Crimea as a Puzzle
Russia's 2014 seizure of Crimea highlights a familiar but understudied choice in interstate rivalry: instead of threatening war to force a concession, a state can move troops, occupy territory, and present a fait accompli—hoping the other side will not or cannot respond with force. Dan Altman's research note asks which strategy—overt coercive threats or unilateral occupation—actually produces territorial gains.
Why Fait Accompli Matters
A "fait accompli" here means taking possession of territory unilaterally (occupation or annexation) without first issuing a public threat of force; "coercive threats" are overt demands backed by the implicit or explicit threat of military action. Understanding which approach succeeds more often matters for theories of crisis bargaining, deterrence, and the causes of war: many models assume coercive threats drive concessions, but that assumption may not match historical practice.
New Data on Land Grabs (1918–2016)
Altman compiles and analyzes a new dataset of all identified "land grabs" from 1918 to 2016—cases in which one state seized territory from another—and classifies how the gains occurred (by fait accompli versus by successful coercive threat). The note focuses on documenting incidence and form rather than presenting an elaborate causal model.
Key Findings
Implications for Theory and Policy
The dominance of fait accompli challenges the centrality of coercive threats in canonical models of crisis bargaining and brinkmanship. Altman argues that international-relations scholars should give greater attention to rapid occupation strategies, the conditions that make them viable, and how states and institutions can deter or respond to them effectively. The finding reframes how scholars and policymakers should think about the causes of war and the prevention of territorial aggression.
| By Fait Accompli, Not Coercion: How States Wrest Territory from Their Adversaries was authored by Dan Altman. It was published by Oxford in ISQ in 2017. |
