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Cold peace

Cold peace is a condition in international relations characterized by a formal peace treaty that halts active hostilities between former adversaries, yet features persistent mutual distrust, limited cooperation, and unresolved grievances, resulting in a pragmatic but unstable truce rather than genuine reconciliation.^[1]^[2] This contrasts with a warm peace, which entails normalized ties, economic integration, and positive mutual perceptions, and differs from a cold war, where ideological rivalry persists without a binding treaty but includes proxy engagements short of direct combat.^[1]^[3] The concept has been applied to several post-conflict dyads, most notably the Egypt–Israel relationship since the 1979 Camp David Accords, where security coordination and border stability have been maintained amid public hostility, minimal tourism, and rhetorical antagonism in domestic politics, preventing renewed war but yielding few broader societal benefits.^[4]^[5] Similar dynamics marked Jordan–Israel ties after their 1994 treaty, with formal diplomatic recognition but subdued public engagement and occasional flare-ups over territorial issues.^[6] In contemporary discourse, cold peace is invoked to advocate managed competition between great powers like the United States and China, prioritizing deterrence and economic interdependence to avert escalation into a full cold war or hot conflict, as explored in analyses emphasizing geopolitical realism over ideological crusades.^[7] While sustaining such arrangements demands ongoing enforcement mechanisms and mutual deterrence, critics argue they risk entrenching zero-sum mindsets, potentially undermining long-term stability if underlying power asymmetries or domestic pressures shift.^[2]^[8]

Definition and Core Characteristics

Formal Definition

A cold peace in international relations refers to a condition of stable but adversarial coexistence between states or groups that have ceased active hostilities, characterized by formal diplomatic ties, pragmatic conflict management, and avoidance of direct military confrontation, yet marked by enduring mutual distrust, unresolved grievances, and limited cooperation beyond basic deterrence. This state contrasts with outright war or cold war escalation, as it prioritizes non-violent dispute resolution mechanisms while stereotypes, ideological divergences, and security dilemmas persist without deeper reconciliation.^[1]^[9] The concept emphasizes causal factors such as imposed truces or external balancing powers that enforce restraint, rather than endogenous transformations like shared identities or economic interdependence that could foster warmer relations. For instance, international strategies may sustain a cold peace by deterring aggression through alliances or nuclear parity, but fail to address root causes like territorial claims or regime incompatibilities, leaving latent risks of reversion to conflict. Scholars distinguish this from warm peace, which requires regional power balances and domestic reforms to enable trust-building institutions and mutual legitimacy.^[9]^[10]

Distinguishing Features from Other Relational States

Cold peace differs from active armed conflict, or "hot war," primarily through the formal cessation of hostilities via treaty or armistice, which enforces a baseline of non-aggression despite latent animosities, as opposed to ongoing military engagements that characterize direct warfare.^[11] This state avoids the kinetic violence and territorial conquests typical of hot wars, yet it lacks the de-escalatory mechanisms of genuine reconciliation, allowing for sporadic border incidents or proxy tensions without escalating to full-scale combat.^[12] In contrast to warm peace, which entails deep mutual trust, positive interdependence, and institutional cooperation reducing the likelihood of renewed conflict—often evidenced by joint economic ventures, cultural exchanges, and aligned security interests—cold peace remains pragmatic and transactional, with relations confined to minimal diplomatic and trade interactions amid prevailing distrust and unresolved grievances.^[10]^[1] For instance, while warm peace fosters shared identities and narrative convergence, cold peace sustains divergent historical interpretations and security dilemmas, perpetuating a fragile equilibrium prone to disruption by domestic politics or external shocks.^[2] Unlike the Cold War paradigm, which featured systemic ideological confrontation, alliance blocs, and proxy battles aimed at undermining the adversary's political order without direct superpower clashes, cold peace emphasizes bilateral or regional standoffs post-belligerency, with tensions rooted in undigested victories or victimhood narratives rather than global hegemony contests.^[13]^[14] Cold peace thus permits limited functional cooperation for mutual survival, such as arms control or economic ties, absent the Cold War's zero-sum subversion goals, though it risks devolving into isolated conflicts rather than orchestrated ideological crusades.^[15]^[12] This relational state also stands apart from mere truce or armistice without formal peace, where enforcement relies on deterrence rather than treaty obligations, by incorporating nominal diplomatic normalization that masks underlying perceptual clashes and misperceptions, enabling coexistence without commitment to transformative engagement.^[16] Overall, cold peace's hallmark is its inherent instability—balancing restraint against resentment—distinguishing it from both escalatory hostilities and harmonious equilibria in the spectrum of interstate dynamics.^[17]

