The unfolding events in Ukraine threaten international peace and security in a manner that goes beyond the immediate crisis. Russia’s increasingly brazen violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity threatens to undermine the widely accepted principle that international borders are not subject to further revision, a principle that has contributed significantly to a global decline in interstate war in recent decades. The United States and its allies have limited means to pressure Russia to withdraw from Ukraine, but upholding the principle of territorial integrity will require a sustained refusal to acquiesce to Russia’s actions.
Conflict over European borders has a horrific history. The specter of Munich and Lebensraum led states to adopt the territorial integrity of states as a core principle of the post-1945 world order, one that transcended the Cold War divide. Since Saddam Hussein’s disastrous push to conquer Kuwait was reversed in 1991, no state has attempted the overt conquest of another. To be sure, states have frequently skirted the edges of this prohibition, such as in Milosevic’s support for Republika Srpska during the Bosnian war, but they have not crossed it. Respect for the territorial integrity of states has become one of the most widely accepted rules of international behavior over the past several decades.
Over this same period, the incidence of war between states has plummeted throughout the world. While many factors likely played a role in this decline and debates over the relative importance of each continue, academic research has increasingly emphasized the importance of settled borders in reducing the likelihood of conflict between states.
Source: nationalinterest.org
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