Traditional approaches to territorial conflicts would suggest that the value of a disputed territory—be it strategic, economic, religious, or historical—drives conflict. Standard explanations of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute often fit this trope, pointing to the military or economic benefits possessing the islands would confer upon the claimant states. This presentation takes a different view, arguing that it is not the value of the islands that drives the conflict, but rather the role of the islands as a tangible object of conflict that generates their value.

Professor Scott Sagan (Stanford University) will present his paper with Professor Benjamin Valentino (Dartmouth), entitled "Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants". Professor Jeff McMahan (Oxford) will serve as discussant. The session will be chaired by Dr Janina Dill (Oxford).

Recent scholarship highlights the multifaceted nature of non-state armed movements, raising important questions about their internal politics and their governance of territory and civilians, i.e. their ‘domestic’ politics. What has received little attention, however, are the ‘foreign’ affairs of non-state armed groups.

Professor Martha Nussbaum will be in conversation about her new book 'The Monarchy of Fear', and also about the relationship between history and philosophy, and feminism and its future.