TERRITORY AND PEACE: EMPIRICAL PATTERNS

Vasquez (1993: 146) has stated: “If the territorial divisions among neighbors are not challenged but accepted as legitimate, peaceful relations can govern. Most borders once satisfactorily settled remain so for long periods of time.”

Is it the case that once a border is mutually accepted that peace can reign?⁷

The earliest systematic evidence we have on this is from Kocs (1995).

Gibler (1996, 1997) has two studies that show that settling a territorial dispute is related to peace between states. Gibler's (1996) first study is done in the context of work on alliances that shows that certain types of alliances are followed by war within five years (Levy, 1981). One type that is not is an alliance made to cement a territorial settlement. Only 1 of 27 territorial settlement treaties is followed by a war of any kind (Gibler, 1996). In a more systematic study, Gibler (1997) shows that alliances that settle territorial disputes also have a pacifying effect on interstate rivalry, which, as noted earlier, is very prone to war.

Using recently collected data on all terri­torial claims made between states from 1816 through 2001 for the Western Hemisphere and Western Europe, Hensel (2006) finds support for the proposition that if territorial claims are settled (either violently or non-violently), then there is a decreased probability of subsequent MIDs.

How can territory have this peaceful and even transformative effect on relations between neighbors? The reason is that once borders are accepted; they can fulfill their role in the modern global system as international institutions. Borders, as Simmons (2006: 253-259) points out, are not just sites of contention, but international institutions that provide a number of mutual benefits (see also Blanchard, 2005).

Borders are international institutions in that they are a set of practices that allocate physical space according to a constructed understanding of reality. Borders divide space and allocate sovereignty, which gives a host of rights to certain individuals and groups and not to others. Borders say, in effect, that in one space such and such can be done and in this other space, these other rules apply. This is what it means to own the land and to have sovereignty over it. Borders can have a tremendous impact on identity, ways of life, and so forth (see Sahlins, 1989).

Simmons (2006) focuses on the economic benefits derived from borders as institutions, which are considerable. Accepted boundaries provide a demarcation of sovereignty and recognition of one another's laws and regu­lations regarding property rights, investment, and trade. When boundaries are not accepted, it is difficult to engage in extensive economic interaction because uncertainty is so high. Uncertainty undermines the normal stability of expectations about the future on which contracts are based.

In contrast, acceptance of boundaries allows parties to see where sovereignty lies and what laws apply. Stable borders embody an institution that allocates certain legal competencies as well as embodying a set of mutual understandings about rules and norms that apply with regard to what the border means and who can do what on each side of the border. In fact, many scholars (Goff, 2000; Simmons, 2006) conclude that, in spite of theories suggesting the decline of the state, borders remain an important factor in international politics. Henrikson (2000) suggests that “good neighborhood” or bon voisinage treaties should be concluded to force states to accept the territorial boundary lines and encourage cooperation.

Economic interaction and trade, in par­ticular, takes place in the context of a variety of rules and practices reflecting legal standards. These reduce transaction costs and thereby increase profits, but mostly they reduce financial risk. Borders help identify who owns what. In doing so they delegitimize theft through conquest. Working borders reduce risk and fear, making trade a viable substitution for conquest (Rosecrance, 1986; Bueno deMesquitaet al., 2003: Ch. 9; Gartzke and Rohner, 2006). Simmons (2006) uses a gravity model of trade to try to estimate the value of trade lost because of a territorial dispute. She points out that the acceptance of a line of demarcation will permit this trade, which would normally exist, to flow. In many ways, what is important is not where the demarcation line is drawn, but simply that it is drawn.

The benefits of borders as institutions for non-economic matters can be even greater. Constructivists have shown that borders serve a number of functions (Blanchard, 2005). Of special importance are the identity and constitutive functions.

Mutual acceptance of a border and the existing territorial distribution permits actors to reap the benefits of both of these functions. Contesting the border interrupts the smooth functioning of the border, making for great uncertainty. This can be seen in the way a border serves to institutionalize a way of life. When borders are accepted, normal interaction and politics come to the forefront. This opens up new possibilities, especially along the borderlands. For Diez (2004: 137), when borders are stable, they are more apt to become porous; what seems to be occurring in this process is that the border “as division” is replaced with the border as “a reference point” that brings people (legal equals) together across a number of stable cross-border interactions. In contrast, contesting borders reinforces them as a focal point of conflict, insecurity, and uncertainty.⁸

A dramatic case for how this process occurs is Western Europe. For centuries, Western Europe's borders have been contested and fought over in numerous wars. One of the great lessons for peace research is how this war-torn region becomes a security community in the Deutschian sense.⁹ The Schumann plan was based on a theory of peace (Mitrany, 1943) that sees economic integration as a foundation that will spill over to produce political integration and peace. It is this theoretical approach that was used to guide much of European integration, and it is clearly antithetical to realist international relations theory.

