Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Smith: Success rate of large powers invading smaller states has dropped

Noah Smith · FPV Drones -The Next War Is Already Here — Yaroslav Azhnyuk, The Fourth Law & Noah Smith, Noahpinion · May 18, 2026 · at 1:55:41

Noah Smith discusses historical patterns of military conquest during a conversation on modern warfare and the war in Ukraine.

0:00 / 0:04exact quote · 4.8s

▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark

“They fail a lot more now than they used to. The success rate of taking places over has gone way down.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

The historical success rate of large powers taking over smaller territories has decreased significantly compared to the past.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Noah Smith's claim that the historical success rate of taking over territories has fallen substantially over time is strongly supported by quantitative international relations literature and conflict datasets. Studies on violent state death and sovereign conquest (Fazal 2004, 2007) demonstrate that while roughly half of sovereign states between 1816 and 1945 experienced violent state death or conquest, violent conquest of sovereign states dropped to near zero after 1945. Research on the territorial integrity norm (Zacher 2001) and data from the Correlates of War (COW) and Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) projects similarly show a structural, statistically significant decline in successful coercive boundary changes and unilateral conquests in the post-WWII era compared to the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Fazal (2004, 2007) found that sovereign state death via conquest and military occupation dropped from approximately 50% between 1816 and 1945 to near zero in the post-1945 era.
Zacher (2001) documented a marked decline in successful coercive boundary changes post-1945 due to the establishment of UN Article 2(4) and territorial integrity norms.
The Correlates of War and Issue Correlates of War datasets confirm that violent territorial transfers and successful unilateral annexations declined significantly in the modern era.

Checked against

[1] cambridge.org [2] google.com [3] cambridge.org [4] dokumen.pub [5] researchgate.net [6] northwestern.edu [7] researchgate.net [8] wikipedia.org

"Mark Zacher" "The Territorial Integrity Norm" numbers OR statistics OR cases Mark Zacher territorial integrity norm conquest success rate Tanisha Fazal State Death conquest rate decline "Tanisha Fazal" "State Death" "1816" numbers OR statistics OR percentage territorial conquest success rate historical decline correlates of war Dan Altman conquest territorial change dataset success rate post WWII

assessed as of 2026-09-02

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

large powers

⚑ Spot an error? Report it

Smith: Success rate of large powers invading smaller states has dropped

Turn any episode into a week of clips.