Harris Panel Explores Why Modern Wars Are So Long and So Hard to End

The event title — “How Wars End” — was deceptively simple.

The topic, however, was complex, with Professor Christopher Blattman, a leading scholar of conflict and political economy, and John Haltiwanger, who covers national security and global conflict zones for Foreign Policy, exploring what's driving today’s prolonged wars and what diplomats and policymakers can realistically do to bring them to a close. 

Moderated by Rebecca Wolfe, an expert on political violence, conflict, and development, the Nov. 19 evening program drew dozens of students to the Keller Center Sky Suite for the latest bespoke global policy event at Harris.

To start the moderated discussion, Wolfe, a Harris senior lecturer, referenced Blattman’s 2022 book, Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace. The book, she said, argues that while conflict does not always lead to violence or war, “when wars break out, they're really hard to end.” 

That’s been the case in both Ukraine and Gaza.

Israel invaded Gaza before Oct. 7, 2023, and one might expect fighting to be over in a few weeks, Blattman said, which would be “typical.” This time, it took more than two years before there was a ceasefire, which as of mid-November was largely holding.

Modern wars that last for two years, or even longer like in Ukraine, where fighting started in February 2022, are so “out of the norm,” Blattman added. But these wars, he said, are continuing for such a long time for their own “peculiar reasons.”

Blattman, Haltiwanger and Wolfe unpacked those reasons and a range of other topics during an hour of brisk discussion. Here are some highlights:

Ukraine

As the event began, news was breaking of a 28-point U.S. plan to end fighting in Ukraine. Details were still emerging about the plan crafted without Ukraine’s input, “but from what we know about it, it's pretty much a nonstarter for Kyiv,” Haltiwanger said, pointing to reported terms including that Ukraine cede control of the Donbas to Russia. 

About 70% of the Donetsk province (which, along with Luhansk province, makes up the Donbas) is controlled by Russia – but the other 30%, which Ukraine controls, is very strategically important, Haltiwanger said. “It would be pretty wild if Ukraine just was like, ‘sure, you can take it.’ ”

Assessments including from the Institute for the Study of War suggest that it would take Russia years and cost tens of thousands of lives to conquer the rest of the Donbas, Haltiwanger said.

“Ukraine doesn't have a whole lot of incentive to just hand this over. But I think the Trump administration's calculus is that right now President Volodymyr Zelensky is contending with a corruption scandal, and under a lot of pressure,” Haltiwanger added. “So, there's thinking that if he's pushed into a corner, maybe this is the right time to pressure him to agree to something that's unfavorable to Ukraine.”

One hurdle, Haltiwanger noted, is that the reported U.S. security guarantees in the peace plan appear to be “something along the lines of an executive order, something that's not legally binding.”

“That's not a very strong guarantee for Ukraine,” he added, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin has violated multiple peace agreements in the past. 

Putin

What are reasons modern wars go on for such a long time? One, Blattman said, is when one side believes it’s impossible to walk back what it’s done. That’s likely the case in Ukraine.

Many uncritically accept that the war in Ukraine is all about Putin's ideological obsession with the “Greater Russia,” Blattman said. “I am still very skeptical. I think it's a convenient narrative. Meanwhile, asking Ukraine to put down their weapons is a completely bonkers thing to do.”

Also crucial to understand, Haltiwanger said, is that Putin is a master manipulator.

“Everyone I've talked to who's ever been in the room with Putin, and I've talked to a lot of people who've negotiated with him, they say this man has been obsessed with Ukraine forever,” he said. “He'll never give up on the goal of subjugating it.”

Putin, Haltiwanger added, “needs to continue the war until he gets something out of it. That's what his political survival is tied to.” 

Trump

U.S. President Donald Trump has made ending wars, including the one in Ukraine, a priority for his administration. While Trump’s claim to have already ended eight wars is, Haltiwanger noted, a bit of an exaggeration, “we’ve got to give credit where credit is due. And there have been instances where the administration has made significant progress on various conflicts.” One example, he said, is with Armenia and Azerbaijan. 

But while reaching a peace deal is hard, he added, “implementing it is a lot harder. It takes sustained attention and expertise.”

One thing the Trump and his administration are getting wrong, Haltiwanger said, is they've turned away from experts.

“They hollowed out the National Security Council, they laid off a huge number of people in the State Department, they dismantled USAID, and this has made it hard for them to make progress in various conflicts,” he said.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff “is very close to Trump, very loyal to Trump, but he's a real estate developer who had no prior diplomatic experience and he’s essentially been made the de facto secretary of state, tasked with solving some of the world's most intractable conflicts, including Gaza and Ukraine. That's tough for even the most seasoned diplomat,” he said.

“I think it's great that the Trump administration has the instinct to engage. It's great that they want to be involved,” he added. “But this refusal to rely on experts, this tendency to value loyalty and ‘yes people’ over experts has definitely hurt them.” 

Latin America 

Also bruising is the apparent contradiction that conflict in Latin America presents to a peace-seeking administration.

“It’s difficult for the United States to march into a room and say, ‘we need to respect international military law and rules of engagement’ when it is blowing up alleged drug boats in both the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific,” Haltiwanger said.

“You might not like drug cartels, but people involved in drug trafficking are still civilians,” he added. “They're not, under international law, considered enemy combatants. I think that makes it very difficult in some circles for the U.S. to be taken seriously when it's saying you've got to respect sovereignty, particularly if they move forward with some sort of operation in Venezuela.”

Gaza 

As panelists met, a shaky cease-fire was holding in Gaza. But, they agreed, getting to the ceasefire may have been the easiest stop on the road to peace.

Top human rights groups and a UN Commission of Inquiry have said that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, “so it's very important that the gunfire stops,” Haltiwanger said. “But all of the moving parts surrounding this, unfortunately, make me quite skeptical that they're going to get to phase two easily.”

One positive and important step, he said, was the United States turning to the international community and getting the UN Security Council to approve Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan, which calls for an international stabilization force.

“This force,” Haltiwanger said, “would oversee the disarmament of Hamas; they would train a Palestinian police force in conjunction with Israel and Egypt. And the Trump administration is very eager to get countries in the region and Muslim-majority countries elsewhere, like Indonesia, involved in this.”

This is an important step, but it's going to be very difficult, he said, particularly because Hamas does not want to disarm.

“I think it’s a terrific credit to the Trump administration for getting it this far,” Blattman said. “But I'm very skeptical that any country in the region is going to voluntarily put their troops in harm's way just to try to disarm Hamas. We've seen this before with Haiti, when everybody basically passed that hot potato around until someone browbeat Kenya into sending policemen in a fruitless effort to calm an uncalmable situation.” 

Blattman added that he does not know anybody who knows how popular Hamas is or how many guns and militants it has, but it’s likely not a small number.

“The idea that you can get those people to give up their guns and have absolutely no part of the political process afterwards, I cannot think of an example of a successful process that has accomplished that,” he said.

Haltiwanger agreed. 

“Getting pen to paper on a deal is one thing,” he said. “Implementing the deal is an entirely different and far more difficult matter.”