Historical Development of the Concept

Origins and Early Theoretical Formulations

The term "cold peace" emerged in mid-20th-century discourse to describe tenuous, non-hostile interstate relations lacking genuine reconciliation or trust, often in the shadow of recent conflict. An early documented use appeared in a 1952 Time magazine article, characterizing post-World War II Europe as a "sustained truce without a settlement," amid lingering divisions and the onset of East-West tensions that precluded warmer cooperation.^[16] This framing highlighted a pragmatic cessation of hostilities enforced by mutual deterrence and exhaustion, rather than ideological convergence or institutional bonds, distinguishing it from both active war and stable alliance.^[16] In international relations scholarship, the concept gained traction during the late Cold War and immediate post-Cold War period, applied retrospectively to détente phases and prospectively to U.S.-Soviet successor states dynamics. Historian John Lewis Gaddis's 1992 analysis of the Cold War's end prompted debates framed as "Cold War or Cold Peace," questioning whether the 1991 Soviet dissolution yielded enduring amity or merely suspended rivalry, with persistent security dilemmas and power asymmetries undermining deeper entente.^[18] Similarly, economist Jeffrey E. Garten's 1992 book A Cold Peace invoked the term for prospective U.S. relations with Japan and Germany, arguing that economic interdependence alone could not overcome historical animosities without explicit security commitments, as evidenced by unresolved trade frictions and alliance strains in the early 1990s.^[19] Systematic theoretical formulation arrived in the 2000s through Benjamin Miller's structural theory of regional war and peace, which positioned "cold peace" as an intermediate equilibrium on a continuum from "hot war" (direct violence) through "cold war" (proxy threats and arms races) to "warm peace" (integrated security communities with shared identities). Miller posited that cold peace arises from balance-of-power stability or hegemony suppressing overt conflict, but without resolving nationalist divergences or fostering mutual vulnerability reduction, as seen in empirical cases like the Middle East post-1979 Egypt-Israel treaty, where treaty compliance persisted amid public hostility and military mobilizations.^[9] His model emphasized that international systemic factors, such as great-power mediation, suffice for cold peace by deterring aggression—evidenced by U.S. guarantees in Arab-Israeli accords—but domestic state-nation congruences are required for warmer variants, critiquing overly optimistic liberal assumptions of automatic pacification via trade or democracy promotion. This framework, detailed in Miller's 2007 book States, Nations, and the Great Powers, integrated realist power politics with constructivist identity elements, attributing cold peace's fragility to unaddressed causal roots like irredentism, supported by quantitative assessments of regional dyads from 1815–1990 showing low-probability transitions to security communities absent ideological alignment.

Evolution in Post-Cold War Scholarship

In the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union's dissolution on December 25, 1991, international relations scholars initially framed the post-Cold War order through lenses of triumphant liberalism, expecting democratic transitions and institutional integration to foster "warm peace" via mechanisms like NATO and EU enlargement. Yet, by the mid-1990s, empirical observations of lingering rivalries—such as in the Balkans and post-Soviet space—led to the articulation of "cold peace" as a distinct relational state, defined by formal non-aggression amid mutual suspicion, arms buildups, and proxy frictions rather than outright war. This shift reflected causal recognition that ideological convergence was neither automatic nor universal, with domestic authoritarian revivals and security dilemmas perpetuating instability despite superpower détente.^[13] By the early 2000s, the concept evolved within regional security complex theory, where scholars like Benjamin Miller integrated cold peace into analytical frameworks distinguishing it from cold war by the attenuation of global ideological crusades, though regional enduring rivalries sustained low-trust equilibria. Miller's model, emphasizing interactions between domestic political compatibility, power balances, and systemic pressures, posited cold peace as a stable but precarious outcome in areas like the Middle East or Eurasia, where treaties coexisted with military mobilizations and narrative contests over historical grievances. This theoretical refinement moved beyond descriptive usage, enabling predictions of escalation risks when domestic divergences intensified, as evidenced in analyses of post-1991 treaty implementations.^[10] The 2010s saw further development in great-power applications, particularly Russo-Western dynamics, with V. Morozov characterizing the post-Soviet era as a "mimetic cold war" or cold peace, wherein Russia's assertion of sovereignty clashed with Western liberal hegemony, fostering cycles of resentment without direct confrontation. This mimetic framing highlighted psychological and narrative dimensions—Russia's victimhood discourse versus NATO's expansion as perceived encirclement—drawing on post-1999 Kosovo intervention frictions and 2008 Georgia war as inflection points that entrenched deterrence over reconciliation. Such scholarship critiqued overly optimistic end-of-history theses, attributing persistence to unaddressed power asymmetries rather than mere policy errors.^[14] Contemporary post-2022 scholarship, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has repositioned cold peace as a prescriptive strategy against "Cold War 2.0," with Michael W. Doyle arguing in his 2023 analysis for pragmatic coexistence with authoritarian peers like China and Russia, eschewing transformative interventions in favor of mutual non-interference to avert nuclear escalation. Doyle's Kantian-inflected approach acknowledges empirical limits of perpetual peace diffusion, citing data on resilient illiberal regimes and economic interdependencies (e.g., U.S.-China trade exceeding $600 billion annually by 2022) as stabilizers, while warning that ideologically driven containment risks hot peace. This evolution underscores a pivot from regional descriptivism to global realpolitik, prioritizing causal deterrence over normative convergence.^[20]^[12]

Preconditions and Causal Factors

Post-Belligerency Dynamics

Post-belligerency dynamics in the formation of cold peace entail the stabilization of relations through armistices or ceasefires that halt active combat but maintain adversarial stances, often enforced by mutual deterrence or external hegemony rather than mutual accommodation. These dynamics emerge when warring parties prioritize short-term de-escalation over resolving core disputes, such as territorial claims or ideological incompatibilities, leading to a fragile equilibrium where renewed violence is deterred but cooperation remains minimal.^[21] Hegemonic intervention by a great power can accelerate this transition by imposing order, as evidenced in post-World War II Middle Eastern arrangements where U.S. influence sustained Egyptian-Israeli truces without deeper integration.^[22] A persistent security dilemma characterizes these phases, wherein each side's efforts to bolster defenses—such as rearmament or fortified borders—are interpreted as preparations for aggression, fostering a cycle of suspicion and proxy competitions without direct confrontation. This dilemma is exacerbated in power vacuums following conflict, where absent stabilizing forces, rivals default to self-help strategies that preserve hostility.^[10]^[23] For instance, post-1988 Iran-Iraq dynamics involved demilitarized zones alongside ongoing rhetorical threats and militia support, illustrating how incomplete demobilization entrenches low-trust equilibria.^[12] Economic and diplomatic disengagement further solidifies cold peace, as parties avoid interdependence that could vulnerability to exploitation, opting instead for parallel systems or sanctions to signal resolve. Without institutional frameworks for dialogue or joint problem-solving, these dynamics impede progression to warm peace, where trust and shared interests supplant deterrence.^[24] Scholarly analyses, such as those by Benjamin Miller, emphasize that such outcomes hinge on the absence of state-nation congruence and great power mediation, which together sustain a "cold" stability over reconciliation.^[25] This pattern recurs when post-war settlements emphasize military parity—evident in arms control pacts like the 1979 Egypt-Israel treaty—over societal or normative alignment.^[26]

