The Profitability of Fait Accompli Conquest

By Emma Ross

Emma Ross is a fourth year at the University of Virginia pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Foreign Affairs and Russian & Eastern European Studies. She focuses her studies on issues concerning Russia and National Security, as well as Post-Soviet conflicts. She is currently working on research and analytic projects in support of the US Air Force and has worked in support of SOCOM.

This paper investigates the question, “Can conquest still be profitable in the modern day?” It reviews the latest existing literature concerning partial conquest and full scale conquest, and serves as a proof-of-concept piece to argue how there may still be a path to profit for some states in the modern day. It discusses how aggressor states may employ various tactics to avoid incurring domestic or international cost as a result of their actions. This paper primarily investigates Fait Accompli conquest, or partial conquest, and examines the unique traits associated with this style of invasion. This paper then conducts a preliminary cost-benefit analysis of conquest for any given state, and discusses how costs of invasion are calculated. The discussion later focuses on how costs of invasion may be avoided by employing particular tactics. This paper has enormous implications for aggressor states in the modern day who seek to seize territory, and grants helpful perspective to other states and international institutions who wish to avoid further challenges to Post-World War Two borders.

Prevailing forms of conquest have changed to reflect the nature of the modern world order. Traditional models of conquest entailed a full-scale military takeover of another state and the extraction of its economic resources. While this was once a viable option to strengthen one’s instruments of national power, it is no longer a common strategy. The costs of launching this type of offensive tactic have become too high in the modern day to remain the common strategy (Coe and Markowitz, 2021). In light of this new reality, states who have interests which would have been served by a full-scale conquest attempt, may instead pursue partial territorial seizures. There are several strategic benefits to a partial territorial seizure that prove to be more effective in the modern international environment. For one, global institutions are hostile to complete conquest. However, partial seizures which occur on a smaller scale are less likely to incur harsh consequences for the country pursuing the conquest. When partial seizure through fait accompli is carried out, states target a specific territory, carry out a military occupation, and then seek to avoid war by forcing the victimized country to simply accept the new situation (Altman, 2017). While full-state conquest, as argued by Coe and Markowitz, is no longer profitable, I believe that the differences in the types of conquest are key in explaining how fait accompli conquest can be profitable.

Since World War II, global borders have become more rigid and conquest has decreased, changing its prevailing form. Changing borders can reflect a challenge to the status quo, and the current world order will resist this change to preserve its power structures (Debs and Montiero 2014). Full country conquests, such as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, have been rebuffed and condemned by powerful countries with stake in the status quo. Deterred by these examples of failed conquest, countries are less tempted to exploit their neighbors through full-scale overpowering. An invasion with the intention of capturing an entire country will be countered by the victim and/ or international actors. The international community will condemn the action, institute repercussions, and the investment into the military buildup will become a sunken cost (Altman, 2020). Facing this fate, countries who wish to capture outside resources must envision another path to pursue their strategic goals.

Pursuing the tactic of fait accompli conquest addresses many of the issues faced by a full conquest approach. Partial conquest reduces the costs to a state which a full conquest would incur by making it easier for potential interfering states and the victim to choose inaction. The theory behind fait accompli works to coerce acceptance of the new situation, often through brute force. The aggressor only targets a specific territory, and makes the victim question its willingness to expend resources to reobtain its lost land. If the aggressor is militarily superior, or has a powerful ally, the victim might choose to forgo war in fear of incurring further cost without a chance of succeeding. Furthermore, the victim might have a more difficult time recruiting allies due to the partial nature of the conquest. The aggressor may also deny they have violated the territorial integrity norm by claiming the land was rightfully theirs (Altman, pg.517). Without a clear picture of which side has the true claim to the territory, outsiders may choose inaction to save their resources and avoid interfering in a complicated conflict.

