Peace Conference

The Chief of State of the New Republic and the Supreme Commander of the Imperial fleet call off the war.

"When neither side is superior, isn’t talking better than fighting?"

— Moishe Russie, Worldwar: Striking the Balance

Wars don't all have to end in a grand Final Battle. In fact, if the combatants both Know When to Fold 'Em, they can end the war without either side being crippled or annihilated.

Basically, two deadly enemies have a sit-down discussion, usually in neutral territory. The talks may be of vital importance: if they fail, a war on hold may restart or a new one may begin.

Since not everyone is interested in peace, someone will probably try to sabotage the talks — usually with a False Flag Operation. If the Propaganda Machine that told a side that the others are so evil was really good, The Remnant may refuse to accept the leader's negotiations and continue the fight all the same (and get rid of the "traitor" leader, if possible). Sometimes the more evil side just wants access to the other side's leadership, but typically peace talks are a good sign that neither side is entirely evil, and both are in fact fairly reasonable.

Of course, sometimes the peace conference is a trap, and the villains have no intention of negotiating in good faith; merely in luring the opposition into a place where it can be stomped out for good.

This trope also encompasses arms control negotiations and longer-lasting talks. While there's some superficial resemblance to a Hostage Situation, the two tropes really aren't related.

If the conflict lasts long enough, a third, neutral party may be required to Reconcile the Bitter Foes. Manipulative characters may take this chance to pull a Genghis Gambit, causing both sides to put off their differences in the face of some new threat. Hardliners may conspire to sabotage the conference as a Pretext for War.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• These are repeated several times in ∀ Gundam by Dianna Soriel and Guin Lineford, only to fail each time as different factions sabotage them. Eventually they're abandoned when it's revealed factions on the moon have turned against Dianna, which rather sinks the chances of permanent peace until that's taken care of.
• In the backstory of Mobile Suit Gundam, the Antarctic Conference was held after the utterly disastrous opening week of war between the Federation and Zeon, which had a death toll in the billions due to rampant use of chemical and nuclear weapons on both sides. Though it started out as peace negotiations, it later turned to arms reduction, and eventually culminated in the Antarctic Treaty, which had several major tenets: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical weapons were not allowed, Zeon was not allowed to Colony Drop Earth, prisoners of war were to be treated humanely, and the Side 6 colonies were officially neutral territory.
  • Degwin Zabi, sovereign of Zeon, attempts a peace talk with the Federation near the end of the series, as he's tired of the war and has lost two of his children to it. The peace talks end in failure before they even begin when Degwin and his flagship, along with General Revil's flagship and a third of the Federation fleet, are vaporized by Gihren Zabi's Wave-Motion Gun.
• In between Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, a conference is held to create the Treaty of Junius to limit various weapons ZAFT and the Earth Alliance could hold and stop the use of nuclear weapons. Sadly, it did zilch to stop the threat of Blue Cosmos and, two years later, war broke out again.
• The Silver, Red, and Blue Clans have one in K: Return of Kings. In the Silver Clan's headquarters... Shiro's tiny dorm room. And of course, it starts out with Saruhiko and Misaki arguing Like an Old Married Couple. Munakata, the Blue King, is not impressed. But they work things out and form an alliance.
• A successful one happens in High School D×D where angels, fallen angels, and devils formed a peace treaty with each other and is known historically as the "Kuon Treaty", named after the academy that they were at. Unfortunately, there's a certain group that doesn't want in on the peace treaty because either a) they still want to continue the Forever War, and b) the old generation doesn't want to recognize the new generation as the leaders.
• Transformers: Armada has one of the most odd cases. At the start of the first-ever Autobot-Decepticon alliance. Optimus Prime and Megatron meet at a peace conference and shake hands to commemorate the alliance, along with several other Autobots and Decepticons (who have mixed feelings).
  Cyclonus: Ha! I can't believe I'm fighting for harmony! What a load of bunk! I'm a lean, mean, fighting machine! Hahahaha!
  Side Swipe: I gotta work with this guy? I'm not so sure about this.
• In Dr. STONE, this was Senku's entire goal in the "Stone Wars" arc. In the end, developing nitroglycerin was enough to force Tsukasa to agree to an armistice, and he even seemed to have a Heel–Face Turn when Senku revived his sister, curing her brain-dead state. Of course, then Hyoga mortally wounded Tsukasa and Senku was forced to make him into a Human Popsicle. But at least the armistice held, and with Tsukasa and Hyoga both out of the picture, their Empire was absorbed into the Kingdom of Science.

