5 - The Panmunjom and Paris Armistices

Summary

War termination research emerged as a recognizable field of historical and social scientific inquiry during the decade of the 1960s - a time of intensifying nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, expanding Third World rebellion against First World dominance, and escalating Americanization of the war in Vietnam. Historians, political scientists, social psychologists, and sociologists identified three major types of war endings: (1) the decisive victory of one side and the conditional or unconditional surrender of the other, as in the 1918 and 1945 closings of World War I and World War II; (2) the imposition of a peace upon the belligerents by one or more external powers, as with the Dayton Agreement that terminated the Bosnian War of 1992-5; and (3) armistices negotiated by belligerents, such as those that led to the cessation of fighting and limited compromises on political and military issues in the Korean War (1950-3) and the U.S.-Vietnam War (ca. 1959-73). Although appearing simplistically reductionist to some other scholars of diplomacy, peace, and war, these commonsensical generalizations nonetheless prove quite useful in clarifying the complexities of war termination by focusing attention on its essential elements.