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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>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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