Peace Agreements and Sausages

By Matthew Parish

Otto von Bismarck, that gruff connoisseur of political reality, reportedly observed that laws are like sausages: it is better not to watch them being made. Peace agreements fall into the same category. At moments of crisis, diplomats and political leaders craft documents under pressure, exhaustion and competing imperatives. The result is invariably a text thick with ambiguities, silences and provisional compromises, held together by the urgent necessity of persuading adversaries to stop shooting. One should never imagine that a peace agreement is a blueprint for the future. At best, it is a means of suspending the violence; at worst, it is a collection of promises that will never be realised. It is something that must exist, so that something else may follow.

The current frantic negotiations between the United States, Europe, Ukraine and Russia fit precisely within this pattern. For all the public rhetoric about comprehensive settlements, security guarantees or reconstruction funds, the essential question is brutally simple: can the parties agree to cease fire along a defined line, and can that ceasefire hold? Once the guns fall silent on the battlefield, the real negotiations begin. The shape of any political settlement, the fate of occupied territories, the structure of security arrangements and the long-term relationship between Ukraine and Russia will be forged not by the clauses of any document but through years of diplomacy, argument and incremental compromise.

The uncomfortable truth, often ignored by those who view peace agreements as constitutional instructions, is that most of what appears in such texts is never implemented. This is not due to incompetence or bad faith, although both are common enough. It is because there is no independent force capable of supervising implementation in a modern interstate conflict. International organisations do not possess enforcement armies; peacekeepers can monitor but not impose political outcomes; and guarantor states invariably interpret their obligations according to their own interests. A peace agreement is therefore an outline, an invitation to further negotiation, and an aspirational framework. It is rarely a contract in the legal sense, and never a fully enforceable one.

Ukraine’s predicament underscores this point. Even if the parties sign a detailed agreement addressing Crimea, Donbas, sanctions, reconstruction and security guarantees, no external actor will physically impose compliance upon either Kyiv or Moscow. Nor would either party tolerate such supervision. The practical value of the agreement lies in one thing only: that hostilities cease at the front line then existing, and the parties enter a phase of political negotiation rather than kinetic escalation. Everything else – territorial questions, prisoner exchanges, reparations, sanctions relief, demilitarisation zones – will evolve over time. Some provisions may be honoured; others may become irrelevant; still others may be transformed by later bargains.

Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrates this phenomenon better than almost any other modern example. Nearly thirty years after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995, much of its text remains unimplemented or only partially realised. The elaborate constitutional architecture that Dayton created has generated decades of political gridlock. International envoys wielded immense powers on paper but faced profound limitations in practice, constrained by diverging interests amongst their own capitals, domestic resistance and the changing strategic environment of the Balkans. Bosnia’s slow, stubborn progress confirms the central insight that peace agreements are foundations for ongoing negotiation rather than completed houses.

Something similar should be expected after any armistice in Ukraine. Once the guns fall silent, the parties will spend years – perhaps decades – adjusting their relations, bargaining over political issues left purposely vague, and renegotiating points of dispute. This is not a flaw in the process but its very nature. Ending a war is a transition, not a settlement. One should not seek purity or clarity in the documents that emerge from negotiation rooms. The value lies in their capacity to stop the fighting.

For Ukraine and her supporters, the hope is that an armistice will provide the space necessary to rebuild the state, strengthen institutions, accelerate integration with Europe and heal the wounds inflicted by years of invasion. For Russia, the hope – however crudely expressed – is to stabilise a disastrous situation without yet more political or military humiliation. For the West, the priority is to prevent escalation and to anchor the region in a framework that can evolve peacefully. All sides, whatever their public posturing, understand that a document drafted under duress cannot dictate the future; it can only permit the future to unfold without further bloodshed.

Benjamin Franklin famously observed that a worse peace is better than the best war. One need not underestimate the difficulties ahead to appreciate the wisdom of his words. The negotiations under way may appear unedifying, contradictory or even cynical, but if they succeed in bringing the guns to silence along Ukraine’s ravaged front line, they may prove the necessary turning point. With restraint, patience and diplomatic persistence, one may yet hope that this imperfect beginning leads to a more enduring peace between the Ukrainian and Russian adversaries.