Redrawing the Map to Promote Peace: Territorial Dispute Management via Territorial Changes

Extract

Redrawing the Map to Promote Peace: Territorial Dispute Management via Territorial Changes. By Jaroslav Tir. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press, 2006. 169p. $65.00 cloth, $23.95 paper.

Geography has for too long been jettisoned from international relations, owing in large part to the historical legacy of the Third Reich. But borders, land, ports, and peoples can each be contextualized by their location, which is neither random nor arbitrary. Rather, they result from and impinge upon the everyday ebb and flow of politics and economics. This welcome volume goes against the grain of much quantitative research in international relations and examines some aspects of the role of geography in the conduct of foreign policy and the attendant implications for international politics. It builds beyond a growing tradition in quantitative IR of including some geographical explanations in empirical investigations to actually focusing on a particular aspect of how the relation of states to territory affects their behaviors.