Territorial disputes lie at the very heart of a wide range of bloody conflicts across the globe. Disputes over territory are believed to be among the most contentious and intractable in international relations.
We will set out theoretical perspectives on conflict and notions of territory and then explore key cases. Our basic goal will be to develop an understanding of when, why, and how territory has played a role in the history of international conflict and how that role might have changed over time. We will closely consider four cases: the Falkland Islands (or las Malvinas, as Argentina calls them), the Spratly Islands in the Pacific, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and, lastly, the ethnoterritorial conflict between South Ossetia and Georgia in Europe.