By Paul Robinson, Website, 11/24/25

War termination is back in the news again this week due to all the kerfuffle surrounding the US government’s 28 point peace plan for Ukraine. I thought, therefore, that this would provide a good opportunity for reviewing my latest read: Jan van Aken’s book, How Wars End: A Hopeful History of Making Peace.

Van Aken is a former member of the German parliament for the Left Party, and has also worked for Greenpeace, as a biological weapons inspector, and as a policy advisor at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. His book is part a personal reflection on his experiences in the world of conflict resolution, and part a summary of the findings of academic peace research, put together in an accessible, jargon-free manner for a popular audience.

The author ’s positions are perhaps what one might expect from someone on the German political left, including a commitment to disarmament, an assertion of the need for transitional justice, a strong preference for negotiations with all parties in violent conflicts, and a preference for non-military solutions. Peaceful tools for resolving conflicts exist, van Aken says, “But far too rarely are they given a chance, because military thinking has become so dominant.” “I’d like to live in a country where it’s all about prioritising a civil approach: always look for a peaceful, civil solution first and take your finger off the trigger while you’re thinking,” he states near the end of the book.

No doubt this will lead hardline Realists and foreign policy hawks to denounce van Aken as naïve. Indeed, in the one online review I was able to find, Britain’s conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper attacked his book as offering a “hopelessly unrealistic appraisal of the world’s many ongoing nightmares.” Certainly, van Aken’s proposals don’t pay much heed to harsh military realities. That said, dismissing everything he says is, in my view, a mistake. I did find some useful points in his book that one can use to appraise the ongoing efforts to bring the war in Ukraine to an end, and it’s worth paying them some attention.

First, van Aken notes that “the idea that there could be non-military solutions at all is an indispensable prerequisite for starting negotiations.” Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine have been much criticized, but the American president at least recognizes the possibility of a negotiated end to the war. That makes him practically alone – to date, we have yet to see a similar recognition from political leaders in Russia, Ukraine, or Europe. If only by pushing them to accept the possibility of a negotiated solution, his efforts are to be welcomed.

Second, van Aken has some interesting things to say about ceasefires. These, he writes, “are viewed critically in peace research … Genuine reliability … can only be achieved if the ceasefire is based on a negotiated agreement.” Part of the problem, he comments, is that “Ceasefires can even make peace negotiations more difficult. When the guns fall silent, a military stalemate … is no longer so damaging and the will to engage in serious negotiations drops dramatically.” This is very relevant to the Ukrainian war, as Ukraine and its European allies have so far insisted on there being an unconditional ceasefire that should precede any negotiations. According to van Aken, this is unlikely to succeed. The negotiations should precede the ceasefire, which should come about when agreement has been reached. As von Aken says, “it is possible to fight and negotiate at the same time,” and this is the recommended path. Controversially, he adds that “anyone who sets preconditions doesn’t actually want to negotiate.” Insisting that a ceasefire is a precondition of negotiations is almost an admission of an unwillingness to negotiate.

Third, van Aken points out that “without trust, it won’t work.” In the article that I wrote about war termination for Landmarks magazine, I made much the same point. Wars tend to drag on because neither side trusts the other to abide by any agreement that they make. This is why the issue of security guarantees has become so prominent in the Ukraine war. The problem, however, is that both sides in that war define their security guarantees in ways that are interpreted by the other as a guarantee of insecurity. The only way out is to find some way of providing reassurances of security that don’t frighten the other party. As van Aken notes, this requires “creative ideas.”

This is, of course, easier said than done. Van Aken argues that while Ukraine needs security guarantees, promises of NATO membership are unrealistic. He suggests a UN peacekeeping force made up of countries friendly to Russia, like China and India. “If some of the UN soldiers came from countries closely allied with Russia, the border would be fairly secure. … it’s hard to imagine the Russians opening fire on Chinese or Indian peacekeepers,” he writes. I’m not sure if this is practical, but it is at least creative.

Fourth, van Aken notes that “a slow, gradual tightening of sanctions isn’t very likely to be effective, because the target country can adapt more easily to it … either all and fast, or nothing at all.’  Besides this, there is “a crucial factor for a sanction’s success: an end must be in sight. … Only if there is a clearly defined policy for lifting the sanctions can the targeted country’s government make an ongoing cost-benefit calculation: if we take step x, it’s guaranteed that sanction y will be lifted. … It sounds logical, but it’s rarely the case in reality. The European Union’s resolutions on the Russia sanctions don’t even formulate clear goals.”

Van Aken’s conclusions about sanctions fit with academic studies of the topic. Gradual, incremental sanctions have a very bad track record, especially when there is no obvious off ramp. It would appear that the West’s approach to this question has not been well informed, and its failure is thus no surprise. It’s almost certainly too late to do anything about it, though. The moment when massive, instant sanctions could have been imposed has been and gone. Further incremental sanctions are unlikely to be any more successful in coercing Russia than those implemented to date.

Fifth, van Aken argues that “The key to cooperative security lies in thinking about the other side’s security interests, and in responding to them. … Even if I don’t understand a security concern from the other side and think it’s completely inappropriate, if one side feels threatened, I have to take it seriously; only if both sides feel safe can they refrain from further armament. … if your opposite number feels threatened, take it seriously and find a solution.” This is an important point, and one that I have often made myself. The fact that you think that the other party’s security concerns are objectively mistaken is not a reason to ignore them. What matters is that they, subjectively, feel concerned. Ignoring that subjective feeling may lead to disaster.  

There is a lot more than this in the book, but I don’t want to make the review too long. Suffice it to say that you don’t have to agree with everything that van Aken says to get something out of it. Above all, I think that he is right to stress that to obtain peace you first have to imagine that peace is possible. If all you do is prepare for war, war is likely what you’ll get. It’s a message that I think needs to be much more widely broadcast.