While economic integration is a key, one of the things that distinguish the post-1945 economic integration of Western Europe from the economic interdependence and trade of pre-1914 Europe is that the former is built on a firm acceptance of borders. While the acceptance of borders was not the centerpiece of Europe's Common Market, but a side­effect, from the perspective of the territorial explanation of war, it was a side-effect that made a crucial difference. In this sense, one of the most important (and overlooked) historical events of our time that produces peace is the acceptance in 1990 of the German-Polish border by the unified German government.

With the creation of the European Union and its enlargement, acceptance of borders has become a keystone in its strategy for peace. The demand that new states settle their territorial disputes as a price for admission will provide a test of the peace proposition within the territorial explanation of war. It predicts that mutually acceptable borders among these states will give rise to long periods of peace between neighbors. This would be expected to be particularly the case in the context of the European Union, which provides an economic and political structure for institutionalizing borders in a fashion that quickly provides benefits (see Diez et al., 2006).

This conceptual analysis, buttressed by case evidence, supports the general proposition that once territorial disputes are settled, they set neighbors on a road to peace. More importantly, it points to why and how peace occurs. From the perspective of the territorial explanation of war, peace does not involve the disappearance of borders, as some who take a globalization perspective argue (Ruggie, 1993), but their acceptance and desecuritization.

If territory is in fact a key to peace, then there should be some observable trace of this in the historical record. One way to test this notion is to observe periods of peace and see if, in fact, they are associated with the absence (or a reduction in the probability) of war for territorial disputes.¹⁰ Henehan and Vasquez (2006: 290, Table 11.4) provide evidence to this effect. They use Wallensteen's (1984) identification of periods of peace among the major states from 1816 to 1976 (with an update through 1991) to see if in these peaceful periods, territorial disputes are less prevalent.

They find that there are few territorial MIDs (in absolute numbers) in these periods of relative major state peace—1 in 1816-1848, 4 in 1871-1895, 0 in 1919-1932, and 11 in 1963-1991. Interestingly, during the early League of Nations period, territorial disputes are kept completely off the agenda. More systematically, there are 16 territorial disputes during the 101 “relatively peaceful years” (.16 per year) compared to 61 territorial disputes during the 73 “relatively war-prone years” (.84 per year).

This statistical evidence implies that there is something about these periods that reduces the number and danger of territorial disputes. Two hypotheses are suggested. One is the hypothesis that guides Wallensteen's (1984) study—that peace is associated with major states attempting to establish a common set of rules of the game to guide their behavior (and thereby govern the system). The second is the hypothesis under discussion here—the acceptance of borders. These two hypotheses, however, are not unrelated. For example, in the Congress of Vienna, borders were fixed and at the same time a set of informal rules of the game regulating major state interactions were adopted.

Another body of evidence that peace is associated with the absence of territorial disputes comes from the democratic peace. It is known that democratic dyads (pairs of states) rarely go to war against each other. Is this because they tend not to have territorial disputes? Mitchell and Prins (1999) are the first to explore this question. They find that democratic dyads mostly have maritime disputes and not territorial MIDs. James et al. (2006) go a step further and argue that territorial disputes can wash out the effects of the democratic peace. Gibler (2007) provides even more evidence that the absence of territorial disputes might be a major reason for the democratic peace. He finds that democratic dyads have few territorial issues, have settled borders with their democratic neighbors, and do not fight each other. He argues that democratic states tend not to fight each other because they have settled their borders. These three studies add to the evidence that peace reigns in the absence of territorial disputes. Further detail on this process is provided by Allee and Huth (2006) who show that democracies tend to use legal settlements as domestic political cover in their attempts to deescalate territorial disputes and are successful at resolving these (between like-minded democracies) before any threat of force is used (see also Huth and Allee, 2002).

While the research on territory and peace is not as extensive nor as robust as the findings on territory and war, it consistently shows that resolving or settling territorial issues can be a road to peace for neighbors. Neighbors who have settled outstanding territorial claims, regardless of whether they have settled them violently or non-violently, have a much lower probability of militarized conflict (a MID) on any issue than neighbors with a claim, which means they are much less likely to go to war or experience rivalry. The findings imply that states need not be trapped in a vicious circle of power politics, conflict, and war. They are at peace and move on to making the border work for them, as outlined by Simmons (2006) and Diez (2004), and not against them.