This is a couple questions. Looking back at history, it's easy to see the malleability of borders. Empires rise and fall. But, throughout history, there have been many long periods where empires remained stationary. By comparison, I feel (and I acknowledge that this is naive) that, for example, France, Spain, UK, Italy, the USA, etc aren't really going to expand or contract any time soon. Influence, perhaps. But the borders are pretty stationary. Let's, for the sake of this question, call this a feeling of "permanence."
(1) Did people in other periods of history have a feeling of permanence? Or, did everyone recognize that there would always be fighting...
(2) Is it possible that the modern, connected, interdependent world (which excludes some big chunks of the world) is now less focused on grabbing land, to the point where wars over territory might be a thing of the past?
(3) Assuming the answer to #2 is "no" - do you think that there is at least a correlation between economic interdependence and modern economic thought and territorial wars?
(4) Will future wars be wars of popular opinion? That is, will future states gain control of new territory through persuasion (and perhaps immigration/demographics), rather than through force?
"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
(1) Did people in other periods of history have a feeling of permanence? Or, did everyone recognize that there would always be fighting...
(2) Is it possible that the modern, connected, interdependent world (which excludes some big chunks of the world) is now less focused on grabbing land, to the point where wars over territory might be a thing of the past?
You might be interested in a book published in 1910 called the Great illusion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion
It basically propositions exactly what you have posted above. That war is a thing of the past, and that the cost of war is so high no one is going to go to war in the future.
Of course WWI started 4 years later and subsequently redrew pretty much every border East of the Seine River.
for example, France, Spain, UK, Italy, the USA, etc aren't really going to expand or contract any time soon. Influence, perhaps. But the borders are pretty stationary. Let's, for the sake of this question, call this a feeling of "permanence."
This is a very west-centric point of view which ignores the fact that borders elsewhere shifts quite a bit (the last great round of it being 1989).
Even during the cold war (a time of static borders in Europe) involved massive conflicts in the third world. Over 20 million people died during the cold war conflicts. In a lot of ways war have simply shifted from the first world to the third world.
Well, a simple way to put it would be the phrase "everything is nice until it isn't", a lot of effort as gone into maintaining peace by world organizations such as the UN, and the creation of the Geneva conventions if you want more information has gone a long way to at least attenuate the effects of war on the population of the belligerent countries. And as we all know occupation (and annexation) of territory belonging to a different country is frowned upon by most nations (at least in what is considered the western world). However, like you said empires rise and fall, and in my opinion (I'm talking about a future possibility, not an historical fact so I believe i'm allowed the use of an opinion to answer you question) that eventually tensions will rise to high to be controlled by any peace keeping organization. Since my historical and social economical knowledge isn't that great in relation to the question at hand I will try to not make a fool out of myself and answers in detail to your question and refrain to give more than my own bit of insight into the situation, sorry. (I also didn't want to mention the Crimea occupation, even though i'm well aware of it i do not know enough to go in depth on the topic and provide and make a decent example to answers questions #2 and #4)