Line on Fire: Ceasefire Violations and India–Pakistan Escalation Dynamics, by Happymon Jacob

While contending the prevailing realists’ explanation of war happening because of power struggle, John Vasquez argues in his book, The War Puzzle Revisited, that a majority of wars are fought over territory, either to defend or occupy it. According to Vasquez, territorial disputes between two countries are ‘much more war-prone’ than others. These disputes underlie the causes of war in two senses: first, ‘…instead of leading immediately or inevitably to war, [territorial disputes] usually produce a sequence of events that results in war’; and second: ‘they are causes in the sense that if claims over contiguous territory are settled amicably at one point in the history of two states, it is highly unlikely that a dyadic war will break out between the two neighbours regardless of other issues that may arise in the future.

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