Persistent Ideological and Security Divergences

Persistent ideological divergences in international relations manifest as irreconcilable differences in core values, political ideologies, and national narratives that preclude the deep reconciliation required for warm peace, instead fostering a tenuous cold peace sustained by deterrence rather than affinity. These divergences often stem from clashing governance models, such as liberal democracy versus authoritarianism, or secular nationalism versus religious fundamentalism, which engender mutual demonization and propaganda that undermine trust-building efforts. For example, post-Cold War U.S.-Russia relations have been marked by persistent ideological friction between Western emphasis on individual rights and rule of law and Russia's prioritization of state sovereignty and traditionalism, leading to a "cold peace" where cooperation on shared interests like arms control is episodic and overshadowed by accusations of expansionism.^[27]^[28] Similarly, in U.S.-China dynamics, the ideological chasm between democratic pluralism and Communist Party-led collectivism amplifies perceptions of existential threats, as each side views the other's system as inherently expansionist and corrosive to its own.^[29] Security divergences compound these ideological rifts by creating self-perpetuating dilemmas where defensive measures are interpreted as offensive preparations, entrenching high-alert postures without active hostilities. Mutual suspicions over intentions—rooted in historical grievances and divergent threat assessments—drive arms races and alliance formations that stabilize cold peace but inhibit demilitarization or joint security architectures. In regional theaters like post-1979 Egypt-Israel relations, ideological residues of pan-Arabism clashing with Zionism persist alongside security concerns over Sinai fortifications and water rights, resulting in formalized non-aggression without normalized trade or societal exchanges. Scholars note that such divergences demand resolution through transformative domestic reforms or hegemonic accommodation, absent which cold peace devolves into frozen conflicts vulnerable to sparks like territorial incidents.^[16] Realist analyses emphasize that power asymmetries exacerbate these issues, as weaker states hedge against perceived ideological subversion by stronger ones, perpetuating cycles of mistrust.^[30] The interplay of ideological and security divergences often yields hybrid threats, such as hybrid warfare or cyber operations, that test cold peace thresholds without crossing into hot war. For instance, Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea highlighted how ideological narratives of Western encirclement justify security actions framed as defensive revanchism, eroding post-Cold War accords.^[27] Empirical studies indicate that transitions to warmer peace historically require ideological convergence, as seen in Western Europe's post-World War II integration, where shared liberal values mitigated security fears; in contrast, persistent divergences in non-liberal dyads sustain cold equilibria.^[23] This causal persistence underscores why cold peace endures in ideologically polarized regions, prioritizing survival over harmony.^[10]

Comparative Analysis

Cold Peace Versus Warm Peace

Cold peace and warm peace represent distinct stages on the continuum of interstate relations following the cessation of hostilities, with cold peace characterized by the mere absence of active conflict amid persistent mutual suspicion and limited interaction, while warm peace entails deeper reconciliation marked by cooperative institutions, economic interdependence, and reduced perceptions of threat.^[10]^[11] In cold peace, states maintain formal diplomatic ties and adhere to ceasefires or treaties, but interactions remain pragmatic and security-focused, often enforced by deterrence or external guarantees rather than intrinsic trust; for instance, relations between Egypt and Israel after the 1979 Camp David Accords exemplify this, where military demobilization occurred alongside ongoing rhetorical hostility and minimal societal exchanges.^[31]^[32] Conversely, warm peace involves transformative processes that foster mutual respect and integration, such as shared regional frameworks that lower the probability of renewed war to negligible levels through dense networks of trade, cultural ties, and joint problem-solving, as observed in post-World War II Western Europe via the European Coal and Steel Community established in 1951, which evolved into broader supranational governance.^[10]^[23] The primary differences lie in the depth of relational transformation: cold peace sustains ideological divergences and security dilemmas, with states viewing each other as latent adversaries despite non-aggression, leading to arms buildups and proxy competitions rather than disarmament; empirical analyses indicate that such arrangements often rely on balance-of-power dynamics or superpower mediation for stability, as in the U.S.-brokered Egypt-Israel disengagement agreements of 1974 and 1975, but harbor vulnerabilities to domestic political shifts that can escalate tensions.^[9]^[23] Warm peace, by contrast, requires addressing root causes through liberal mechanisms like democratic convergence and economic liberalization, yielding higher durability; studies of regional transitions show that Western Europe's shift from cold peace in the 1950s—post the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty—to warm peace by the 1970s correlated with intra-regional trade volumes exceeding 60% of GDP and the absence of bilateral defense pacts, contrasting sharply with cold peace's typical trade levels below 10% and persistent alliance dependencies.^[10]^[30] This distinction underscores causal realism in peace durability: cold peace achieves negative peace (no war) via restraint but neglects positive peace elements like reconciled identities, rendering it prone to breakdown under stress, whereas warm peace builds resilience through interdependent incentives that make conflict economically and socially irrational.^[1]^[33] Empirical comparisons reveal that transitions from cold to warm peace demand deliberate policy shifts beyond mere armistice; for example, Jordan-Israel relations, formalized by the 1994 Wadi Araba Treaty, initially aspired to warm peace with joint water projects and tourism exceeding 1 million visitors annually by 1997, but devolved toward cold peace by 2021 due to unresolved Palestinian issues and public opinion polls showing over 80% Jordanian disapproval of normalization, highlighting how unaddressed grievances erode cooperative foundations.^[32] In theoretical formulations, scholars like Benjamin Miller argue that external balancing suffices for cold peace but insufficient for warm peace, which necessitates internal societal transformations such as elite accommodation and public reconciliation to mitigate revisionist pressures; data from post-Cold War cases, including the limited U.S.-China détente since 1972, illustrate cold peace's endurance through strategic restraint—evident in annual bilateral trade surpassing $500 billion by 2020—yet persistent territorial disputes and military expenditures averaging 2-3% of GDP underscore its inferiority to warm peace's conflict inoperability.^[9]^[34] Thus, while cold peace averts immediate catastrophe, it remains a provisional state vulnerable to reversion, whereas warm peace, though rarer and costlier to achieve, offers sustainable security through mutual vulnerability and shared prosperity.^[10]^[35]

