ABSTRACT
This chapter responds to the potential criticism that previous studies testing the relationship between territorial MIDs and war are based on just involvement in territorial MIDs. The role of territory in the escalation of disputes to war has been documented in many previous studies. The major hypothesis to be tested is whether initiators of disputes are more likely to escalate to war over territorial issues than over other types of issues. However, the pattern for both initiators and non-initiators is consistent with the territorial explanation in that both always have a higher probability of going to war over territory than over regime or policy. The main conclusion of this chapter is that the territorial explanation applies to initiators as well as to disputes in general. Initiators of territorial disputes are more likely to go to war than initiators of other disputes. Initiators seem to exercise caution evinced in their lower probability of war.