Arts

• Raphael Rooms: The Italian authorities know the country doesn't stand a chance at fending off the Huns, so they send Pope Leo I to meet their king, Attila, in order to dissuade him from attacking Italy. This is the historical event depicted by "The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila". Attila is the central figure of the fresco; he and his people agitatedly watch some Christian martyrs appear in the sky. Facing him, therefore having his back turned to the viewer, is the Pope; Leo and other religious authorities stand calmly.

Comic Books

• Go Go Power Rangers deconstructs the infamous Put on a Bus moment. Following the events of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Shattered Grid, Jason is confronted by one of the Emissaries of the Morphin' Grid and asked to become part of a group of secret Rangers known as the Omega Rangers. He recruits Zack and Trini, but since they can't tell the other Rangers, Jason lies and claims they're going on a Peace Conference. Ultimately, both Tommy and Zedd consider the three of them cowards, both of them stating that if Zedd wins, there won't be a need for a peace conference.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: Diana manages to force peace talks between the Saturnian Empire, Paradise Island, and the United States before the Empire launches its full scale attack. While this does result in a treaty the Empire only intends to follow it to the letter and is poised to take advantage of any perceived breach by the other signers.

Fan Works

• Clear Skies is about a plot to disrupt a Gallente-Caldari peace conference, by crashing a Titan into the space station it's taking place on.
• Earth's Alien History:
  • In 2226, the Terran Treaty Organization hosts a peace summit in its capital, Stockholm, which is attended by all its member states, the Klingons, and the Romulans (the Citadel Council also sends observers, though they're considered a spent force by that point and not serious players). The purpose of the summit is officially to merely solve outstanding political disputes and deescalate tensions among the major powers of local space, but in truth, it's to disclose to all involved governments the danger posed by the impending Reaper invasion.
  • After the end of the Goa’uld War in 2337, TeTO and its allies meet on Concourse to hash out the terms of how to divide up the former Goa'uld Empire.
• Cardin Winchester organizes two of these in Lords Among the Ashes. The first took place at the end of year four and coincided with Jaune and Cinder's marriage. It was largely successful as it set up relief efforts, established refugee sites, and convinced some players to become neutral. The second peace conference took place during year seven and it was a complete disaster.
• Innocence Once Lost: A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Alternate Universe Fic. One of the side stories revolves around alternate versions of Luna and Twilight going to a Moonbase to sign a peace treaty between humans and ponies only for extremists on both sides to form a Villain Team-Up to launch a terrorist attack and restart hostilities.
• Second Chances includes one between the Five Great Sects.

Films — Live-Action

• The description of this trope could perfectly serve as a description of the Khitomer Accords between The Federation and the Klingons in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and the backstory to Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• The accident at the center of Hostile Waters takes place shortly before the Reykjavik summit between the US and Soviet Union. Preventing the incident from souring the talks before they even begin is a factor that weighs heavily in the decision making of both sides.
• The Mouse That Roared - the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, having declared war on the U.S. for the express purpose of being defeated and showered with reparation money, finds themselves winning, by seizing an ultimate nuclear weapon. The peace terms with the U.S. representative include having a California winery cease producing a cheap rip-off of their chief export pinot (their reason for going to war), a request for a million dollars in aid (the U.S. rep protests that they may have to settle for a billion, not a paltry million, but the Fenwick rep reminds him they won), and a proposal that the bomb be held by the little countries of the world as leverage against the superpowers going to nuclear war.
• The climax of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows revolves around the heroes trying to stop an assassination at one of these at Reichenbach, organized to deal with the political crisis created by Moriarty's acts of terror. But their actions merely ended up delaying The Great War by twenty-odd years.
• In X-Men: Days of Future Past, Mystique plans to murder Trask during the signing of the Paris Peace Accords.

