come and gone in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Last week, the DRC and Rwanda called for a cease-fire in the eastern part of the country. An astonishing 700,000 people have been displaced by fighting just since January. The record of truces in this war-torn country does not give much hope for this latest initiative.
In other countries, the mutual hostility between the warring parties has been so intense that cease-fires don’t even get a chance to take hold. Sudan, split in two by government forces and the rebel Rapid Support Forces, has so far resisted international calls for immediate humanitarian pauses in the violence.
Cease-fires don’t always fail. Libya hasn’t seen any major violation of the cease-fire signed in 2020. But it’s the only success of the three cease-fires that the Borgen Project cited in October 2022 as evidence of a more peaceful world. The civil war in Sudan resumed in April 2023. Later that year, Azerbaijan broke a cease-fire to defeat Armenia and seize control of the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Donald Trump promised that he would, like some authoritarian father figure, force warring parties in Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere to stop fighting and get along. Only the credulous believe in this avatar of Trump as peacemaker. The truth is, cease-fires are usually just empty promises, regardless of how smart, powerful, or delusional the mediator-in-chief happens to be.
What makes some cease-fires endure even as so many others disappear into the fire of renewed hostilities?
Why Cease-Fires Die
When he responded to Trump’s peace proposal for Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “We are in favor of it but there are nuances.”
Those “nuances” were sticking points as sharp as a saber. Putin wants the world to recognize his illegal seizure of four Ukrainian provinces over which he doesn’t even have full control. He wants all foreign military assistance and intelligence sharing with Ukraine to end. NATO membership for Ukraine must be off the table. Oh, and he also wants the world to lift sanctions against his country.
Putin believes that he has an advantage on the battlefield and, with Trump as president, at the negotiating table as well. There is some truth to Putin’s perception. Russia has more soldiers and resources at its disposal than does Ukraine, and Trump is the most pro-Russian president that the United States has ever produced. Putin also knows that the celebrated dealmaker is actually a naïf who pays little attention to details and has been taken to the cleaners in the past, most notably by the Taliban in its 2020 deal with the United States.
But Russia, too, has reached certain limits in its capacity to recruit soldiers and produce the armaments to continue its occupation of Ukraine. Mutual exhaustion is one of the best signs of a cease-fire that can endure. That was certainly the case with the two Koreas in 1953 after two years of relatively little territorial movement by either side.
But both parties to the conflict have to acknowledge, if only to themselves, that they have sunk into a quagmire. Putin, by contrast, thinks that he can prevail. He wants not only those four provinces but the entirety of what he calls “Novorossiya,” which includes all of Ukraine’s southern coast, which would render the country land-locked. Putin also wants elections that can replace Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a more malleable leader.
Any cease-fire that doesn’t lead to Putin achieving these ultimate goals is a cease-fire that Russia is unlikely to uphold.
A power-besotted aggressor who believes that he—and isn’t it always a he?—has an asymmetric advantage over his opponent is one of the leading reasons why it’s difficult to stop wars. Cease-fires for these aggressors are only pauses to regroup or to win international approval or to lull opponents into complacency.
That applies to Benjamin Netanyahu as well. Israel and Hamas have been locked in a conflict over Gaza for more than two decades. On October 7, the much weaker Hamas launched a brutal surprise attack on Israeli territory that killed more than 1,000 people and produced 250 hostages, which the Palestinian group figured it could use as bargaining chips. Instead of negotiating, the Netanyahu government launched its own brutal response, which has left 50,000 dead in Gaza.
Like Putin, Netanyahu has maximalist ambitions and an uncompromising attitude. He wants to destroy Hamas. He also wants to destroy the capacity of Gaza to serve as a part of some future Palestinian state. He doesn’t really care about the hostages that Hamas is holding. The Israeli leader is so determined to prove that Hamas is using Israeli hostages and Palestinian civilians alike as human shields that he’ll sacrifice them both in his bid to annihilate Hamas and, of course, maintain his own political position. To add grievous insult to catastrophic injury, he’ll then accuse the Palestinian group of human rights abuses after the fact.
A huge number of Israelis are fed up. This last weekend, 100,000 turned out to protest in the major cities.
Getting to Peace
Most cease-fires fail, often spectacularly so. “Of the 105 failed cease-fires, 84% were followed by an offensive within an average of just 13 days,” reports Patrick Burke in his study of cease-fires in 25 wars from 1947 to 2016. According to a study by Jason Quinn and Madhav Joshi, 80% of cease-fires fail.
