Territorial dispute is one of the most common sources of interstate conflict. Historically, such conflicts have tended to be more intense and more likely to be militarized than other types of interstate disputes. They are also more likely to escalate into regional or global wars. Both World Wars, the experience of European colonialism in Africa and elsewhere, and the continuing conflicts over Tibet have shown that fighting over territory can lead to catastrophic human suffering.
The literature on territorial disputes has generally approached this issue from a conflict scholarship perspective, explaining them in terms of rational strategic and economic interests and changing power relations. However, this article argues that these modes of explanation are seriously flawed and that territorial disputes should be understood from a normative point of view, in terms of subjective conceptions of justice and international norms.
In addition, domestic public perceptions of a disputed territory can be important for understanding why a territorial claim may become intractable. For example, if a disputed territory is closely linked to a nation’s painful history of loss, individuals may feel that the territory must be fully recovered to undo an injustice and that compromise would not meet this moral standard.
Finally, the legitimacy of a territorial claim is heavily dependent on whether it can be viewed as consistent with principles of international law at a critical date, such as when a state initially acquired the claimed territory. For this reason, it is essential that scholars consider the legal frameworks of territorial sovereignty and use at the critical points of time when assessing a particular territorial dispute.