Fighting sometimes over uninhabited islands or lands that have no strategic value.
Even if the land have some value, wouldn’t be better to give up claims rather than risk bad relations, embargos or war?
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There are a lot of different reasons and factors depending on each different conflict like this. Ultimately you’re asking why governments aren’t better at cooperating with each other and the answers vary from it not being in their best interest to do so, ego, stubbornness, corporate interests, etc.
In the case of situations that are genuinely trivial, which I imagine are fewer than you realise, why should one country give up the land when the other country has equally trivial grounds for wanting it. They both feel that the other country should be the one to give up surely?
There is a huge difference between what makes sense economical compared to internal politics and international politics.
Even if it mak scene in an economic and international politics perspective it can be terrible for internal political reasons where your political opponent will criticize you. Using national pride argument and day that are weak and the great country of X do not need to follow the demands of country Y
The internal political explanation is often the most important explanation.
An example is the Falkland where it had no economic or strategical value for either country. Argentina invaded the primary as a way to shift focus from the economic problems and the junta dirty war against political opponents.
For the UK that had ave a terrible economic decade before and had an empire that had crumbled with colonies declaring independence now had island far away from where the population like to remain British. So it was a perfect opportunity for Margaret Thatcher to show strength. Sh e and the government’s approval rating was terrible, she gains the political power and popularity she later had in large part because of the war.
Falklands might not strategically important for the UK but other holdings around the world are and resisting the Argentinians show that they are prepared to defend the country. That will make anyone thinking of capture an important colony to think twice.
Foor the Argentinas Junta it was a disaster and it resulted that the stood down and there was a democratic election the next year. But if the had captured it the would have stayed in power longer.
So for both sides is was a political gamble and the military usage was popular in both countries. That is popular in Argentina before the start to lose the war.
So the Falklands Island might be strategically irrelevant and an economic drain but because of internal politics and the message you send to the word they were important for both.
>Even if the land have some value, wouldn’t be better to give up claims rather than risk bad relations, embargos or war?
Well if the land has value then you have to compare the value gained by keeping the land vs. the value lost by an embargo or fighting a war. If the value gained is higher than the value lost, then it’s worth it to fight for it.
But also, countries feel like they need to project strength so that they won’t be taken advantage of. For example, a bully demands your lunch money, and threatens to hit you if you don’t hand it over. It’s only a few dollars, you’d probably be willing to give that up to avoid a broken nose. But if you give it up this time, he’s just going to do this again tomorrow, and the next day, and so on. It won’t end with a few dollars, it could eventually be hundreds or thousands of dollars. Is *that* worth it? You might need to take a broken nose today to save yourself thousands of dollars in the long run. Because taking that broken nose shows the bully that it’s not easy to steal from you, it’s a big hassle, he’s better off leaving you alone.
Countries need to put up a fight and make a big stink when they’re forced to give up a land claim, because if they give it up quietly, they’ll be seen as weak, and their enemies will come back again and again to make more demands. Even if the costs of fighting are large, it’s worth it in the long-run, to deter other countries from constantly bullying you.
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