Mutual exhaustion on the battlefield is certainly one factor behind a successful cease-fire. But what can mediators do when one or both sides believe that they can still achieve a complete victory, as Croatia did with Operation Storm in 1995 and Azerbaijan accomplished more recently?
Trump’s approach is to strong-arm the weaker party. He cut off military aid to Ukraine, trash-talked its leader, and forced the country to accept a partial cease-fire. With the latest deal on the Black Sea, he is dangerously close to agreeing to lift some restrictions on Russian exports without approval from Ukraine or the European Union. Such a cease-fire is not likely to last or to lead to a second stage.
Putin is no doubt watching Netanyahu, taking careful notes, and identifying lessons to learn:
- Lesson one: Break previous agreement
- Lesson two: Flatter Trump
- Lesson three: Apply maximum firepower
- Lesson four: Ignore international opinion
From a conflict resolution point of view, a more successful approach would be to identify the underlying reasons for the dispute—competition for resources, historical grudges, cultural differences—and find ways of nudging the parties toward addressing those root causes nonviolently. But this approach assumes a certain power balance among the combatants.
It’s hard to imagine Trump, Netanyahu, or Putin being very interested in such a process. They don’t believe in talk therapy. They believe in power moves.
Where one side has an obvious advantage, an outside force could try to level the playing field. That requires arm-twisting not the weaker party but the stronger one. That’s what the United States did to get Serbia to the table and sign the Dayton Accords to end the war in Bosnia.
Ah, but didn’t the West follow just such a strategy with Russia during the current conflict? All the sanctions against Russia and arms deliveries to Ukraine and resolutions at the U.N. only made Putin fight harder. These punitive actions were taken to help Ukraine repel the invaders and uphold the principles of international law. In other words, the international community has had a stake in the conflict, since Russia didn’t just seize Ukrainian territory, it defied a collective global norm.
With Israel, of course, the Biden administration did little or nothing to restrain Netanyahu. The Trump administration has only encouraged the Israeli leader. Trump’s scenario of a Gaza resort with no Palestinians, however ridiculous it sounds, served notice that the United States would be okay with a genocidal push of all Palestinians from their land.
So, perhaps in some contexts, cease-fires are just bound to fail.
But don’t despair. Remember that 80% failure rate from Jason Quinn and Madhav Joshi? Believe it or not, these researchers were actually encouraged by the results of their analysis of data from 196 conflicts between 1975 to 2011.
“What we found was that the best predictor that any one cease-fire agreement will be successful—and by successful I mean: not followed by renewed conflict or violence—… is how many failed peace agreements came before,” Jason Quinn noted. He pointed to the ultimate successes in ending wars in Nepal and Colombia as important examples.
Wars are hard to end. Exhibit A: The Hundred Years War. It makes sense that cease-fires are bound to fail and fail and fail and fail and fail until one day, they produce a lasting peace. Skilled mediators, a power move or two, mutual exhaustion on the battlefiel and at the negotiating table: These can all eventually lead to success.
But one thing is for sure. Trump’s unholy affection for both Putin and Netanyahu will produce only the worst kind of cease-fire, the kind that the strong use as a prelude to their final push to eliminate the weak.
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Trump Lifts Ukraine Aid Pause After Kyiv Agrees to Cease-Fire Proposal
Ukraine's foreign minister called the endorsement a "step that proves Ukraine is ready to move forward on the path to a just end to the war."
Mar 11, 2025
The Trump administration said Tuesday that it would resume military aid to and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine after that country's leadership endorsed a U.S. proposal for a 30-day cease-fire in the war defending against Russia's three-year invasion and occupation.
The Washington Postreports that U.S., Ukrainian, and Saudi officials met for eight hours on Tuesday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. No Russian officials were present at the negotiations.
"We're going to tell them this is what's on the table. Ukraine is ready to stop shooting and start talking," U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after the meeting. "And now it'll be up to them to say yes or no. If they say no, then we'll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here."
Ukraine has agreed to a 30 day ceasefire. Incredible work by Trump team. Now if Russia agrees, Trump may have gotten cease fires in the Middle East and Europe in his first 60 days. Nobel Peace Prize worthy: pic.twitter.com/lYogXVP8wj
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) March 11, 2025
White House National Security Adviser Michael Waltz said following the talks that "the Ukrainian delegation today made something very clear, that they share President [Donald] Trump's vision for peace, they share his determination to end the fighting, to end the killing, to end the tragic meat grinder of people."
