More than two months into the war with Iran, a commentary in the Magnolia Tribune said the conflict, combined with an event in Venezuela, could be a major global turning point but that a lasting peace will be difficult to secure.
The Tribune said the Strait of Hormuz remains the central terrain of the confrontation and compared its importance to Vicksburg in the U.S. Civil War. The commentary said a double blockade of the strait is creating a siege atmosphere and cited energy analyst Daniel Yergin as calling the situation “the biggest energy disruption in history.”
The piece reviewed past peacemaking efforts to underscore the difficulty of ending wars. It noted that the Paris peace talks for Vietnam stretched from May 1968 to Jan. 1973 while fighting continued, and that fighting in World War I ended with an armistice on Nov. 11, 1918 but the Treaty of Versailles was not signed until June 28, 1919 — a treaty the Tribune said many historians now blame in part for the rise of the Third Reich and World War II.
The Tribune also cited shorter but consequential postwar delays in the Spanish-American War and the Mexican-American War. It noted the Treaty of Paris was signed Dec. 10, 1898 and that the Philippine insurrection began with the Battle of Manila on Feb. 4, 1899. The piece recounted that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed Feb. 2, 1848 and ratified by the U.S. Senate on March 10, 1848, adding large territories including California and parts of seven other modern states to the United States.
Concluding that wars often produce unintended consequences, the Magnolia Tribune said many Americans are tired of the stand-off at the Strait of Hormuz and anxious about gasoline prices, but that ending a war is far more complicated than starting one and peacemaking can be easy to get wrong.
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