Cold Peace Versus Cold War

A cold peace constitutes a condition of managed antagonism between states, typically post-belligerency, where formal accords or deterrence mechanisms prevent renewed hostilities, but deep-seated distrust precludes substantive reconciliation or joint endeavors.^[12] This contrasts with the Cold War, a multifaceted rivalry—exemplified by the U.S.-Soviet standoff from 1947 to 1991—that featured ideological crusades for mutual ideological supremacy, extensive proxy engagements (e.g., Korea 1950–1953, Afghanistan 1979–1989), and bloc-based alliances like NATO (1949) and the Warsaw Pact (1955) designed to encircle and erode the opponent's geopolitical foundations.^[16] In cold peace, the emphasis lies on pragmatic non-aggression without transformative subversion, whereas Cold War strategies explicitly sought the adversary's political or territorial dissolution through covert operations, arms proliferation (e.g., nuclear stockpiles exceeding 70,000 warheads by 1986), and information warfare.^[17] Fundamentally, cold peace eschews the zero-sum escalation inherent in Cold War logic, where mutual assured destruction doctrines and competitive resource allocation (e.g., U.S. defense spending averaging 9.4% of GDP in the 1950s–1960s versus 6–8% in the USSR) fueled perpetual brinkmanship.^[36] Instead, cold peace accommodates selective economic interdependencies—such as trade volumes that grew between erstwhile rivals without bloc autarky—to undergird stability, as observed in post-1988 Iran-Iraq dynamics where bilateral commerce persisted amid unresolved grievances.^[12] Scholarly analyses, including Michael Doyle's framework, posit cold peace as a "live and let live" equilibrium devoid of the Cold War's regime-change imperatives or industrial espionage campaigns, thereby mitigating risks of inadvertent escalation through normalized deterrence rather than offensive posturing.^[20] This distinction underscores causal realism: Cold War persistence stemmed from incompatible universalist ideologies demanding expansion, while cold peace endures via reciprocal recognition of sovereignty limits, absent the messianic drives that prolonged U.S.-Soviet enmity for over four decades.^[11] Empirical divergences further illuminate the relational spectrum. Cold War theaters involved institutionalized containment (e.g., Truman Doctrine, 1947, allocating $400 million in aid), fostering global polarization, whereas cold peace manifests bilaterally with episodic diplomatic friction but no sustained alliance-building against a singular foe.^[13] Risks in cold peace center on endogenous breakdowns from unresolved disputes, unlike the exogenous proxy spillovers (e.g., 38 proxy conflicts documented 1945–1991) that characterized Cold War volatility.^[14] Thus, transitioning from Cold War to cold peace requires demobilizing ideological apparatuses, a process evidenced in post-1991 Russo-Western ties, where initial détente eroded into tense coexistence without reverting to full-spectrum confrontation.^[15]

Cold Peace Versus Active Conflict or Hot Peace

Cold peace constitutes a post-belligerency condition in which direct military hostilities have ceased under the framework of a formal treaty or armistice, yet mutual antagonism persists without normalization, economic integration, or diplomatic thaw, thereby averting the sustained violence inherent in active conflict. Active conflict, conversely, features ongoing armed engagements, including ground operations, aerial strikes, and naval confrontations, generating consistent battlefield casualties and territorial disruptions; for example, global data recorded 61 state-based armed conflicts in 2024, the highest in over seven decades, marked by such direct escalations.^[37] In cold peace, states prioritize deterrence through maintained military postures and rhetorical hostilities over kinetic actions, reducing immediate risks of escalation while preserving core grievances, as evidenced in analyses of post-war dyads where truces hold absent reconciliation efforts.^[15] Distinguishing cold peace from hot peace further underscores its relative stasis: hot peace entails proactive, indirect measures such as proxy engagements, cyberattacks, industrial espionage, and economic sanctions aimed at undermining adversaries without triggering full-scale war, fostering a dynamic friction that cold peace deliberately sidesteps.^[38] Whereas hot peace, as conceptualized in great-power rivalries like U.S.-Russia post-2014, involves layered subversive activities to erode opponent stability—such as hybrid warfare tactics declared under humanitarian pretexts—cold peace enforces a pragmatic non-aggression norm, lacking these erosive campaigns in favor of isolated deterrence and minimal interaction.^[39] This delineation highlights cold peace's emphasis on mutual survival amid irreconcilable divides, where violations of the truce risk reversion to active conflict, but routine provocations characteristic of hot peace are curtailed to prevent inadvertent spirals.^[11] Empirical thresholds reinforce these contrasts: transitions from active conflict to cold peace often follow exhaustive ceasefires, as in certain Middle Eastern armistices post-1973, where battle deaths plummet but border fortifications endure without proxy incursions typical of hot peace variants.^[16] Hot peace, by sustaining low-level attrition—evident in heightened espionage and sanctions regimes since the early 2010s—erodes long-term stability more insidiously than cold peace's overt but contained tensions, potentially serving as a precursor to either détente or renewed hot war.^[40] Thus, cold peace functions as a brittle equilibrium, preferable to active conflict's destructiveness yet vulnerable to hot peace's creeping encroachments if ideological rifts deepen unchecked.