Literature

• At the beginning of The Sixth Battle, peace negotiations between the ANC and South Africa's apartheid government are seriously disrupted when extremist whites fly two remote-controlled Cessnas filled with explosives into the building holding South Africa's Parliament, killing F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. Pretoria guesses correctly that when the talks later appear to be making progress, the Soviet Eurasian-supported Front Line States will launch an attack.
• Timothy Zahn's Hand of Thrawn duology had, as one of a great many plot points, the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Remnant, Pellaeon, realizing that the only way what was left of the Empire would survive was if they signed a peace treaty with the New Republic. Of course some of his people resisted, leading to about three-fourths of the events of that duology as they kidnapped his diplomatic envoy, sent pirates masquerading as New Republic forces to attack him, and decided to make it look like the greatest military mind the galaxy had known was Back from the Dead and didn't want the war to end. Eventually, Pellaeon prevailed. And it worked, even if there were still factions that refused to accept this.
• Preventing one of these from happening between Manticore and Haven is a major plot point in At All Costs and the failure of the previous one is the major reason for the resumption of hostilities in War of Honor. One is also featured prominently in Mission of Honor and A Rising Thunder, though it's not quite as formal as most. And by "not quite as formal" we mean "the President of the Republic of Haven shanghaied most of her Cabinet and paid an unannounced call on the queen of Manticore". Yeah.
• Subverted in a short gag in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with G'Gugvuntts and Vl'hurgs - they only appear in the midst of the conference, which turns sour due to the words of Arthur Dent traveling through a freak wormhole. After fighting a terrible war, they realize the source of the misunderstanding and decide to form an alliance against the Milky Way. They fail to reckon scale into their strategy, and thus their entire fleet is swallowed by a small dog.
• Star Trek: Forged in Fire features a conference between the Klingons and the Federation, although this is a few years before the successful conference at Khitomer. Some groundwork is laid here.
• Toward the end of Belisarius Series. In this case, it was in a weird way a Peace Conference between allies; in a way. The Emperor of the Malwa had recently overthrown the one who had started the war and was simply clearing up loose ends. Thus in the last campaign he actually had been an ally. In the peace conference, the new emperor was giving himself a reasonably sized empire to begin his dynasty with, and letting his empire's former enemies worry about dividing the Plunder, a straightforward job for the most part as most of them just kept what they had conquered except for a massive palace with a hoard so big that it would inevitably be an object of interimperial rivalry if any one kept it. This problem was solved by donating it all to charity.
• In Worldwar: Striking the Balance, Fleetlord Atvar of the Race holds one with the foreign ministers from Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States, with Great Britain and Japan as observers. It results in the Race agreeing to let all these countries (plus Canada) remain independent but the Race ruling the rest of the world. The biggest point of contention is over Poland. Since the Nazis and Soviets still dispute control over Poland, the Race decides they will maintain control of it. The Soviets accept this, but not the Nazis – until the Nazis’ plan to detonate a nuclear bomb in Poland fails.
• Peace Talks, the 16th book in The Dresden Files, has the titular talks being arranged so that the signatories of the Unseelie Accords can hash out an understanding with the Fomor and end the (mostly offscreen) conflict that's been ongoing since the aftermath of Changes. It turns out that the Fomor have no intention of seeking peace; the assemblage is just so that the Fomor's true ruler, Ethniu the Last Titan, can give all the supernatural nations a Join or Die speech in relation to her intentions to wage war on humanity.
• Forest Kingdom: In the Hawk & Fisher spinoff series' book 5 (Guard Against Dishonor), there's a secret one being held in Haven, between the Low Kingdoms and the kingdom of Outremer. Naturally, some people don't want the talks to succeed, so Fisher is assigned to security, where she ends up getting framed for one of the attacks on the gathering.
• A Practical Guide to Evil: After the Tenth Crusade attacks Callow in the beginning of book 4, Villain Protagonist Catherine wages every battle with the ulterior motive to still allow peace talks. After the Proceran invaders are decimated by a frozen lake being dropped on them and nearly out of provisions, they do indeed sit down to establish a truce. Though neither side is completely happy with the compromise they reach in the following hard-fought diplomatic battle, they still uphold it.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who did this twice in the Pertwee era:
  • "The Mind of Evil" has the Master hijacking a chemical-armed missile aiming to use it on a world peace conference.
  • That conference didn't work, as another one was held a year later to stop a situation turning into World War III. In "Day of the Daleks", a bomb going off starts that war and leads to the Daleks taking over Earth, which was what some guerrillas have traveled back in time to prevent by killing the man they thought was responsible. He wasn't and by blowing up the conference themselves, they caused their own problem. The Doctor is able to prevent this from occurring.
• As stated by the opening Babylon 5 was designed to be a place for settling disputes diplomatically. It didn't go so well.
• The end of Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars has one take place between the Sebaceans and the Scarrans aboard Moya.
• Battlestar Galactica (1978) opened with a peace conference intended to end a thousand-year war between the human Twelve Colonies and the Cylons. For anyone who a.) hasn't seen the original Battlestar Galactica yet b.) nonetheless cares about spoilers, the "peace conference" is really an evil and almost entirely successful plot by the bad guys to lure the good guys into a trap and wipe them out.
• The Battlestar Galactica (2003) reboot starts with something similar, but different: The Colonies and the Cylons had an Armistice Line, and an agreement to meet once a year on a little station on the line where representatives of each side would presumably sit across a table from one another, stare at each other for a while, and then go home. This arrangement is remarkably similar to the arrangement for the Panmunjom Conference between the US-led UN coalition and North Korea set up at the end of The Korean War and has been going on continuously ever since (see Real Life, below). Except...the Cylons don't send anyone. Ever. No one has seen the Cylons presumably since the peace agreement 40 years before the series begins. Eventually, the Cylons walk in one fateful meeting and shoot the Colonial representative, starting the war.
• The final season of 24 revolves around an UN-sponsored peace conference to end Kamistan's nuclear weapons programme.
• The crews of the various Star Trek shows get involved in facilitating these from time to time, but anything that can go wrong usually does. Either the talks are a trap by one side, or a third party interferes, or one of the negotiators has a dangerous secret, and so on.
• One of the interesting (and probably infuriating) things about the era centered around Star Trek: The Next Generation were the predominance of these in the backstory that lead to treaties that kneecapped the Federation as they gave everything and more to their belligerent parties. In fact, the Marquis were created because of one of these.
• Babel One in Star Trek: Enterprise, the peace negotiations between the Tellarites and Andorians which mark the first step towards The Federation.
• In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Jason, Zack, and Trini were written out of the show by being sent to a Teen Peace Summit. "Sent to a peace conference" proceeded to become the production team's euphemism for what we call being Put on a Bus.

