History has taught one stubborn lesson: the page that ends the fighting is not the same as the page that ends the cause of fighting. Armistices, accords, and checklists have a moral gloss; they are instruments of mercy. Yet mercy without clarity can harden into reprieve without resolution. When peace is sought as a hurried convenience, rather than a work of national and moral reconstruction, it often proves to be only a thinner veil over the same old conflict.

The twentieth century offers multiple cautionary examples. In 1953, the Korean Peninsula was ordered into an armistice that froze a war rather than ending it; the border became a line of perpetual tension. In 1973, the Paris Accords ceased certain hostilities in Vietnam, but did not settle the political project driving the conflict; the war’s broader effects endured. In 1995, Dayton ended open battle in Bosnia, yet the uneasy compromises it enshrined left resentments and rigid structures that took decades to unravel. These are not failures of diplomacy per se; they are reminders that a paper peace can outlast actual peace by ignoring the work that must follow combat: moral clarity, institutional dismantling of violent networks, and political reconstruction.

There are practical reasons states and international actors rush to conclude hostilities. Cease-fires save lives in the short term, provide breathing space for aid, and allow diplomats to claim progress. For the human impulse -- journalists, voters, relatives of the bereaved -- a pause is a welcome relief........

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