Empirical Examples

Middle Eastern Cases: Egypt-Israel and Jordan-Israel

The Egypt–Israel peace treaty, signed on March 26, 1979, after the 1978 Camp David Accords, marked the first formal recognition of Israel by an Arab state and included Israel's phased withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, completed by April 25, 1982, in exchange for Egypt's normalization of diplomatic ties and non-aggression commitments.^[41]^[42] Despite compliance with treaty stipulations, including demilitarization of Sinai and joint military patrols, the relationship exemplifies cold peace through persistent mutual distrust, minimal people-to-people exchanges, and Egypt's official rhetoric framing Israel as a security threat amid regional instability.^[4]^[43] Security coordination has endured, such as intelligence sharing on Sinai jihadists and Gaza border management, but economic ties remain limited, with bilateral trade under $500 million annually as of 2023, overshadowed by Egypt's dependence on U.S. aid tied to the treaty.^[41]^[44] Egyptian public sentiment underscores the cold nature, with state media often amplifying anti-Israel narratives and polls showing widespread opposition; a 2024 survey found only 8% of Egyptians favoring normalized relations, a figure hardened by events like the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack and subsequent Gaza war.^[45] Incidents, including Egypt's 2024 accusations of Israeli treaty violations over Gaza aid and water disputes, have strained ties without derailing the no-war framework, reflecting ideological divergences rooted in pan-Arabism and Palestinian solidarity.^[46]^[43] This dynamic has proven durable, surviving Egyptian leadership changes from Sadat's assassination in 1981 to Sisi's 2014 rise, yet vulnerabilities persist, as evidenced by 2025 reports of "strategic coldness" amid accusations of gas deal breaches and refugee pressures.^[44]^[41] The Jordan–Israel peace treaty, formalized on October 26, 1994, at Wadi Araba, terminated the 1948-1994 state of belligerency, establishing embassies, border cooperation, and resource-sharing annexes on water from the Jordan River and Yarmouk, with Jordan receiving $1.2 billion in U.S. debt relief to facilitate implementation.^[47]^[48] Relations constitute cold peace via elite-level pragmatism—evident in covert intelligence collaboration against ISIS and Iranian proxies since the mid-2010s—but offset by public hostility, driven by Jordan's 50-70% Palestinian-origin population and recurring protests over Israeli policies in Jerusalem's holy sites.^[49]^[50] Economic pacts, like a 2016 gas supply deal valued at $10 billion over 15 years, have faltered amid 2023-2025 diplomatic rows, including Jordan's recall of its ambassador after the Al-Aqsa clashes and cancellation of water-for-energy swaps.^[32]^[51] Tensions escalated post-October 2023, with Jordanian officials decrying Israeli actions in Gaza and domestic unrest threatening King Abdullah II's monarchy, which maintains the treaty for survival amid economic woes and refugee burdens exceeding 2 million Syrians and Palestinians.^[52]^[50] Border incidents, such as the September 2024 shooting of three Jordanian citizens attempting infiltration, highlight enforcement challenges without reverting to hostilities, underscoring the treaty's stability through shared threats like extremism, yet its fragility against ideological rifts and unmet expectations for broader Arab-Israeli progress.^[53]^[51] Both cases illustrate cold peace's hallmarks: treaty adherence averting war, but absent trust and normalization, perpetuated by domestic politics and unresolved regional grievances.^[4]^[49]

Iran-Iraq Relations (1988–2003)

The ceasefire ending the Iran-Iraq War took effect on August 20, 1988, following United Nations Security Council Resolution 598, which called for mutual troop withdrawals to internationally recognized borders, an exchange of prisoners of war, and a formal cessation of hostilities.^[54] Iraq accepted the resolution's terms immediately, while Iran, facing military setbacks and U.S. naval pressure in the Persian Gulf, acquiesced after initial reluctance, though it demanded Iraqi reparations and accountability for initiating the conflict.^[55] Troop disengagements occurred under UN supervision by early 1989, restoring the pre-war status quo ante along the border, but no comprehensive peace treaty was ever signed, leaving core grievances—such as border delineations based on the 1975 Algiers Accord, which Iraq had repudiated in 1980—unresolved.^[56] Prisoner exchanges began in November 1988 for the sick and wounded, totaling around 1,569 individuals under International Committee of the Red Cross auspices, but thousands of POWs remained detained on both sides for years due to mutual distrust and accounting disputes.^[57] Relations deteriorated further with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, which Iran publicly condemned as aggression, aligning Tehran with the U.S.-led coalition's objectives to expel Iraqi forces without direct military involvement.^[58] Iran provided covert support by sheltering over 100 Iraqi aircraft that fled to its territory during the 1991 Gulf War, refusing their return to Saddam Hussein's regime, and Tehran viewed the ensuing UN sanctions and no-fly zones as weakening its longstanding adversary.^[59] Throughout the 1990s, Iran sustained backing for Iraqi opposition groups, particularly Shia Islamist factions like the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which operated from exile in Tehran and conducted cross-border activities against Saddam's Ba'athist government.^[60] Saddam responded with brutal suppression of Shia uprisings in southern Iraq in 1991, which Iran encouraged but did not militarily aid, while border skirmishes and accusations of infiltration persisted without escalating to full conflict.^[61] By the early 2000s, the absence of diplomatic normalization was evident in ongoing POW detentions—estimated at several thousand—and unfulfilled demands for Iraqi war reparations, which Iran pursued through UN channels without success.^[62] Iraq's chemical weapons use during the war and suppression of its Shia majority fueled Iranian rhetoric portraying Saddam as an existential threat, yet pragmatic restraint prevailed, with no resumption of direct hostilities amid mutual exhaustion and external pressures like UN sanctions on Iraq. This period exemplified a cold peace: an uneasy armistice upheld by deterrence and international monitoring, punctuated by proxy subversion and ideological antagonism, but devoid of economic cooperation or confidence-building measures, culminating just prior to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam.^[63]

