State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation - Paperback

by Tanisha M. Fazal (Author)

If you were to examine an 1816 map of the world, you would discover that half the countries represented there no longer exist. Yet since 1945, the disappearance of individual states from the world stage has become rare. State Death is the first book to systematically examine the reasons why some states die while others survive, and the remarkable decline of state death since the end of World War II.

Grappling with what is a core issue of international relations, Tanisha Fazal explores two hundred years of military invasion and occupation, from eighteenth-century Poland to present-day Iraq, to derive conclusions that challenge conventional wisdom about state death. The fate of sovereign states, she reveals, is largely a matter of political geography and changing norms of conquest. Fazal shows how buffer states--those that lie between two rivals--are the most vulnerable and likely to die except in rare cases that constrain the resources or incentives of neighboring states. She argues that the United States has imposed such constraints with its global norm against conquest--an international standard that has largely prevented the violent takeover of states since 1945.

State Death serves as a timely reminder that should there be a shift in U.S. power or preferences that erodes the norm against conquest, violent state death may once again become commonplace in international relations.

Back Jacket

"State Death is a pathbreaking study of how and why states 'die' or are eliminated from the international system. Despite previous attention to the issues of war, state emergence and failure, and strategies for success, the phenomenon of state death has not previously received systematic attention. Fazal deserves enormous credit for introducing the discipline of international relations to what should have been a topic of long-standing interest."--David A. Lake, University of California, San Diego

"The book is one of the first--and definitely the best--to examine the fundamental question far too oft overlooked: what behavior, exactly, allows states to survive? Fazal tackles an extremely important topic--the causes of 'state death'--which has broad ramifications for competing theoretical frameworks in international relations as well as for policy. I am confident this book will feature on many syllabi for years to come."--Hein Goemans, University of Rochester

Author Biography

Tanisha M. Fazal is assistant professor of political science at Columbia University.