a policy paper
PART 2
DAMAGE TO INTERNATIONAL ORDER
In a just society, the purpose of law is to provide for the rights of life, liberty, and property, and to effect equitable solutions to disputes. It must also impose appropriate punishment for breaches of the law, else the integrity of the legal system itself is compromised. More than any other legal system, international law suffers from a dearth of integrity because it has few enforcement mechanisms. Indeed, in many cases, an alleged perpetrator of an international wrong must consent to be bound by international law. Imagine a society where if the defendant decides not to appear in court, there is no legal proceeding. That is international society for the most part. There is no world policeman; the citizens of international society, that is the sovereign states, must either cajole or intimidate the defendant to appear in court, or take the law into their own hands. On the international scene, we call the former “sanctions,” the latter is called “war.” When a breach of international law occurs that is so egregious that the act is a threat to the integrity of the international order, whatever sanctions that are necessary to convince the perpetrator to cease and desist must be imposed in the defense of the international order itself, for the failure to do so must ultimately endanger the peace of the world.
The three principles underlying the international system of sovereign territorial states that evolved from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia are:
1) The principle of the sovereignty of states and the fundamental right of political self-determination.
2) The principle of legal equality between states.
3) The principle of non-intervention of one state in the internal affairs of another state.
Although an exhaustive recitation of sources of international law is beyond the scope of this paper, several may be noted here.
1) Article 8 of the Convention on Rights and Duties of States, signed at Montevideo on 26 December 1933, states:
No state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.
2) Article 11 of the said Convention states:
The contracting states definitely establish as the rule of their conduct the precise obligation not to recognize territorial acquisitions or special advantages which have been obtained by force whether this consists in the employment of arms, in threatening diplomatic representations, or in any other effective coercive measure. The territory of a state is inviolable and may not be the object of military occupation nor of other measures of force imposed by another state directly or indirectly or for any motive whatever even temporarily.
3) Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco on 26 June 1945, states:
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
Failure to uphold in Ukraine the principle of territorial integrity that is at the heart of the international system of legally equal, sovereign states will encourage other entities to resort to force to redraw international borders. Although the term “nation-state” is ubiquitous, it is also woefully inaccurate. A “nation” is a “people,” a group that has an identity by virtue of a distinct language, religion, culture, or history. A “state” is a government that exercises sovereignty over a defined territory. It is the norm rather than the exception that peoples straddle international borders, and that states encompass multiple ethnic groups. Historically, warfare has been the favorite means for redrawing International borders, until the rise of the new international norm against annexation by right of conquest in the mid-twentieth century. The ascendance of that norm ended the World Wars, and the frequency of smaller wars between nations diminished. Absent that norm the Cold War might have erupted into a Third World War. Russia’s occupation and annexation of Crimea weakens that norm, and threatens to make war between nations for the sake of territorial gain more common.
Failure to uphold the security guarantees given to Ukraine in 1994 in exchange for decommissioning the vast nuclear arsenal that it inherited from the Soviet Union would set a poor example to states who have developed or are developing nuclear weapons outside of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. The probability of any of these states ever giving up their nuclear weapons and programs drops to near zero under this scenario. If anything, more states will be motivated to initiate clandestine nuclear weapons programs.
A world of more frequent wars and more nuclear-armed states will be the consequence of allowing the annexation of Crimea to stand, and therefore reversing Russia’s aggression is worth any price the international community must pay, short of war.
Cold War or Hot Deal: The World's Options in the Ukraine Crisis, Part 1
Cold War or Hot Deal: The World's Options in the Ukraine Crisis, Part 3
Cold War or Hot Deal: The World's Options in the Ukraine Crisis, Part 4
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