Photos from the Belfer Center: February 15-28

If the history of the USSR is any guide, then IS will not refrain from trying to expand after being recognized. Even after Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, the Soviet government spent decades actively and quite successfully implementing his driving dictum: “Probe with a bayonet: If you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, then push.”

In the future, territorial conflict is likely to become more important, as populations grow and resources decline, and as territorial disputes expand into new domains, such as the polar regions, outer space and near-Earth orbits, radio frequency bands, the internet, and the commercial control of land. To avoid war and to enable other positive effects to follow, resolving conflicts is critical. Should territorial issues be resolved, studies have found that demilitarization and democratization are more likely to ensue. States will have a better chance of achieving these goals if they step back and recognize the broader patterns of territoriality in nature, of which humans are just one particularly deadly example.