The Norm Against Territorial Conquest Is in Its Death Throes
When the phrase “rules-based order” is invoked, it is intended to describe the organization of the international system since World War II, a system marked by the presence of international institutions such as the United Nations that seek to organize relations between states enough to at the very least avoid another world war. But invoking the phrase can also induce eye rolls, largely because the ostensible protector of that order—the United States—is selective in supporting the rules it is ostensibly based on.
U.S. President Donald Trump would not invoke the phrase if, as his former adviser Steve Bannon once put it, you threatened to shoot him. But even his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, who was a seemingly staunch supporter of the U.S.-led order, demonstrated the hypocrisy that often accompanies use of the phrase by openly criticizing the International Criminal Court when its decisions went against U.S. interests, as in the case of the Israel-Hamas war, but praising them when U.S. interests were served, as in the case of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Hearing the phrase “rules-based order” can lead to questions about “whose rules” and “what order.” But one rule in that order appeared to hold firm over the past 80 years, if not earlier: the norm against coercive territorial acquisition. It is an idea that was expressed in both the ill-fated Covenant of the League of Nations and the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Treaty, which sought to ban conquest as a legally acceptable means of state practice. While those early efforts failed, the idea lived on, eventually becoming the core provision of the United Nations Charter. Specifically, Article 2 clause 4 of the charter holds that “[a]ll 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.”
One could argue that this provision serves as the solid core of the global international legal system that underpins the rules-based order. While many treaties and provisions are vaguely written and flexibly applied, the legal prohibition on the taking of territory is clearly stated. It is the foundational principle of the existing international order, as it ensures that the global map, which is dotted by the respective territories of the world’s independent and sovereign actors, does not devolve into a free-for-all of states helping themselves to their neighbors’ land. It is intended to make sure that international relations’ analytic idea of anarchy, by which the world is made up of independent sovereign states answerable to no single global government above them, is not reduced to the colloquial notion of anarchy, meaning chaos and unconstrained destruction.
But that seems to no longer be the case. To be sure, large-scale attempts at territorial acquisition and conquest, such as Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait or Russia’s 2022 attempt to conquer all of Ukraine, remain exceedingly rare. But smaller-scale attempts are not. From fait accompli encroachments where nary a shot is fired, like Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, to the series of border conflicts between Ethiopia and Eritrea that appear poised to flare up again, these attempts to take land, though limited, are also the biggest threat to the normative foundation of the anti-conquest norm. As IR scholar Tanisha Fazal recently wrote, “Nibbling around the edges of countries may be more damaging to the norm against territorial conquest than trying to swallow them in a single bite.”
The norm against territorial conquest arguably served as the solid core of the global international legal system that underpins the rules-based order. But that seems to no longer be the case.
And when it comes to nibbling, states have done quite a bit, with Israel’s military incursions beyond the already annexed Golan Heights into southern Syria following the fall of former dictator Bashar al-Assad just one recent example. Even more disturbing are Trump’s repeated declarations of his determination to acquire Greenland, which have gone from simply wanting to purchase the island—which can still arguably violate the anti-conquest norm if the purchase is induced through coercive means—to calls for a referendum by its inhabitants, to not ruling out the use of force to take possession of it. His overtures toward Canada, while still difficult to take seriously, are similarly problematic for the norm against conquest, because even here he hasn’t ruled out the use of force and coercion to, if not acquire all of the country, at least redraw their shared border so that the entirety of the “Great Lakes” are under U.S. control.
The fear is that Trump’s declarations in both cases will help normalize such demands even if he doesn’t follow through on them, further weakening the anti-conquest norm.
But the norm may well have already been terminally weakened well before Trump came to office. When Russia took Crimea in 2014, it was kicked out of the G8 and hit with a series of sanctions. But those consequences weren’t nearly harsh enough, as losing membership in the G8 was largely symbolic—and emptily so at that given Russia’s disinterest in maintaining ties to the West—while the sanctions didn’t target the key oil and gas sectors of the Russian economy. Indeed, the administration of then-President Barack Obama was criticized for being too soft on Russia, often in excoriating terms.
Sad to say, but the weak response by the U.S. and its European allies to Crimea was, at best, the beginning of the end and, at worst, the death knell of the norm against territorial acquisition. What it showed, and what the war in Ukraine has only served to underscore, is that, while small states will be opposed and even consumed should they attempt to take land, a major power can do so at a cost that may well be worth it.
If the prohibition against forceful and coercive territorial acquisition is a core pillar of international law, then what does its erosion mean for that law? I wrote last year about the moderating effect of international law, whether by lending moral weight to forces opposing illegal actions or incentivizing avenues for demonstrating resolve that don’t require taking costly illegal actions. As I wrote, “One must always think of the counterfactual: What would the behavior be without the law? In most cases, the answer is, Probably worse. And the difference between them is why international law matters.”
But the gap between what the behavior would be with and without the norm against territorial conquest is closing, and not for the better.
Of course, adherence to the idea was always tenuous and partial. The history of international relations since 1945 is rife with attempts at territorial revision. Indeed, the desire to acquire territory was and remains a key driver of conflict. But even the façade of restraint generated by that norm seems to be waning. And it’s a safe bet we’ll miss it when it’s gone.
Paul Poast is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago and a nonresident fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.