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called his country's endorsement of the cease-fire proposal a "step that proves Ukraine is ready to move forward on the path to a just end to the war."
"Ukraine is not an obstacle to peace; it is a partner in its restoration," Sybiha added.
U.S. officials said the cease-fire proposal will now be sent to Russia for approval. It is unclear whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will accept the offer.
"The ball is now in their court," Rubio said of the Russians.
Buoyed by Western support but stretched thin and vastly outmanned and outgunned, Ukrainian forces have been struggling to repel Russia's invasion and hold Russian territory they seized in the Kursk region, with an eye toward potential future territorial exchanges.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian forces launched a massive drone attack on Moscow. Three people were reportedly killed and six others were injured when debris struck a meat processing facility.
Tuesday's development marked a dramatic turnaround from just two weeks ago, when Trump and Vice President JD Vance lambasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a highly contentious White House meeting that was followed by a suspension of all U.S. military assistance and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv.
The U.S. has "provided $66.5 billion in military assistance since Russia launched its premeditated, unprovoked, and brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and approximately $69.2 billion in military assistance since Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014," according to a State Department fact sheet dated March 4.
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Trump, Hitler, Dogs, Vance, Cats, Flags, and Putin
Perhaps Trump’s big lie about Haitians eating pets was just a smokescreen to squelch speculations about something diabolical occurring at Mar-a-Lago. The sources used are no less creditable than Trump and Vance’s.
Mar 07, 2025
Warning: This commentary includes Trump-style rhetoric.
I have never been a flag-waver. But after watching U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance crudely attack President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine, I decided to buy Ukrainian flags. You can buy flags from most countries that are made in America and are “super tough.” Zelenskyy and his fellow Ukrainians have proven they are super tough even in the face of the devastating consequences of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
Despite their posturing the same can’t be said about the miscreants in the president’s inner circle. Elon Musk, rather than growing up with American democratic values, was nurtured and schooled by racist apartheid South Africa. He, along with Vance, shamelessly supported a far-right neo-Nazi party in the recent German elections. That’s Hitler-made, not American-made.
The recurring Mar-a-Lago Dog-Cat banquets are no less bizarre than Trump’s assertion that USAID was full of people who do not hold American values.
Trump, who clearly admires dictators, relies on political tools used successfully by Hitler and other tyrants to gain and consolidate power. He employs hateful rhetoric, threats of violence, and physical violence along with state-sanctioned discrimination. The latter includes ethnic cleansing under the guise of mass deportations.
A case in point was Trump’s big lie during the election claiming that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio were stealing pets and eating them. Vance and Musk jacked up the story which Trump used to harass Haitians, saying Springfield will be one of the first targets for mass deportations. Trump, lamenting that Norwegians were not applying to come to the United States, removed the temporary protected status of Haitians after he was elected.
Perhaps this was just a smokescreen to squelch speculations about something diabolical occurring at Mar-a-Lago. The sources used are no less creditable than Trump and Vance’s and consequently should be covered as extensively:
Why are dogs and cats vanishing in an expanding circle centered at Mar-a-Lago? Could this be tied to rumors that Trump requires people to eat dog meat and drink cat piss as proof of fidelity? If so, it is likely these events would have been recorded to ensure future loyalty.
Surely, this is no more fantastical than Trump’s blatant lies about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio and his disingenuous attempts to shift the blame for the war in Ukraine. Trump, who called Putin a genius when his tanks were lining up to invade a neighboring nation, now blames Zelenskyy for starting the war.
Using hate speech, Trump denigrates families fleeing violence, calling them murderers and rapists released from prisons and mental hospitals. This provides rhetorical cover to justify mass deportations aimed at ethnically cleansing our communities and blocking approved asylum-seekers from entering the country.
The recurring Mar-a-Lago Dog-Cat banquets are no less bizarre than Trump’s assertion that USAID was full of people who do not hold American values. Or that “burn, baby, burn” will not lead to global disasters. Or that unqualified Trump loyalists are better suited to running things than the people being fired. Or that cutting governmental services, while at the same time swelling the national debt to increase the wealth of billionaires, will make America great. Or that tariffs and trade wars make economic sense and that the prices of eggs will go down once Trump is elected.
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