South Asian Cases: India-Pakistan

The India-Pakistan relationship has exemplified cold peace since the establishment of mutual nuclear deterrence following both countries' tests in May 1998, marked by the absence of full-scale interstate war after 1971 alongside persistent low-intensity hostilities, proxy terrorism, and unresolved territorial disputes over Kashmir.^[64] This dynamic emerged from the 1972 Simla Agreement, which converted the 1949 ceasefire line into the Line of Control (LoC) and committed parties to bilateral resolution without third-party intervention, yet failed to yield a final settlement amid Pakistan's support for Kashmiri separatists.^[65] Over 50,000 deaths have occurred in the Kashmir insurgency since 1989, largely attributed to Pakistan-based militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, sustaining mutual distrust without escalating to conventional invasion due to nuclear risks.^[66] Nuclear capabilities have imposed a fragile stability, deterring all-out conflict while enabling calibrated escalations such as the 1999 Kargil intrusion by Pakistani forces—disguised as militants—which India repelled without crossing the LoC, signaling a "red line" for nuclear thresholds.^[67] Post-Kargil dialogues, including the 1999 Lahore Declaration pledging nuclear risk reduction, collapsed amid the December 2001 attack on India's parliament by Pakistan-linked militants, leading to a 10-month military standoff.^[68] Subsequent crises, like the 2008 Mumbai attacks killing 166 civilians and the 2019 Pulwama suicide bombing prompting India's Balakot airstrikes, tested this equilibrium; Pakistan's retaliatory downing of an Indian jet underscored tit-for-tat restraint to avoid nuclear exchange.^[69] Confidence-building measures, such as the 2003 LoC ceasefire, have periodically mitigated violence but remain reactive, with over 4,000 violations recorded between 2013 and 2017 before a 2021 renewal reduced incidents by approximately 80%.^[70] Ideological divergences exacerbate the cold peace: Pakistan's military doctrine views India as an existential threat, justifying asymmetric warfare via proxies, while India's post-2014 policies under Prime Minister Modi emphasize punitive deterrence, including surgical strikes after the 2016 Uri attack.^[66] Diplomatic ties severed after India's 2019 revocation of Jammu and Kashmir's autonomy—halting trade, visas, and high-level talks—have not derailed the status quo, as economic interdependence remains minimal (bilateral trade under $3 billion annually pre-2019) and both prioritize internal stability over conquest.^[71] External powers, including U.S. mediation in crises, reinforce deterrence without resolving core grievances, yielding an "unstable peace" prone to miscalculation yet enduring due to the catastrophic costs of escalation.^[64] Scholarly assessments, such as those from Carnegie analyses, describe this as a manageable cold peace requiring incremental stabilization through sustained military hotlines and demilitarization pilots, though Pakistan's internal instability and India's rising power asymmetry heighten breakdown risks.^[72]

Other Instances and Emerging Applications

Relations between India and China have exemplified a cold peace since the mid-20th century, marked by recurring border skirmishes and strategic rivalry without full-scale war. The 1962 Sino-Indian War resulted in China's occupation of Aksai Chin, leaving unresolved territorial claims along the 3,488 km Line of Actual Control (LAC). Tensions escalated in the 2020 Galwan Valley clash on June 15, where hand-to-hand combat led to 20 Indian deaths and estimates of 35-45 Chinese casualties, prompting partial troop disengagements but sustained military reinforcements on both sides, with India deploying over 50,000 additional troops and China fortifying positions near the LAC.^[73]^[74] This dynamic persists amid economic interdependence, as bilateral trade reached $136 billion in 2023, yet mutual distrust hinders normalization.^[75] Armenia-Azerbaijan relations entered a phase of cold peace following the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, where Azerbaijan recaptured significant territories, culminating in the September 2023 offensive that displaced over 100,000 ethnic Armenians and ended the self-declared Republic of Artsakh. Ceasefire agreements brokered by Russia in November 2020 and subsequent U.S.- and EU-mediated talks have maintained a fragile truce, but the absence of a comprehensive peace treaty, coupled with Azerbaijan's demands for constitutional changes in Armenia renouncing territorial claims, sustains low-level hostilities and border incidents.^[76]^[77] As of October 2024, negotiations for border delimitation continue, yet analysts warn of prolonged instability without mutual recognition.^[78] Serbia-Kosovo interactions represent another instance of cold peace since Kosovo's 2008 independence declaration, unrecognized by Serbia, leading to ongoing EU-facilitated Brussels Agreement dialogues since 2011. Despite technical normalizations like the 2013 IBM (Integrated Border Management) deal and 2015 Ostermundigen Agreement on energy, core issues such as Serbia's non-participation in Kosovo's institutions and reciprocal non-recognition persist, with incidents like the 2023 Banjska clash killing one Serbian policeman.^[79] Bilateral trade stands at approximately €600 million annually, but political animosity impedes deeper cooperation.^[80] Emerging applications include U.S.-China relations in the 2020s, framed as a cold peace to avert escalation amid trade wars, Taiwan Strait tensions, and South China Sea disputes. Following the 2018-2020 trade tariffs affecting $360 billion in goods and China's 2022 military exercises post-Pelosi's Taiwan visit involving 11 warships and 76 aircraft, summits like the November 2023 APEC meeting in San Francisco yielded agreements on fentanyl cooperation and military dialogues, yet strategic competition endures with U.S. export controls on semiconductors and China's Belt and Road expansion.^[81]^[82] Proponents argue this managed rivalry, akin to post-Cold War U.S.-Russia détente, prioritizes stability over confrontation.^[20] Similarly, Japan-China ties have cooled into a cold peace since territorial disputes over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands intensified in 2012, with annual military incursions and economic decoupling measures, though 2023 Xi-Kishida talks aimed at stabilizing relations.^[83]