In sum, partial conquest reduces the mechanisms which launch repercussions from external actors. Without external force to condemn their actions, aggressors may evade consequences for seizing foreign land. While external actors are motivated by preserving the status quo, small land seizures don’t often amount to a enough of a threat to merit a serious military or economic response. The seizure may violate the territorial integrity norm in principle, but with the burden of action on the international community, fait accomplis do not always represent a serious enough threat to merit the expenditure of capital.

Recent scholarship in the field of modern conquest explores the limitations this foreign policy presents to the real world. Andrew Coe and Jonathan Markowitz pose the question: why do powerful countries such as the United States not invade resource rich territories, such as in the Persian Gulf? Throughout their discussion, they muster evidence which supports the claim that such an exploit would not be profitable in the modern world. Their central argument was that the costs which go into waging an invasion would not be worth the benefits they would reap. In discussing the various costs that compose an invasion they conclude that the assets that aid a foreign invasion would be much more profitable in serving a domestic civilian pursuit. In effect, the opportunity cost of an invasion is such that a highly developed country would be better served without exploiting foreign resources, and instead investing at home.

One of the key argumentative points about conquest profitability stems from military investment. To refute modern conquest profitability, we must critically examine military expenditure, as it is one of the greatest upfront costs of invasion. As a rule, we see that the more productive a country is, the costlier their assets will be in their pursuit of conquest. They can afford more efficient and devastating technology. However, by investing in military technology, aggressor countries lose the opportunity to invest in domestic goals that could yield greater returns (Coe and Markowitz, pg.7). In this sense, a country’s very asset of productivity is the key reason why full conquest wouldn’t be monetarily beneficial. The investment into an invasion would be better served as an investment into the domestic economy.

What makes their study even more interesting is that conquest is not profitable for more developed countries, but could be profitable for less developed countries. The opportunity cost of investing elsewhere in one’s economy acts as the main mechanism for refuting invasion’s profitability. Therefore, less developed countries’ main incentive for not pursuing invasion must be the cost imposed on them by the international community. This also means that the revenue from plunder for high income countries is not enough to make up for the lost opportunity in domestic investment. This consideration of the unprofitability of conquest for more powerful countries is part of what triggers the conquest prevention or punishment response by which the international community deters those who are able to profit through conquest. The more important question this paper will explore is how a country could avoid triggering this punishment mechanism.

To conclude this discussion on the topic of total conquest’s nonprofitability, I will again emphasize the role of the international community. It is their power which acts as the main force in preventing and punishing tresspasses against international sovereignty. It has been determined by Article 39 of the United Nations charter that in response to an act of international aggression, measures will be taken against an aggressor country. However, in order for this article to take effect, an action must be defined as an aggression by the UNSC. Crucially, the international community is historically hesitant to become involved in a matter that is complicated and unclear. Although there are rare examples of international inaction in response to total conquest, fait accompli conquest can avoid this retaliation mechanism more consistently. In their article, Hodeg and Yahel write, “The classic annexations occur when the dominating state believes that there will be silent international consent” (Hodeg and Yahel, 2017). It seems this silent consent, or at least non-intervention, occurs much more often in cases of fait accompli conquest.

To address the issue of fait accompli profit, it must be broken down into its component parts. The first step in this process is to define profitability, which in this paper entails reckoning monetary expenses with returns. In any conquest, the aggressor state expends resources in building up its military, which are necessary to maintain control of the captured territory (Carter, 2010). It may also face some international consequences for its actions, such as sanctions and decreased trade. The returns from conquest may also be defined broadly in terms of natural resources and other forms of wealth extraction. In order to determine if the exploit was profitable, these aspects must be compiled and studied. Existing scholarship provides a great framework for this undertaking in Coe and Markowitz’s paper. However, their focus concerns the hypothetical total conquest attempt of a rich country over a poorer but resource-rich country. This paper is undertaking the questions of whether similar profit prevention mechanisms would prohibit partial territorial conquest from being profitable.

