Territoriality and Territorial Proximity as the Causes of International Conflicts

Abstract

This paper investigates with critical analysis that territoriality and territorial proximity more often than not, accounts for significant international conflicts. The author, in the first part, explains the emergence of international conflicts from territorial disputes, and further discusses the territorial issues in international conflict with the lens of the general premise surrounding the sovereignty of states –territoriality, and thus found that: the challenge to the Westphalia principle through the emergence of supra-regional entities –its operations usually embedded in quest for regional expansion are often achieved through benefits from strategic conflicts; and that supranational entities –its emergence are usually born out of conflict have created conflicts in the international realm. The last part placed critical emphasis on the analysis of how distance between States –considering from a realist perspective that the world is anarchical and that States view other States as potential threat to its national interest, have barred or fueled international conflict. The researcher argued that territorial propinquity have increased conflict due to the contingency from not only limited to geographically closer States but also from States that have been highly aided technologically in tele-military spaces and thus creating a borderless globe with equal opportunities and risks of conflict/crises/war. Therefore this paper strongly posits that territoriality and territorial proximity have directly or indirectly influenced the conflict spread toward the arena of global insecurity. This leaves the dot to recommending an affirmative reforms in the United Nation regarding the rightness of interventions and Ocean and Sea laws; and also since the territories with resources and its proximity to militarized spaces have greater correlation to international conflicts, thus the need for the demilitarization of such spaces that threaten or influence stability and conflicts respectively.

Keywords: Conflict, Dispute, Land, Resources, Security, Sovereignty, Territoriality, Territory, War