The relationship between conquest and conflict may seem straightforward: start a war, prevail on the battlefield, take control of desired territory, Dan Altman write in Foreign Affairs.
Yet more and more, this is not how states take each other’s land. Instead, they use a different strategy: seize a small piece of territory quickly and with minimal bloodshed, then try to avoid war. Today, conquest looks like what Russia did in Crimea and what China could do once again in the South China Sea.