Tabletop Games

• The Galactic Summit Event card in Star Realms. While it doesn't end the game, the Event does provide 8 Authority to all players.
• The Treaty of Thronehold in Eberron, signed during a conference at the Galifarian capital of Thronehold. By the time it was signed, what remained of the Five Nations were all but exhausted by a century of war, and the Day of Mourning was the final straw. The treaty recognized several of the new nations established during the war and forced said nations into peace.
• This trope crops up from time to time in BattleTech, usually when combatants are temporarily sick of fighting ^note There were impromptu peace conferences that ended the First Succession War, at least with the Steiner-Marik, Marik-Liao, Liao-Kurita, Steiner-Kurita and Davion-Liao fronts... after Kentares IV, there was so much bad blood between Kurita and Davion that no peace conference could ever erase. Please note that the fact that this was the end of the First Succession War should be a hint that the peaces didn't hold or because a Greater-Scope Villain had appeared on the scene ^note The formation of the short-lived Second Star League was due to the Inner Sphere deciding they really needed to stop beating up on each other so they could make Clan Smoke Jaguar no longer exist and tell the rest of the Clans to stop their invasion
  • The trope was soundly denied in 3020, when Katrina Steiner issued her Peace Proposal, which was meant to definitively end the Succession Wars through a negotiated settlement. The plan failed due to apathy from the four other Great Houses ^note the nicest response they got was from House Davion, which essentially boiled down to "Love to, but can't. But hey, how about an alliance?". That would bear fruit as the Federated Commonwealth, along with subtle political interference from ComStar, who benefited greatly from the Successor States pounding each other into the dirt.

Theater

• When Norwegian diplomat Mona Juul and her husband Terje Rød-Larsen finally succeed in getting Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to attend a clandestine conference in Oslo, they're explicitly instructed by their government to not call the secretive meetings a "peace conference" for political reasons. That being said, all participants in the Oslo talks are aware that they've been assembled to negotiate a peaceful solution to the ongoing conflicts... in a conference-like setting.

