By Fait Accompli, Not Coercion: How States Wrest Territory from Their Adversaries

In February 2014, Russia decided to wrest the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. Moscow could have threatened to attack Ukraine if Kiev failed to relinquish Crimea. However, Russia did not attempt coercion. Russia unilaterally occupied and annexed the territory, gambling that it could take Crimea without provoking war. This alternative strategy—the fait accompli—receives little scholarly attention. At issue is a fundamental question of statecraft in international politics: How do states make gains? By coercion or by fait accompli? Territorial acquisitions offer the best single-issue domain within which to address this question. Using new data on all “land grabs” since 1918, this research note documents a stark discrepancy. From 1918 to 2016, 112 land grabs seized territory by fait accompli. In that same span, only thirteen publicly declared coercive threats elicited cessions of territory. This fact suggests that the fait accompli deserves a larger role in the field's thinking about strategy and statecraft on the brink of war. It carries with it important implications for canonical theories of war that rely on assumptions about coercive bargaining during crises.