Coe and Markowitz examine traditional conquest and conclude that the cost of full-country conquest is no longer worth incurring. For the purposes of a side-by-side comparison, a study concerning fait accompli conquest should apply their stricter economic definitions and methods concerning profit. The authors examine measurable economic activity to discern gains or losses in their study, and fait accompli conquest could very well differ from their findings about full-scale conquests. Essentially, the logic for further investigation stems from this puzzle: why would fait accompli persist today if it was not profitable, while full-scale conquest has diminished? This paper seeks to understand whether partial conquest is profitable in order to rationalize its continued existence. If it is not profitable, there must be some different compelling reason why it persists, and further study would be needed.

I will now examine the costs of fait accompli conquest and determine how they might compare to traditional conquest. The cost of military buildup is composed of several factors: the target’s proximity, terrain type, area, population, will to resist, military personnel, and military quality (Coe and Markowitz, 2021). Some of these costs shrink proportionally as the target of conquest shrinks in a fait accompli conquest, as opposed to in a total conquest endeavor. This means that the potential for extracting benefits also decreases. Another important cost in military conquest is loss of life, which no matter the productivity of any given country, is always an asset that could have been diverted to another purpose for a domestic investment. These military costs have yielded varied returns in profit over time, and in general, have produced decreased or negative returns in cases of traditional conquest (Gartzke, 2011). One of the key contrasts Coe and Markowitz note is that lower income countries don’t have as much profit to lose by diverting resources to the military as higher income countries do. This factor of deterrence from conquest for developed countries through virtue of greater profit elsewhere is therefore not as relevant for lower income countries. The other major cost to be taken into account when making a decision to invade another country are the sanctions that may be imposed upon you after the invasion. Masahiko Asada’s writings on sanctions note that, “Article 39 triggers the sanction mechanism. The starting point is based on a finding by the Security Council of a threat to peace, a breach of peace, or an act of aggression” (Asada, 2020). The UNSC has determined there were acts of aggression when North Korea invaded South Korea, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, and in a few other instances1. Even when the UN decides not to impose sanctions, they can still be imposed by regional economic organizations, such as the European Union, or by individual states. All this is to say that there are mechanisms in place to rebuff conquest by malicious actors. Each actor who could impose sanctions has to find enough justification in a breach of peace or other capacity to find sanctions worth imposing.

Sanctions are one of a nation’s largest foreign policy tools, and they send diplomatic signals as well as yield economic consequences. Actors may feel disinclined to impose sanctions for a few reasons. Short of an obvious breach of international peace, such as in the Korea and Iraq examples, states may attempt to negotiate their way out of acting as an international peacekeeper to avoid diplomatic and economic costs. Fait accompli conquest can then potentially avoid triggering the sanctions mechanism by arming reluctant powers with arguments as to why the aggressor's actions don’t constitute a breach. Daniel Altman describes this process when, “In territorial disputes, states can claim that the territory they seized is rightfully theirs, thus denying that occupying it violated the norm” (Altman, 2020). If the norm of territorial sovereignty is not clearly violated, the powerful states and institutions may remain content with the status quo. To sanction an actor, especially one with some importance on the world stage, invites retaliatory sanctions and reduced diplomatic cooperation. This discussion illustrates how, in theory, the cost imposed by sanctions for conquest could be avoided in fait accompli conquest.

Another less easily calculable cost of traditional conquest includes the enmity of the victimized country. In typical conquest, the entire country is targeted for invasion and dissent is addressed during the conflict. The added cost which dissent creates is typically factored into the military cost in the “will to resist” factor explained earlier, until the invasion fails or all meaningful dissent is crushed. However, continually putting down dissent as it arises should be factored in as a recurring cost of conquest. In fait accompli conquest, only a specific territory is targeted for conquest, so the state who formerly held the territory is still able to impose cost or try to recruit the support of allies to counter the aggression. Ideally, as Altman describes in his paper, the aggressor has an overwhelming amount of brute force in fait accompli and forces the victim country to accept the situation (Altman, 2020). This may not always be the case, and the weaker country may eventually grow stronger. The cost of creating or inflaming an enemy definitely varies between situations and acts as the potentially substantial long-term military and infrastructure costs.

