Conflict Management of Territorial Disputes

Despite the decline in interstate wars, there remain dozens of interstate disputes that could erupt into diplomatic crises and evolve into military escalation. By far the most difficult interstate dispute that exists are territorial disputes, followed by maritime and river boundary disputes. These disputes are not only costly for the states involved, but also potentially dangerous for states in the region and allies of disputant states who could become entrapped in armed conflicts. Fortunately, though many disputes remain unresolved and some disputes endure for decades or more than a century, many other disputes are peacefully resolved through conflict management tools. Understanding the factors that influence conflict management—the means by which governments decide their foreign policy strategies relating to interstate disputes and civil conflicts—is critical to policy makers and scholars interested in the peaceful resolution of such disputes. Though conflict management of territorial and maritime disputes can include a spectrum of management tools, including use of force, most conflict management tools are peaceful, involving direct bilateral negotiations between the disputant states, non-binding third party mediation, or binding legal dispute resolution. Governments most often attempt the most direct dispute resolution method, which is bilateral negotiations, but often, such negotiations break down due to uncompromising positions of the disputing states, leading governments to turn to other resolution methods. There are pros and cons of each of the dispute resolution methods and certain factors will influence the decisions that governments make about the management of their territorial and maritime disputes. Overall, the peaceful resolution of territorial and maritime disputes is an important but complicated issue for states both directly involved and indirectly affected by the persistence of such disputes.</p

Militarized territorial disputes

States involved in territorial disputes are more likely initiate militarized interstate disputes to threaten or use force (MIDs) compared to states involved in other types of interstate disputes, when the disputed territory has strategic or ethnic value, and when the opposing states are contiguous, rivals, or have relative power parity. Though useful, these factors are static or rarely change over time, so they cannot explain the timing of an MID in a territorial dispute. It is not clear why a challenger state would threaten or use force at one point in the dispute, but not at another point. This study proposes that challenger states sometimes use MIDs not only to signal resolve to the opposing state in the territorial dispute, but to credibly demonstrate resolve to other adversaries in other disputes – an attempt to transfer reputation for resolve. To tackle the debate about transferability of reputation for resolve, the study empirically analyzes all territorial disputes from 1919 to 1995 and finds support that challenger states are more likely to initiate territorial MIDs as costly signals of resolve and credibility around the same time as another MID with a different adversary. Further analysis indicates that in terms of intensity level, challenger states are more likely to use threats, displays of force, or low intensity uses of force when initiating an MID to signal resolve to other states. </jats:p