What is the term for calling off a war when you are winning?

Question

If you're losing a war, you can surrender to end the war. In an armistice, neither side surrenders, but both agree to end the war. Is there a term for a side that is winning that has a change of heart and ends the war unilaterally?

A ceasefire or truce both appear to be cessations of hostility that are somehow less than an armistice. Neither appear to be unilateral.

I understand that it probably doesn't happen much, so there may not be a word for it.

As to why such a thing might occur, besides just thinking better of it or having an election that leads to a new direction from leadership, I could also see enough Pyrrhic victories leading the aggressor to give up on the war, but certainly not surrender or even enter into an agreement of any kind.

Answer 1

I would say the winning force "withdrew" from the conflict, or one of its many synonyms: it "bowed out of", "exited", or "abandoned" the conflict, "discontinued" hostilities, "disengaged" from battle, "abjured" the war, "retreated" and therefore "foreswore" or "relinquished" its formal victory, and so on and so forth.

None of these words have a particularly martial connotation (I don't think there exists a martial term which means "forfeit, but not lose") but that's easily addressed through context, as in the examples above.

Or, you could describe it the way my father did the first time I went to Atlantic City: Quit while you're ahead.

Answer 2

To echo what @Edwin Ashworth said; you cannot end a war without either:

1. Killing everyone who you were at war with (e.g. genocide).
2. Agreeing to end the war with the other side(s).

The closest I can think of is that one side "having achieved its objectives, no longer prosecuted the war".

Answer 3

There is a saying, it's time to declare victory and bring the troops home, attributed to George Aiken, former US Senator and Governor of Vermont. The sentence is actually a distillation of a longer statement made in 1966, relatively early in the Vietnam War.

"The United States could well declare unilaterally ... that we have 'won' in the sense that our armed forces are in control of most of the field and no potential enemy is in a position to establish its authority over South Vietnam," and that such a declaration "would herald the resumption of political warfare as the dominant theme in Vietnam." He added: "It may be a far-fetched proposal, but nothing else has worked."

[Wikipedia]

If the withdrawal of the winning side results in significant negative outcomes, you could say snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, which is an ironic reversal of snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The inverted phrase means

To suddenly lose a contest one seemed very likely to win, especially through mistakes or bad judgment.

[Wiktionary]