Book Review - Good Fences, Bad Neighbors: Border Fixity and International Conflict

Written by: Boaz Atzili, 

University of Chicago Press, 2012,

ISBN 9780226031361, 296pp

Reviewed by: Ryan D Griffiths, Lecturer, University of Sydney

Boaz Atzili’s new book, Good Fences, Bad Neighbors: Border Fixity and International Conflict, is an excellent study of the positive and negative consequences of an international norm emphasising territorial boundaries. Atzili argues that a norm against conquest and territorial aggression developed in the wake of the Second World War. On the one hand, this norm has been so successful that the seizure of territory has become a rare occurrence since 1945, and this constitutes a sea change from earlier periods when conquest was common. On the other hand, the norm has, paradoxically, helped perpetuate a large number of weak states where governmental institutions and services are sparse, where social cohesion is lacking, and where civil war is common. Thus, the book provides a theoretical explanation for why inter-state wars, particularly those over territory, have declined in number even as the number of intra-state wars has increased. It should be a valuable book for anyone interested in conflict and the types of conflict that the international community will face in the future.

Atzili spends a fair amount of time discussing the origins and significance of what he calls the norm of border fixity. By this he means a consensus, a prevailing view by most states and international actors that foreign conquest and territorial aggression should be prohibited. He traces the ideological origins of the norm to Woodrow Wilson at the end of the First World War, but, like a number of other scholars, he argues that the norm didn’t really begin to affect state behaviour until after the Second World War when a combination of ideological and material forces made the norm more persuasive, more accepted and more common. As a result, wars of conquest have become quite rare, and, when they do occur, they are internationally condemned.

Although such a norm has had undeniably positive effects in international life, it has also generated some unintended consequences. Here, Atzili brings in the literature on state formation and political development to say that border fixity has a tendency to create weak states. He provides a detailed discussion of how war and territorial threats have historically driven states to centralise their power, rationalise their institutions and bureaucracy, and basically forge a stronger, more cohesive nation-state. Using case studies, Atzili describes how both Brandenburg-Prussia and Argentina developed in relation to external threats; he also shows how Poland-Lithuania failed to develop adequately, and was thus swallowed up by its neighbours. Like other scholars working on state formation, Atzili uses ideas related to natural selection; faced with a hostile environment states will either develop stronger political institutions and become a stronger state, or they will be conquered by other more developed states. The net result is a system of stronger states. Atzili then argues that the absence of these selective pressures in the post-1945 period have created ‘moral hazard’ problems, in which weak states can more or less limp along—their borders secured by international consensus—without developing strong political institutions. It is in weak and sometimes failed states such as these that ethnic conflict and civil war often arises, sometimes spilling over national boundaries, and regularly eliciting international aid and intervention. He describes these dynamics through case studies of Lebanon and the Congo.

In all this is a theoretically interesting, highly readable and engaging book. One might challenge Atzili’s choice of case studies, questioning whether it makes sense to compare Brandenburg-Prussia with the Congo. The author probably understates the importance of socio-political preconditions in the formation of these states, but his broad description is generally persuasive. He ably draws together several disparate literatures to tell a convincing story about the changing face of conflict since the Second World War.