Video Games

• Command & Conquer:
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series:
    • One mission in the Allied campaign in the Yuri's Revenge expansion to Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 centres around a peace conference between the Allies and the Soviets, with the aim to stop shooting at each other and focus on shooting at Yuri's forces. Despite Yuri's attempts to interfere or taking advantage of most world leaders being gathered in London, it succeeds.
    • In the Soviet campaign of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, Cherdenko uses one as a trap to decapitate the Allied leadership.
  • Command & Conquer: Generals 2:
    • Most of the world's politicians and diplomats go to one of these... And thanks to terrorists, they don't come back, leaving the eponymous Generals to seize control of all the nations.
    • In the first game, one mission starts with a UN negotiator arriving at a conference with the GLA... and the GLA attacks, pretty much For the Evulz (later in the mission, they also destroy a dam that wipes out part of a town).
• Suikoden III opens with a cease-fire agreement being negotiated by the Grassland Clans and the Zexen Confederacy, while the Holy Kingdom of Harmonia is waiting for a secret treaty to expire so they can launch a new offensive. Needless to say, since this is the start of the game, the treaty meeting doesn't go well.
• Killer7 states at the beginning that the first appearance of the Heaven Smiles were at a World Peace Conference. The video accompanying it shows one of them detonating during a signing ceremony.
• Nintendo Wars: In Advance Wars 2, Adder uses one as a trap against Yellow Comet's commanders. Kanbei insisted on at least hearing Adder out, despite Sonja's objections.
• The intro to Starlancer shows the Coalition and the Alliance meeting for peace talks, when the Coalition reveals it has brought a cloaked armada and proceeds to wipe out a large chunk of the Alliance Space Navy. Despite this, the war lasts nearly a century.
• In Final Fantasy VI, after some Espers destroy the imperial capital Vector, The Empire invites The Returners to offer a cease-fire and invite them to help negotiate with the Espers — a peace conference to set the stage for another peace conference. This turns out to be a trap for the Espers, which leads in to the second half of the game.
• Used in Wargame: European Escalation, at the end of a campaign which proposes that West and East Germany went to war over the defection of Werner Weinhold. The final mission involves holding off a Warsaw Pact attack on a NATO salient, with a timer ticking down until a ceasefire agreement in signed. The Pact forces bring out one last offensive push as the timer goes to zero — only for the negotiations to deadlock and the mission to continue for a few minutes more!
• Star Trek Online:
  • Episode "From the Ashes", mission "Turning Point". The Federation and Klingon Empire meet on Khitomer to decide whether they're going to grant political recognition to D'Tan's Romulan Republic movement. The Tal Shiar, State Sec to The Remnant of the Romulan Star Empire, tries to sabotage the conference and frame the Republic as untrustworthy. Thanks to Republic Commander Temer Jumping on a Grenade to save Klingon Ambassador Woldan, the attempt backfires.
  • Mission "Surface Tension". In the face of the Undine stepping up their war on the Alpha and Beta Quadrant superpowers, culminating in a massive offensive against Earth and Qo'noS, the Federation and the Klingon Empire declare an armistice, ending the war that had supposedly^*The war basically vanishes from anybody's minds after the "Klingon War" and "Warzone" episodes and they're doing Teeth-Clenched Teamwork almost every time they meet up after that. been going for the last five years straight.
• Early on in Sunrider Liberation Day, Kayto Shields is invited to listen in on peace talks between the Solar Alliance and a moderate faction of PACT. While both sides sincerely want peace, neither one is willing to budge on their respective demands^note Admiral Grey of the Solar Alliance wants to maintain a presence in the Neutral Rim so he can provide humanitarian aid to the hundreds of planets devastated in the war, while Veniczar Fontana of PACT wants both factions to pull out of the Neutral Rim so it doesn’t become “the Alliance’s backyard” and so the talks don’t go anywhere. The end of the game also features the titular Liberation Day ceremony, meant to mark the liberation of Cera, the defeat of PACT’s hardliners, and the end of the war. It ends in failure when a possessed Chigara shoots Admiral Grey dead and turns some Spider Tanks loose on the attending delegates, ensuring that the war escalates.
• BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm has one of these as the focus of its first act. It’s a gathering of many website leaders, who sit down and try to work out an alliance in the face of a greater threat. This being the Internet, it’s not very easy, but they finally manage to reach a consensus just in time for STORM to attack and wipe them all out.
• In Sierra Ops Episode I: Collapsing Daybreak, Terran and Martian diplomats sit down at the lunar city of Mondshire in order to deescalate rising tensions between the two planets. When a Martian force attacks the Rhines space colony during the negotiations, the talks fall through and a war ensues.
• The final chapter of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings takes place during a peace summit between the rulers of various kingdoms and representatives of the Mage community.
• Dragon Age: Inquisition starts with one of these failing. A war had been raging between the mages and the Templars and it had grown to consume nearly the entire continent of Thedas, so peace talks were convened at the Temple of Sacred Ashes by the Chantry, overseen by the Divine herself. Unfortunately it was sabotaged by having the Temple blown up, killing the Divine and the negotiators for both the mages and the Templars, which rekindled the conflict (with the added bonus of throwing the Chantry into a Succession Crisis, as well as opening a hole in the sky for good measure). A major part of the game concerns the player finding out who did it, and why.
• In the later half of the Shadowbringers expansion in Final Fantasy XIV, there's peace talks between the Eorzean Alliance and the beastmen population. Due to the Big Bad attacking both sides to further his grand plan, the two sides decide to put their differences aside and fight together as one for a better future for all.