Stability, Durability, and Risks

Factors Contributing to Endurance

The endurance of cold peace often stems from robust deterrence mechanisms that raise the prospective costs of aggression beyond tolerable thresholds for both parties. In nuclear-armed dyads such as India and Pakistan, mutual possession of deliverable warheads—estimated at over 170 for India and 170 for Pakistan as of 2023—has enforced crisis stability by compelling restraint during escalatory episodes, including the 1999 Kargil intrusion and the 2019 Balakot aerial exchanges, where neither side pursued ground invasions that risked nuclear thresholds.^[84]^[85] This dynamic aligns with deterrence theory, wherein the certainty of devastating retaliation outweighs territorial or ideological gains, thereby perpetuating a tense but non-belligerent status quo absent deeper reconciliation.^[86] Treaty-based constraints and external security guarantees further bolster longevity, as seen in the Egypt-Israel dyad post-1979 Camp David Accords. The agreement's demilitarization clauses for the Sinai Peninsula, monitored through joint patrols and U.S.-facilitated intelligence sharing, have contained border incidents despite episodic diplomatic frictions and Egyptian domestic opposition, with bilateral military coordination enduring through over four decades of minimal violations.^[4]^[42] U.S. annual military aid to Egypt, averaging $1.3 billion since the treaty's ratification, incentivizes compliance by linking economic stability to non-aggression, while Israel's qualitative military edge—maintained via U.S. support—deters revanchist impulses without provoking preemptive action.^[45] Post-war exhaustion and resource depletion also contribute causally, particularly in protracted conflicts like the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, where cumulative casualties exceeding 1 million and economic devastation—leaving Iraq with $75 billion in debt—imposed a de facto truce through 2003, sustained by sanctions regimes and internal reconstruction imperatives that prioritized recovery over resumption.^[87] In such scenarios, leadership calculus shifts toward domestic consolidation, where the marginal utility of peace (e.g., reallocating military spending to infrastructure) eclipses revanchism, though this factor wanes without reinforcing deterrence.^[10] Balance-of-power equilibria, often underwritten by great-power involvement, provide an additional layer; for instance, U.S. bipolar engagement in Middle Eastern cases has calibrated arms flows to prevent unilateral dominance, as in Jordan-Israel relations post-1994 treaty, where coordinated counterterrorism efforts against shared threats like Iranian proxies have pragmatically extended non-war states without fostering amity.^[88] These elements collectively explain cold peace's resilience as a suboptimal equilibrium: empirically verifiable in low recurrence rates of interstate war among treaty-bound adversaries (e.g., zero major Egypt-Israel clashes since 1979), yet vulnerable to shifts in capability asymmetries or external withdrawals.^[89]

Vulnerabilities and Pathways to Breakdown

Cold peace arrangements, characterized by formal non-aggression pacts without deep societal reconciliation or trust-building, are inherently susceptible to disruption from domestic political shifts that prioritize nationalist agendas over pragmatic restraint. In the Egypt-Israel case, persistent anti-Israel incitement in Egyptian state media and education systems undermines public support for the 1979 treaty, fostering generational hostility that could empower hardline leaders to renege on commitments during crises.^[90] Similarly, reliance on mutual deterrence rather than cooperative institutions leaves these pacts vulnerable to miscalculations, where localized incidents—such as border skirmishes or proxy attacks—escalate due to honor-bound responses or alliance obligations.^[91] Proxy conflicts and spillover from unresolved regional disputes represent a primary pathway to breakdown, as seen in Egypt's exposure to Gaza-related instability following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. Egyptian officials have warned that Israeli military operations in Rafah or potential Palestinian refugee inflows into Sinai could jeopardize the treaty, prompting Cairo to bolster forces beyond demilitarized limits and heighten rhetoric against perceived threats to its sovereignty.^[92] ^[93] Economic interdependencies, like the 2020 gas supply deal, introduce fragility by tying Egypt's energy security to Israeli stability, yet Cairo's domestic economic woes—exacerbated by war-induced disruptions—could incentivize scapegoating Israel to rally public support.^[94] In South Asian dynamics, India-Pakistan relations exemplify how terrorism and territorial flashpoints erode cold peace endurance, with militant attacks in Kashmir repeatedly triggering retaliatory strikes and ceasefire violations. The April 2025 Pahalgam assault, killing 26 civilians, exemplifies this cycle, where Pakistan's alleged tolerance of cross-border groups prompts Indian surgical responses, narrowing the gap between restraint and full mobilization amid nuclear shadows.^[66] Pathways to escalation often stem from attribution failures or domestic pressures, as seen in the 2019 Balakot crisis, where initial de-escalation gave way to brinkmanship until third-party mediation intervened; without such buffers, analogous incidents risk uncontrolled ladder-climbing toward hot conflict.^[95] Broader vulnerabilities include external great-power involvement, which can embolden revisionist actors by offsetting deterrence costs, and leadership transitions that dismantle personal diplomacy sustaining the status quo. In Iran-Iraq post-1988 relations, the 2003 U.S. invasion disrupted a tenuous cold peace by removing Saddam Hussein's regime, unleashing sectarian proxies that reignited hostilities through asymmetric warfare.^[12] Overall, these pacts' durability hinges on sustained mutual vulnerabilities, but pathways to breakdown accelerate when core grievances—unaddressed identities, resources, or irredentist claims—intersect with opportunistic aggression, potentially reverting to active warfare or intensified proxy confrontations absent robust verification mechanisms.^[96]

