Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- Part I About strategic rivalries
- Part II The dangers of strategic rivalries: Crisis behavior and escalation
- Part III Playing to type: Spatial and positional issues in strategic rivalries
- Part IV Filling in some steps to war
- 8 Arms build-ups and alliances in the steps-to-war theory
- 9 Contested territory and conflict escalation
- Part V Strategic rivalries and conflict
- References
- Index
9 - Contested territory and conflict escalation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- Part I About strategic rivalries
- Part II The dangers of strategic rivalries: Crisis behavior and escalation
- Part III Playing to type: Spatial and positional issues in strategic rivalries
- Part IV Filling in some steps to war
- 8 Arms build-ups and alliances in the steps-to-war theory
- 9 Contested territory and conflict escalation
- Part V Strategic rivalries and conflict
- References
- Index
Summary
Enlil, king of the lands, father of the gods, upon his firm command drew the border between [Lagash and Umma]. Mesalim, king of Kish, at the command of Ishtaran, measured the field and placed a stele. Ush, ruler of Umma, acted arrogantly. He ripped out the stele and marched unto the plain of Lagash. Ningirsu, the hero of Enlil, at the latter's command did battle with Umma. Upon Enlil's command he cast the great battlenet upon it. Its great burial mound was set up for him in the plain.
(taken from Van de Mieroop, 2004: 46)The passage above is an excerpt from a contemporary account of a Sumerian border conflict between Lagash and Umma that persisted roughly between 2500 and 2350 BCE. After the war described in the excerpt, the boundaries were redrawn by the winners only to be repeatedly contested by Umma, at least according to the Lagash version of events. Undoubtedly, this Lagash-Umma conflict was not the first territorial squabble between states but it is probably the first one on which we have some documentation. Since that time, states have multiplied, as have their borders, and so have their consequent disagreements about where those boundaries should be placed.
Some 4,350 years after the Lagash-Umma conflict, we have learned a number of things about the role of contested territory in the escalation of interstate conflict. For instance, there is little controversy that contested territory plays a central role in the escalation of force and the onset of war.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Strategic Rivalries in World PoliticsPosition, Space and Conflict Escalation, pp. 240 - 272Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008