Web Original

• In The Falcon Cannot Hear, once the more authoritarian belligerents of the Second American Civil War are defeated, the allied factions gather in Toronto to hash out peace terms. The Toronto Conference also sets the groundwork for a new federal government, designed to incorporate each faction's own political beliefs.
• A More Personal Union:
  • The Austrian-mediated Treaty of Bordeaux, which ended the First Franco-Spanish War. Aside from bringing hostilities to an end, it also forces Spain to recognize the independence of France's allies in Navarre and the Netherlands.
  • The Livonian War ends with a peace conference at Stetten, wherein a defeated Sweden is forced to acquiesce to Denmark and Russia's demands, giving them both increased hegemony in Northern Europe.
  • There's a formal treaty signing at Pamplona after the end of the Second Franco-Spanish War, though that's just a formality finalizing months of backdoor negotiations elsewhere.
  • After the Great War ends, all of Europe meets at Geneva to hash out peace terms.
• New Deal Coalition Retained: In 1991, as World War III enters what's clearly its final phase, the Allies meet in Riyadh in order to hash out terms for the post-war world. While there are numerous arguments over territorial claims, the one thing agreed upon by all parties is to ensure that whatever state succeeds the Soviet Union never becomes a world power again.
  • And after the war is actually over, a conference is held in Warsaw (to be symbolic of the Warsaw Pact's defeat), where the Riyadh Conference's agreements are put into effect via the acceptance of the post-Communist governments of all the former Pact members.
  • In 1993, a conference is held in Geneva, with the Americans, British, and Germans using it to mediate a peaceful resolution to the Second Russian Civil War.
  • The Ulaanbaatar Accords are held in neutral Mongolia to end the Third Sino-Japanese War.

Western Animation

• The peace talks between the Earth army and the Brain Balls of Futurama, headed by Henry Kissinger and Bender of all people/robots/severed heads. It was actually a ploy by Nixon and Brannigan, unknown to the negotiators, to use Bender as a bomb.
• In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Chameleon tries to disrupt the signing of a peace treaty between two long-warring nations.
• Pops up surprisingly often in Totally Spies!, usually under risk of sabotage and the girls having to stop it.