Theoretical Debates and Criticisms

Academic and Policy Critiques

Academic scholars have critiqued the cold peace paradigm for its inherent fragility and limited durability, arguing that it represents a minimal cessation of hostilities rather than a stable equilibrium. Benjamin Miller, in his analysis of regional peace strategies, contends that cold peace, often secured through balance-of-power mechanisms or international mediation, fails to address underlying domestic vulnerabilities such as weak state institutions or unresolved ideological conflicts, rendering it susceptible to reversion toward conflict without complementary internal reforms like democratization or economic integration.^[9] This perspective highlights how cold peace prioritizes elite-level agreements over societal reconciliation, leading to persistent mutual suspicions and occasional escalations, as evidenced in the stalled normalization between signatories despite formal treaties.^[10] In the context of Middle Eastern dyads, academic examinations of Egypt-Israel relations underscore these limitations, portraying cold peace as a "tinderbox" where strategic military cooperation coexists with public antagonism and minimal civilian interchange. Jeffrey Azarva's 2007 assessment warns that the 1979 Camp David Accords yielded only a tenuous standoff, vulnerable to domestic upheavals like Egypt's political instability or shifts in leadership attitudes, potentially escalating to renewed hostilities absent deeper trust-building measures.^[87] Similarly, analyses of Jordan-Israel ties post-1994 treaty reveal a regression from initial optimism to cold peace, driven by asymmetric power dynamics and unaddressed grievances, illustrating how the absence of robust economic interdependence exacerbates periodic diplomatic freezes.^[32] Policy critiques from think tanks and strategists emphasize cold peace's opportunity costs and risks to broader regional security architectures. Institutions like the Middle East Forum argue that settling for cold peace in Egypt-Israel relations forfeits potential economic synergies, such as expanded Sinai development or joint counterterrorism, while exposing allies to miscalculation amid fluctuating alliances, as seen in Egypt's post-2011 hedging toward Islamist influences.^[97] U.S. policy analysts, including those at the Washington Institute, have faulted cold peace frameworks for underutilizing leverage like aid packages to enforce normalization, noting that without incentives for people-to-people contacts, treaties remain "reversible" under exogenous shocks like the 2023-2024 Gaza conflict, which strained bilateral channels despite upheld non-aggression pacts.^[98] In South Asian applications, policy discourse on India-Pakistan critiques cold peace as perpetuating nuclear brinkmanship without deterrence stability, advocating instead for multilateral confidence-building to mitigate crisis pathways observed in events like the 2019 Pulwama incident.^[24] Critics across both domains also question the conceptual precision of cold peace, positing it as an intermediate state prone to "mimetic" replication of Cold War logics, where narratives of victimhood and unassimilated victories sustain low-level animosities without Cold War-era ideological containment structures.^[15] This meta-critique, drawn from European security studies on Russo-Western dynamics, warns that policy overreliance on cold peace analogies overlooks causal drivers like unresolved territorial disputes, advocating empirical metrics—such as trade volumes or joint exercises—to gauge progression toward warmer variants rather than complacent stasis.^[99]

Realist Perspectives on Viability and Alternatives

Realist scholars in international relations theory view cold peace as a viable and often enduring state of affairs in an anarchic system, sustained by structural incentives for states to prioritize survival through balance-of-power dynamics and deterrence rather than risking destructive wars. Kenneth Waltz, a foundational neorealist, argued that bipolar configurations, as exemplified by the U.S.-Soviet standoff from 1945 to 1991, foster stability by concentrating power and enabling clear mutual deterrence, preventing escalation despite ideological antagonism and proxy conflicts. This period saw no direct superpower clashes, with nuclear arsenals—totaling over 70,000 warheads by the 1980s—imposing prohibitive costs on aggression, thus preserving a tense but war-free equilibrium.^[100] John Mearsheimer extends this analysis, contending that offensive realism drives states to seek regional hegemony but constrains them to managed rivalry when balanced by peers, as power symmetries compel rational actors to forgo conquest for fear of retaliation or overextension.^[101] In post-Cold War Europe, for example, NATO's eastward expansion and Russia's responses have perpetuated a cold peace since 1991, with deterrence mechanisms like conventional forces and residual nuclear capabilities averting hot war amid territorial disputes such as those over Ukraine prior to 2014.^[100] Realists emphasize that such arrangements endure as long as relative power remains stable, with economic interdependence providing marginal reinforcement but not the primary causal driver—evident in the U.S.-China rivalry since the early 2010s, where trade volumes exceeded $600 billion annually by 2022 yet military posturing in the South China Sea has not precipitated conflict due to balancing coalitions and naval deterrence.^[102] From a realist standpoint, alternatives to cold peace include hegemonic dominance, which offers temporary stability under a preponderant power (e.g., U.S. unipolarity from 1991 to circa 2010) but invites balancing coalitions and eventual diffusion of power leading back to rivalry. Liberal approaches, such as deep institutional integration or democratic peace propositions, are critiqued as overly optimistic, masking power imbalances and fostering miscalculations that could erode deterrence—realists cite the European Union's expansion as initially stabilizing via NATO's realist core rather than supranational ideals alone.^[30] Hot war remains the grim fallback if deterrence fails, as in potential escalations from unresolved disputes, underscoring cold peace's pragmatic superiority for state preservation in anarchy. Isolationism or appeasement, meanwhile, risks power vacuums exploitable by revisionist actors, as Mearsheimer warned post-Cold War regarding multipolar Europe's latent instabilities without renewed balancing.^[100] Thus, realists advocate sustaining cold peace through arms control pacts, alliance maintenance, and vigilant power assessments over idealistic pursuits of "warm peace."^[101]

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Israeli-Egyptian Peace: Forty Years After the 1973 War and Holding
Oct 2, 2013 · Over the past forty years, Egypt has sought to manage its relations with Israel using a restrictive format often referred to as "cold peace.Missing: instability | Show results with:instability
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The cold peace: Russo-Western relations as a mimetic cold war
Feb 12, 2013 · A cold peace is accompanied by a singular stress on notions of victimhood for some and undigested and bitter victory for others. The perceived ...
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[PDF] Back to the Future - John Mearsheimer
The Cold War peace contrasts sharply with European politics during the first 45 years of this century, which saw two world wars, a handful of minor wars ...
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Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order
Apr 1, 2019 · But a cold peace was eventually imposed on the Balkans by 1999. Developments in the Greater Middle East were more mixed, but even there it ...
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[PDF] Realism, liberalism and regional order in East Asia - T.V Paul
May 16, 2022 · 'Peaceful change' is viewed here as a continuum along a minimalist and maximalist spectrum from cold peace to regular peace to warm peace. In ...