For Better and Worse: Border Fixity, State Capacity, and the Geography of War - Working Paper

Multiple studies have shown that war has been in decline, however, as Atzili and Young show in their paper "For Better and Worse: Border Fixity, State Capacity, and the Geography of War" , there is also a spatial component to conflict that should be taken into account.

Abstract:     

"Recent scholarship suggests interstate war is on the decline. In fact, some scholars claim that war is nearly obsolete. But is this decline universal? Using newly coded data, we show that the general decline in the phenomenon of interstate war is not evenly distributed across regions of the world. We argue that this geographic shift of warfare is impacted by the interaction of the international norm of border fixity, a proscription of the forceful conquest and annexation of homeland territory, and state capacity. We examine current scholarship on the issue and explore cases that demonstrate several mechanisms that link our explanation to the shifting geography of war."

 

The link between war and state capacity is quite intuitive, just from a game theory or risk management perspective, conflict with a stronger state should be avoided.. on the other hand the stronger party has the 'incentive' to go to war. This paper analyzes a second variable: border fixity, the international norm that makes current state boundaries (a legacy of post-WW2 world) fix. The age-old mechanism of conquest and annexation as a method of replacing weaker states by stronger ones is not accepted anymore.

The relationship between state capacity, border fixity and war is an interesting one and further reinforced by their spatial analysis of war. While war has been in the decline in Europe and the American continent (the geography of war is defined by the location where conflict takes place not by their participants), it has been on the rise in Asia and Africa.

What role does border fixity play? According to the authors, it provides a level of security to the states, the knowledge that their territorial integrity will not be put into question. This becomes a positive reinforcement among states with strong capacity, as it enables them to focus on other things and establish a new level of trust. However, where state capacity is weak, the dynamic reverses and regime change/interventions/support to rebel groups become common instruments.

Interestingly, the biggest (normative) challenger to border fixity these days are not state competing claims over territories (that nevertheless remain worrisome and potential triggers), but secessionist movements. A threat from within for which there is not really an adequate mechanism under international relations.