Real Life

• The Ur-Example (in the West at least) is the Congress of Westphalia of 1648, where all the princes great and small involved in the Thirty Years' War got their heads together to end both this war and The Eighty Years' War. In the process, the Congress defined the concept of state sovereignty and declared piracy universally illegal, giving any country the right to try any pirate it caught.
• The next few centuries were peppered with peace conferences, the most famous being the Congress of Vienna (1815) to end the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Berlin (1878) to reorganize the Balkans, and the Paris Peace Conference (1919) to end World War One.
• Since the Big One at Paris, these aren't so common; the United Nations more or less exists to serve as a permanent peace conference. However, some important ones occurred after the Cold War (the 1995 one at Dayton settling the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the 1993 one at Oslo between the Israelis and Palestinians being the most notable).
  • One problem with the "permanent peace conference" idea was that such conferences generally occurred after wars between the Great Powers. However, the founding of the UN came alongside the end of World War II, which brought with it the ultimate deterrent to war between the Great Powers. The UN has since turned its attention to other endeavors, some successful (e.g. many of its humanitarian programs), some disastrous (e.g. the Iraqi Oil for Food program in The '90s), and some more mixed (e.g. peacekeeping).
• In the United States, the best known are the Panmunjom Truce talks during the Korean War which led to the cease-fire; and the Paris Peace Accords which ended the direct American involvement in the Vietnam War. Neither one has good connotations for Americans. As pointed out in M*A*S*H, the Panmunjom talks spent years arguing on the shape of the conference table (which was a Red Herring for the real issues). The Paris Peace Accords were quickly broken by North Vietnam, which attacked and defeated South Vietnam.
  • The Panmunjom talks are perhaps the oddest peace conference (not a grammatical error, there were a lot of talks for one official conference) in history. The talks were started on a cease-fire, so technically North Korea and the U.S. led U.N. coalition are still at war. Every month the two delegations meet and just stare at each other for two hours. Occasionally there's an incident or an attempt for diplomacy.
  • One of the funniest parts of American Military History is reading about the talks, though it is black humor since so many people died during the arguments. Basically, if one side did anything out of the ordinary, like bring a little flag to the talks, then the other side would immediately one-up them, to the point where the flags became bigger than the meeting rooms. The Chinese representative also became famous for being able to simply sit without movement for hours, even letting a fly crawl across his face.
• The 1998 talks at Stormont Castle in Stroke Country that led to the Good Friday Agreement, bringing an end of the worst of The Troubles.
  • And then, because Sinn Fein and the DUP are assholes (or extremists, or principled, or whatever you like), the whole thing broke down again, requiring another conference and another agreement at St. Andrews (in Scotland; and yes, it's the place with the golf course) in 2006.
• In a way Real Life peace conferences are theater because the negotiations all took place beforehand. No head of state can politically afford to come to a Peace Conference without returning with a treaty so doing negotiations in person hurts a head of state's bargaining ability. Therefore proper peace conferences should be done secretly and the alleged Peace Conference is only to solemnize it with a lot of pomp.
  • This is a lot truer today than it was in the past, primarily because of increased speed of communication. The aforementioned Paris Peace Conference actually got a great deal done; while telegraphs could send messages quickly, they were useless for negotiation, and the only way to cross long distances was by ship or train. Now, with telephones, airplanes, and (increasingly) the Internet, settling things beforehand is much easier, and you can ensure that the underlings who are doing it stick to your policy (rather than have to show up in person if you want to get anything done your way).
  • The nuclear negotiations in Geneva in November 2013 between the representatives of the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China (collectively the P5+1) and Iran are a rare case in the modern world of the actual official conference between high-level officials (foreign ministers) being where the actual deal was made. This was necessary in part because the backchannels are not as strong between the US and Iran as they are in many cases, and in part because this conference was as much a trust-building exercise as an attempt to resolve substantive issues (the actual agreement set up a temporary freeze on Iranian nuclear activity in exchange for easing of sanctions and a commitment to further talks). The negotiations were largely secret, but cameras were allowed in every now and again; they revealed the negotiations were being held in the most ordinary-looking hotel conference room ever, the result of a double-booking. Seriously — the delegations were reduced to eating takeout because the hotel was overcommitted on catering the other event (the Iranians opted for Iranian food from a local restaurant that did delivery, while the Americans and Brits apparently split pizzas).
• According to one version of the story, Henry Kissinger, during the Yom Kippur war was disappointed to get a message from Nixon telling that he spoke with the President's authority. The reason was that he wanted enough ambiguity to prolong the Peace Conference and give the Israelis time enough to get their Revenge before the war stopped.
  • More specifically he wanted the war to end in a condition where both sides had shown enough badassery to neither feel humiliated or feel overarrogant toward their rival. While it sounds and is a rather gruesome sort of logic, in Israeli-Egyptian relations at least it more or less worked as planned; there is peace if not friendship. With the Syrians (who pretty much got their clocks cleaned) not so much, though at least they haven't challenged the Israelis in a conventional battle since then.

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