The cost of invasion can also be substantially reduced through the recruitment of an aggressor’s ally to aid the effort. Compounded strength increases the effort the victim needs to successfully fight back, and can quicken the mechanism which forces the victim to accept the new situation. It can also make the international community more reluctant to rebuke the conquest because some third-party countries had already accepted it, which means that in order to respond, they would need to antagonize multiple actors to punish aggressors. The introduction of an ally is a strong force in reducing the cost of fait accompli conquest.

Taking a look at the profits which states can gain from fait accompli conquest, the results are similarly complicated. The first most obvious profit from conquest is the natural resources from the territory. These can be incredibly lucrative and are also stationary assets that cannot flee when a change in power occurs. Resources such as oil and gas can be sold on international markets, assuming sanctions or trade barriers were not erected in response to the conquest. Resources also serve as one of the most compelling motives and profitable products of the government for conquest, as noted by Gartzke in his study. However, through fait accompli conquest, resource profit will be proportionally decreased as the target territory decreases. Another, albeit less dependable, mode of returns is profit from the people who live in the conquered territory. This may come from the monetary addition of their labor into the conqueror’s economy, and also through taxation. This source of profit is much less dependable and valuable than resource wealth. Profit from people is liquid, and can flee the territory, along with their private financial assets (Coe and Markowitz, 11). Through fait accompli conquest, those who live in conquered territory have the option to relocate to the part of their country which has not been invaded, though relocating is not cheap. Some may have little choice but to stay, some will stay due to their affiliation with and affection for the land. Only the most wealthy will have the ability to leave. Ultimately, profiting from the people likely will not present a significant source of profit unless the people wish to stay, or the population benefits from the invasion due to cultural affiliation with the aggressor.

This exploration has shown that for fait accompli conquest, there is unfortunately still a path to profit in the modern day. As has already been established by other papers, conquest may still be profitable for lower income countries if you ignore the international community’s punishment mechanisms. Therefore, should a country wish to pursue conquest to profit, a country would engage in fait accompli conquest and do its best to avoid triggering punishment mechanisms. Their likelihood of success is compounded when they have a strong military, a powerful ally, and some semi-legitimate claim to the territory. However, through fait accompli, often a smaller territory is targeted and therefore the profits will also be proportionally smaller.

This work outlines how the allure of conquest should not be dismissed in the modern day simply because we have some prevention mechanisms in place. In fact, conquest has never fully disappeared as a feature of the international environment. Conquest was a prominent feature of the 12th century, as Mongols expanded across Asia. It persisted through the 19th century, with the European “Scramble for Africa,” and now in the 21st century, as Russia overtakes Crimea. Despite the goals of post-World War II institutions, territorial integrity is still not guaranteed and conflict continues to stem from questioning borders. While existing work examines why full-state conquest is pursued much less often than partial territorial conquest, these studies do not examine whether these same constraints on profitability of conquest exist in cases of partial territorial conquest. Testable implications of this paper could be found in examples of countries who have already pursued fait accompli conquest, as one could examine whether they subsequently profited. Cases such as the 2020 Nagorno Karabakh conflict and the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea serve as two case studies which could illustrate this argument. In sum, a more controlled military undertaking has the potential to incur fewer costs due to its limited strategic nature and its potential to avoid war and international repercussions. While existing models do not scrutinize this process, it is nevertheless important to examine this issue due to its wide-ranging modern day applicability. While China would never occupy Japan, it may one day decide to pursue fait accompli conquest in the disputed Senkaku Islands or in the South China Sea. Furthermore, an entire war was fought only a few months ago, when Azerbaijan seized the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia (Rubin, 2020). Further research in the profitability of fait accompli could help us to better understand the motivations of aggressors, and this study begins the work in determining the role that profit has in influencing a state. It could also teach us how to identify a profitable conquest undertaking, and how an international community could impose a higher cost, such that the offensive would no longer be worth it.