Never-Ending Conflicts? Territorial Changes as Potential Solutions for Territorial Disputes

Abstract

This study examines how territorial changes - which are defined as any alterations of international boundaries - influence the prospects of future armed conflict between countries gaining and losing land through the change. The losing country is motivated to use force by the value of the lost land, while the winner is motivated by the value of additional land it desires but which the loser still controls. Relative power and the change process (i.e., peaceful, overwhelming victory, and violent but short of an overwhelming victory) condition whether these motivations are turned into the post-change use of force. The findings based on all non-colonial territorial changes in the period 1900-92 offer these insights: (1) peaceful; and (2) overwhelming victory changes are significantly better in terms of future conflict prevention than their violent counterparts; and (3) the importance of tangible (strategic, economic) versus intangible (ethnic) value of the land in future conflict onset varies according to the specific type of change considered (i.e., state-to-state territorial transfer, partition/secession, unification).