Claimability in International Relations: Oil Discoveries, Territorial Claims, and Interstate Conflicts

War is rare, less because states peacefully settle disputes, but more because they have nothing to dispute. To address this simple but oft-neglected reality, I propose a concept of claimability, defined as the appropriateness of making a claim. Focusing on three international norms that emerged after the world wars (territorial integrity, self-determination, and maritime sovereignty), I construct a new dataset of states’ claimable areas for 1946–2024. I illustrate the usefulness of this concept by applying it to oil and conflict. By leveraging the records of over 600,000 wildcat drills, natural experiments, and difference-in-differences, I demonstrate that fuel resources increase interstate conflicts only when they are discovered in areas claimable to multiple states. The extensive analyses of validity, heterogeneity, and mechanisms, as well as a “most-similar” case study, provide further credence. These findings imply a crucial role of claimability; states claim and dispute only when international norms permit such actions.