THREAD: Excited to share my new article @IntOrgJournal! In it, I argue that the relationship between conquest and war has changed. 1/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/evolution-of-territorial-conquest-after-1945-and-the-limits-of-the-territorial-integrity-norm/E81D1E3F2C34CB00D8501BFDB363A1AD

The traditional view of conquest brings to mind images of Nazi Germany, Napoleon, and the Roman Empire. Aggressors started wars, fought to prevail on the battlefield, and secured control of territory if they won those wars. 2/

Modern conquest works differently. More and more, countries now seize a small piece of territory, then attempt to keep it without ever fighting a war.

Conquest is now about avoiding war more than winning war. 3/

We observe a dramatic decline in attempts to conquer entire states after 1945. However, conquests of small pieces of countries remained common long after World War II. Smoothed trends: 4/

This is one of several pieces of evidence I present against the popular claim that a territorial integrity norm caused a dramatic decline in conquest after 1945. 5/

Instead, the decline of conquest was limited to large, war-prone conquests. Indeed, the (partial) decline of conquest was a symptom of the decline of war, not its cause. 6/

One might have thought that the decline of war after 1945 meant the decline of conquest. Instead it meant that most aggressors limited their ambitions to seizing types of territories that are less likely to provoke war. Conquest changed. It shrank. But it did not go away. 7/

Around the 1980s, conquest evolved further away from risking war. By the 1990s, the majority of conquests seized unpopulated areas for the first time. Conquests of ungarrisoned territories, which are more often bloodless, also began to outnumber conquests of defended areas. 8/

All of this reflects the existence of two distinct strategies of conquest: a brute force strategy that targets entire countries and a fait accompli strategy that targets small pieces. See the two clusters here: 9/

The fait accompli has become the predominant strategy of conquest – and, indeed, of territorial aggression generally. 10/ https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/61/4/881/4781720

Crimea offers an example, albeit unusually large and populous. The Spratly Islands (1970s-1990s) and Paracel Islands (1974) provide more typical examples of modern conquest. Kargil and the Falklands demonstrate what happens when the gamble inherent in a fait accompli fails. 11/

The current crisis between India and China – in which many reports say China has deployed forces forward to seize several disputed border areas – is an almost prototypical example of modern conquest: 12/ https://twitter.com/daltman_IR/status/1265282455092842496

A remarkable feature of modern conquest is that conflicts over puzzlingly small territories are common – and that some cause wars. The relationship between conquest and war is so strong that even modern, comparatively war-averse conquest remains a leading cause of war. 13/

The two most violent conflicts between two nuclear powers broke out over several hills in Kargil (Kashmir) in 1999 and over Zhenbao Island in the Ussuri River in 1969. Pakistan against India and China against the Soviet Union, respectively. Worth it or not, both happened. 14/

What does the future of interstate conflict look like?

Past need not be prologue, but trends suggest that attempts to get away with seizing small territories – a minority of which fail and cause wars – will be a defining and recurrent element in 21st century conflicts. 15/